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In 2019, the Harry Potter-themed augmented reality (AR) game Wizards Unite was released, one which employed the same game mechanics as Pokémon Go. In order to explore the similarities and differences in players’ perceptions, motivations to play, and missing functions in Wizards Unite and Pokémon Go, we conducted a web-based survey which targeted active players of Wizards Unite 14 weeks after its release. The results are compared to a survey applying the same methodology and questions directed at active players of Pokémon Go. An important reason why many players started playing Wizards Unite was that they were already Harry Potter fans. For Wizards Unite players the motivation stemming from public attention was lower compared to that for Pokémon Go players. The main motivating factors drawing players to these games include fun, curiosity, and being physically active. The AR function was not mentioned as a motivating factor for either game. The aspect of players being able to collect and complete the game was more of a motivation for playing Pokémon Go. Although the game mechanisms are similar, we identified specific differences in the motivational factors of the two games. The main difference is the misfit between the general game story with hunting and collecting within the Harry Potter universe. Nevertheless, the theme of the game and its background story can be important long-term motivating factors of Wizards Unite. The findings in this paper provide insights into how one can create AR games that meet players’ needs.

This paper explores how players perceive Fortnite streamers as influencers and how these internal perceptions shape their experience of the streamers’ videos and their own gameplay. Fortnite is currently the most popular multi-platform free-to-play game. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted revealing that streamers are, first, perceived as entertainers by showcasing high-level gameplay. Gamers consume this content because it is perceived as fun, relaxing, and an engaging way to learn. Streamers are, second, an inspiration to play by inspiring competition, collaboration, curiosity and commitment in gamers through their expertise in showcasing the game. Finally, gamers perceive streamers as endorsers through their videos as skins are perceived as giving social status, the battle pass is perceived to provide rewards, skin choice is highlighted in the player’s game, and new game mechanics are promoted.

A game is best evaluated by playing it and prototyping is therefore an important activity in game development. Game writers and narrative designers are responsible for the narrative structure of a game, which may have a varying degree of interactivity to it. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of prototyping tools for game writers. There is a limited range of such tools available, of which Twine is one of the most established. Most of these tools have a text-based programming interface for modelling of game mechanics. This paper presents Deig—a proto- typing tool for creating point-and-click adventure games. In Deig, game mechanics is modelled graphically using nodes from a set of primitives. We present an interview study where game writing students reflect on their experience of using Deig and Twine as prototyping tools. The result shows that both tools have their merits and complement each other. Deig was found to be intuitive for modelling of game mechanics, which lead students to create interactive narratives. Twine was found to be more useful for experimental writing. The conclusion of this work is that there is a need for a diverse set of prototyping tools to support game writing. Inkluderande julkalender

Traditionally, most software patches have primarily fixed bugs or improved performance in previously released software. However, modern computer games use patches not only to fix software but to change gameplay, as well. Despite the importance of changes in gameplay to both the players and the game designers, there is little or no published results nor 3rd party Websites that analyze game data along with patch data. We analyzed the effect of patches on gameplay for what may be the most popular computer game in the world, Riot Games League of Legends (LoL). Our methods: (1) harvested all available patch data—over 160 patch files with over 7700 patch changes—and created a novel taxonomy to classifying the patch changes; (2) gathered game statistics from over 11,000 players and over 465,000 games; (3) analyzed game data and patch data separately and in combination to gather insights into the impact of patching; and (4) developed a publicly accessible Web site that allows for interactive exploration of game data and the corresponding patches. Analysis of the data shows that Riot Games applies patch changes to LoL gameplay twice each day on average, about 10× more often than Riot Games patches LoL bugs. Patches tend to keep player-chosen champions close to a win rate of 50%. While most gameplay patch changes can be categorized and quantified, the effects of patches are not straightforward and require interpretation of patch text in order to fully understand their impact.

Emerging research on video games has suggested that feelings of both enjoyment and meaningfulness can be elicited from gameplay. Studies have shown enjoyment and meaningfulness evaluations to be associated with discrete elements of video games (ratings of gameplay and narrative, respectively), but have relied on closed-end data analysis. The current study analyzed participants’ open-ended reviews of either their “most fun” or “most meaningful” video game experience (N = 575, randomly assigned to either condition). Results demonstrated that “fun” games were explained in terms of gameplay mechanics, and “meaningful” games were explained in terms of connections with players and in-game characters.

In this paper, common methods for the marketing of ‘AAA’ and ‘indie’ games are analysed in order to determine the extent to which video gamers consider them to be effective and trustworthy. Data was gathered through (1) an online survey that was distributed amongst online gaming communities and completed by 167 respondents; and, (2) a questionnaire that was completed by 37 respondents (who were computer games design students). The aims behind this project were as follows: (1) to determine the reasons why gamers may or may not purchase gaming platforms and multi-platform video games; and, (2) to measure the extent to which their friends influence their purchase decisions. It was discovered that friends and family were the most trusted video game marketing source amongst the gamers, and that their friends had a decisive impact on their console and multi-platform video game purchases.

A common notion in games for learning is that the player must win the game. But is it always necessary for the player to win in order to ‘get’ the message that the game is trying to portray? When we think back on our most memorable learning experiences, we find that these lessons are often things we learned through failure rather than success. There is a class of games where ‘winning’ doesn’t look the way we typically expect it to look. Some games do not allow their players to win, and their underlying message is more akin to that found in a cautionary tale. We refer to these games as games you can’t win, and they form a distinctly different approach to game design. Games such as Sweatshop (Littleloud, 2011), Darfur is Dying (MTVu, 2006), and September 12th (Newsgaming, 2005) are games you cannot conceivably win, and they are designed that way deliberately. This paper presents a critique on serious games that are unwinnable by design. We examine the concepts of games and learning, the design of unwinnable games, design strategies for unhappy and/or unwinnable learning games, and ways to measure the success of games you can’t win. We also briefly consider potential issues and future directions, and we conclude that the messages delivered via games you can’t win are more powerful than those of games in which you can win.

Since digital games and their scientific study are quite new, many questions concerning the fundamental nature of these phenomena remain. Two often-cited attempts to clarify the fundamental components of games include the Mechanics–Dynamics–Aesthetics Framework and the Elemental Tetrad. This theory development paper attempts to reconcile these two frameworks into a single, clear and cohesive account of the kinds of elements that constitute games. The proposed theory not only includes all of the elements from its source frameworks but also introduces two refinements: (1) it differentiates game mechanics from narrative mechanics; (2) it distinguishes three types of narratives—stories told by the developers through the game, stories that emerge from gameplay and players’ interpretations of game stories. The proposed theory should be useful for teaching game design fundamentals, as a coding scheme for qualitative data analysis and to analyse game design challenges. Subject to further clarification and extension, the proposed model may provide a basis for a general theory of digital games.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate game design practice, in order to define a language and methodology that can be used to improve game systems design. Through our user research, we determined that game designers gain clarity about their game systems from externalizing and reflecting upon their games’ mechanical structures and flow. We call our resulting language and approach the Game System Modelling Language (GSML). Our research has shown that GSML provides a practical, novel perspective that assists game designers in analyzing and refining their game systems independently of prototyping and player feedback.

‘Griefing’ is a term used to describe when a player within a multiplayer online environment intentionally disrupts another player’s game experience for his or her own personal enjoyment or gain. Every day a certain percentage of users of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) are experiencing some form of griefing. There have been studies conducted in the past that attempted to ascertain the factors that motivate users to play MMORPGs. A limited number of studies specifically examined the motivations of users who perform griefing (who are also known as ‘griefers’). However, those studies did not examine the motivations of users subjected to griefing. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the factors that motivate the subjects of griefing to play MMORPGs, as well as the factors motivating the griefers. The authors conducted an online survey with the intention to discover the motivations for playing MMORPGs among those whom identified themselves as (i) those that perform griefing, and (ii) those who have been subjected to griefing. A previously devised motivational model by Nick Yee that incorporated ten factors was used to determine the respondents’ motivational trends. In general, players who identified themselves as griefers were more likely to be motivated by all three ‘achievement’ sub-factors (advancement, game mechanics and competition) at the detriment of all other factors. The subjects of griefing were highly motivated by ‘advancement’ and ‘mechanics’, but they ranked ‘competition’ significantly lower (compared to the griefers). In addition, ‘immersion’ factors were rated highly by the respondents who were subjected to griefing, with a significantly higher rating of the ‘escapism’ factor (compared with rankings by griefers). In comparison to the griefers, the respondents subjected to griefing with many years’ experience in the genre of MMORPGs, also placed a greater emphasis on the ‘socializing’ and ‘relationship’ factors. Overall, the griefers in this survey considered ‘achievement’ to be a prime motivating factor, whereas the griefed players tended to be motivated by all ten factors to a similar degree.

Virtual economies, in which players use real money to buy and sell virtual items such as weapons and clothes in games, have now become one of the most important business models in the game industry. The success of virtual economies raises controversies and discussions about how virtual items come to have commercial value as intangibles in games. Some follow the traditional labour focused perspectives to argue that the value of virtual items is created by players’ efforts in obtaining them. Others suggest that this value is given by players’ personal preferences. This paper suggests that both the labour focused and personal preference focused perspectives, on their own, tend to overlook how players are still limited and affected by the gaming environment that involves various game mechanics. I argue that we need to reconsider how the game mechanics created by game design play a critical role in generating and affecting the value of virtual items. I therefore examine two significant game mechanics: functionality and aesthetics, and explore how they generate and affect the value of virtual items inside or outside Huizinga’s magic circle. I argue that these mechanics not only build the rules for players to follow, but also contribute to different types of value of virtual items in the context of gameplay. This paper suggests that an interdisciplinary approach that bridges economics and game design will be necessary with the growing development of virtual economies in the future.

As games keep evolving and improving in areas such as graphics, audio and physics, game players also expect the games to have believable agents. Many games have been criticised by players because of repeated dialogues; or because of the developers’ lack of knowledge of the game world; or because the player is unable to avoid obstacles in the game; etc. Furthermore, games may also be unpopular when their agents do not make mistakes, or exhibit better behaviors than real humans. This paper describes some state-of-the-art adaptive agents, and it focuses on dialogue and social interactions. It discusses game agents and their importance in games. It provides some history on what approaches have been used in games. This paper explains the basis and ideas used for adaptive agents (including emotion and personality models), and examines the approaches used by developers including Maxis (Sims 3), Valve (Left 4 Dead), The University of California (Prom Week) and StoryBricks.

Immersion within video games is a key aspect that contributes to a player’s enjoyment of a game. However, there are different forms of immersion within the media of video games and these different aspects of a video game are combined in order to make the player feel immersed within the game world. This paper aims to explore these definitions of immersion and the various techniques used to immerse the player, with a particular focus on audio methodologies. An investigation into audio’s impact on player immersion was conducted with a group of 20 students (16 male, 4 females): 10 participants tested a game with audio effects, and the other 10 participants tested the same game without audio effect. The survey results show that the use of audio effects appears to improve player immersion in the video game.

User interfaces are a crucial factor in successful computer games design. Well-designed user interactions in a computer game can enhance user experience in terms of playfulness, immersion and flow, resulting in better user engagement during game playing. The aim of this paper is to better understand the elements of user interface designs in games by measuring the user experience while engaged in playing the game. An experiment was conducted using The Sims 3, an extremely popular social and life simulation game featuring real 3D graphics, to measure various facets of user experiences while interacting with the game. A Game Engagement Questionnaire (GEQ) was customised and administered to 35 participants aged between 20 and 28, and their responses were analysed. The findings show that most participants enjoyed the game. Overall, participants provided positive feedback on the user interface.