Digital games as experiment stimulus


Järvelä Simo Ekman Inger Kivikangas J. Matias Ravaja Niklas
2012 DiGRA Nordic '12: Proceedings of 2012 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

Digital games offer rich media content and engaging action, accessible individually or in groups collaborating or competing against each other. This makes them promising for use as stimulus in research settings. This paper examines the advantages and challenges of using games in experimental research with particular focus on strict stimulus control through the following four areas: (1) matching and regulating task type, (2) data segmentation and event coding, (3) compatibility between participants and (4) planning and conducting data collection. This contribution provides a breakdown of the steps necessary for using a digital game in experimental studies, along with a checklist for researchers illustrating variables that potentially affect the reliability and validity of experiments. We also offer a practical study example. Ideally, the identification of the methodological and practical considerations of employing games in empirical research will also provide useful in interpreting and evaluating experimental work utilizing games as stimulus.

 

Review on psychophysiological methods in game research


Ekman Inger Chanel Guillaume Järvelä Simo Cowley Ben Salminen Mikko Henttonen Pentti Ravaja Niklas
2010 DiGRA Nordic '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International DiGRA Nordic Conference: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players

This paper reviews the psychophysiological method in game research. The use of psychophysiological measurements provides an objective, continuous, real-time, non-invasive, precise, and sensitive way to assess the game experience, but for best results it requires carefully controlled experiments, large participant samples and specialized equipment. We briefly explain the theory behind the method and present the most useful measures. We review previous studies that have used psychophysiological measures in game research, and provide future directions.

 

Social Architecture and the Emergence of Power Laws in Online Social Games


Kirman Ben. Collova Francesco Davide Fabrizio Ferrari Eva Freeman Jonathan Lawson Shaun Linehan Conor Ravaja Niklas
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper explores the concept of the “social architecture” of games, and tests the theory that it is possible to analyse game mechanics based on the effect they have on the social behaviour of the players. Using tools from Social Network Analysis, these studies confirm that social activity in games reliably follows a power distribution: a few players are responsible for a disproportionate amount of social interactions. Based on this, the scaling exponent is highlighted as a simple measure of sociability that is constant for a game design. This allows for the direct comparison of social activity in very different games. In addition, it can act as a powerful analytical tool for highlighting anomalies in game designs that detrimentally affect players’ ability to interact socially. Although the social architectures of games are complicated systems, SNA allows for quantitative analysis of social behaviours of players in meaningful ways, which are to the benefit of game designers.

 

Towards Emotionally Adapted Games based on User Controlled Emotion Knobs


Saari Timo Ravaja Niklas Laarni Jari Turpeinen Marko
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

The paper presents an approach to a gaming personalization system to systematically facilitate or avoid user-selected emotions during gameplay with control knobs that regulate the emotional impact of the game. Underlying the framework is a Psychological Customization system that entails personalization of the way of presenting information (user interface, visual layouts, modalities, narrative and temporal structures and other factors) per user or user group to create desired transient psychological effects and states (such as emotion, attention, involvement, presence, persuasion and learning).

 

Presence experience in mobile gaming


Laarni Jari Ravaja Niklas Saari Timo
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

As a growing number of people play computer games with small-screen mobile devices such as handheld computers, mobile phones and handheld game consoles, it is important to know whether the gaming experience is comparable to that for playing with a PC on a large screen. One important aspect of gaming experience is whether people feel themselves engaged in the game activity and whether they feel present in the game world. In the present study participants played a rally game either with a PC or with a PDA, and presence was measured by the MEC-SPQ presence questionnaire. The results showed that, even though there was no difference in attentional engagement between conditions, participants experienced significantly higher levels of presence in the PC condition. Some user characteristics, measured by the Witmer and Singer’s ITQ questionnaire, played a mediating role between device type and different aspects of presence.