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Game Approachability Principles (GAP) is proposed as a set of useful guidelines for game designers to create better tutorials and first learning levels – especially for the casual gamer. Developing better first learning levels can be a key step to ease the casual gamer into play proactively – at the conceptual design phase - before it is too costly or cumbersome to restructure the tutorials, as would be the case later in the development cycle. Thus, Game Approachability, in the context of game development, is defined as making games initially more friendly, fun, and accessible for those players who have the desire to play, yet do not always follow through to actually playing the game. GAP has evolved through a series of stages assessing accessibility as a stand-alone, heuristic-based approach versus one-on-one usability testing. Outcomes suggest potential for GAP as (1) effective Heuristic Evaluation, (2) adjunct to Usability Testing, and (3) proactive checklist of principles in beginning conceptual and first learning level tutorial design to increase Game Approachability – for all levels of gamers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Game developers have begun applying formal human-computer interaction (HCI) principles in design. Desurvire et al [2] adapted a set of Heuristics for productivity software to games. The resulting set, presented at CHI 2004, was Heuristics to Evaluate Playability (HEP). Generalization of these heuristics is required to make them applicable to a multiple of game genres and game deliveries. This follow-up study focused on the refined list, Heuristics of Playability (PLAY), that can be applied earlier in game development as well as aiding developers between formal usability/playability research during the development cycle. Heuristics were formed based on their efficacious scores on the popular game review website, metacritic.com. Fifty-four gamers rated High and Low ranked games on 116 potential heuristics. Implications for how these Heuristics will help developers improve game quality are discussed. PLAY has been found useful in design evaluation and elf-report survey format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]