We design games for emotional and cognitive player experiences, and tools and methods ranging from scientific questionnaires to physiological equipment allow us to do this effectively. In this talk Lennart will present successful combinations of player evaluation methods to build player profiles and personalized gameplay moments using psychological insights, specifically looking at VR horror games.

1. GAME UX
SUMMIT ’17
#GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Challenges of Evaluating Player
Cognition & Emotion
Lennart Nacke | @acagamic
Associate Professor, University of Waterloo

2. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
§ Associate Professor, Games User Research
§ Ph.D. in Game Development, Keyword: Fun
§ Director of the HCI Games Group at the
University of Waterloo
§ Ask me about SWaGUR
WHO AM I?

3. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

4. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
§ Discuss core challenges of evaluating cognitive and emotional
factors of Game UX
§ Raise awareness of using a scientific, iterative UX design
approach
§ Show some examples of our work
WHY AM I HERE?

5. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
1. Understanding cognition, affect, emotion
2. Eight challenges of user research in this field
Overview

6. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

7. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Cognition
Affect

8. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

9. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
EMOTION

10. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Experiencing and
interpreting novel
information
may cause
neurophysiological
pleasure

11. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

12. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Gamers are a little
more complicated
to read…

13. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

14. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 1: Inducing player emotions

15. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

16. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

17. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

18. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 2: Real-time processing of human factors

19. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
1
9
PHYSIOLOGICAL DATA
Common measures include skin conductance
level, EEG, EMG,,and heart rate.
PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES

20. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 3: Visualizing complex high-density data

21. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

22. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 4: Personalizing the player experience
Gustavo F. Tondello, Rina R. Wehbe, Lisa Diamond, Marc Busch, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2016. The Gamification User
Types Hexad Scale. Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY ’16, ACM.
http://doi.org/10.1145/2967934.2968082

23. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
BrainHex (from Chris Bateman)

24. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 5: Representing all facets of UX
Source: Peter Morville

25. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

26. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 6: Picking the right measures

27. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 7: Measuring how and what we learn

28. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
CHALLENGE 8: Evaluating VR immersion
Source: Neurable.com

29. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

30. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO

31. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Design Guidelines for Immersive VR Games
1. Audio Feedback is generally important but visual senses are more
prominent in VR and more important to design for
2. Avoid forced camera movements when porting PC titles to VR
3. Limit play session time for gamepad-based VR navigation and
consider game design that can accommodate players that need a
break
4. Design for exploration in VR gameplay, the sensory experience is
more important than progression in gameplay

32. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
1. Inducing player emotions
2. Real-time processing of human
factors
3. Visualizing complex high-density
data
4. Personalizing the player experience
8 Challenges
5. Representing all facets of
UX
6. Picking the right measures
7. Measuring learning
8. Evaluating VR immersion

33. #GAMEUXSUMMIT ‘17 / TORONTO
Contact Me
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TODAY
HCI Games Group, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Thank you to Katja Rogers, Joe Tu, Andrew Cen for the videos
P.S. Buy our new book: Games User Research (Oxford University Press),
pre-orders coming January 2018
P H O N E
(+1) 519-888-4567 x38251
E M A I L
len@uwaterloo.ca
W E B S I T E
www.hcigames.com