This document discusses game usability and player experience. It summarizes several existing game usability models and identifies three key dimensions for evaluating game quality: development, functional, and player experience/community. Different game quality checks require different analytical approaches across these dimensions. The goal is to develop a comprehensive model for evaluating all aspects of game quality and player experience.

2.  Blekinge Institute of Technology
 PhD Candidate
 Digital Game Development Degree
 EU FUGA (“Fun of Gaming”)
project
 Fun & player experience research
 Biometrics consulting

3. 1. Related Work
2. A Game Usability Model
3. Take Home Message

4.  Playability from Järvinen et al.
“a collection of criteria with which to
evaluate a product’s gameplay or
interaction”
 Playability is
1. Functional
2. Structural
3. Audiovisual
4. Social

5.  Desurvire et al.
1. Game play
2. Game story
3. Game mechanics
4. Game usability
 Korhonen et al.
1. Game usability
2. Mobility
3. Gameplay

6.  Development dimension
1. Constructs
2. Quality level
3. Analysis approach
 Functional dimension
 Concrete
 Abstract

8.  Different game quality checks
require different approaches
 Game quality focuses around
1. Technology
2. Player experience
3. Community
 Quality control should include all of
these aspects

9. Desurvire, H., Caplan, M. and Toth, J. A. Using Heuristics to
Evaluate the Playability of Games. In CHI '04 extended
abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (Vienna,
Austria). ACM, 2004, 1509-1512. DOI =
10.1145/985921.986102.
Järvinen, A., Heliö, S. and Mäyrä, F. Communication and
Community in Digital Entertainment Services. Prestudy
Research Report, Hypermedia Laboratory, University of
Tampere, Tampere, 2002. Retrieved on 2009-02-09 from
http://tampub.uta.fi/tup/951-44-5432-4.pdf.
Korhonen, H. and Koivisto, E. M. I. Playability Heuristics for
Mobile Games. In Proceedings of the 8th conference on
Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and
services (Helsinki, Finland). ACM, 2006, 9-16. DOI =
10.1145/1152215.1152218.

10. Lennart.Nacke@bth.se
gamescience.bth.se
www.acagamic.com
Connect at
www.linkedin.com/in/nacke
Blekinge Institute of Technology
Box 214
SE-374 24 Karlshamn
Sweden