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Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion.
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This paper presents a gameplay experience model, assesses its potential as a tool for research and presents some directions for future work. The presented model was born from observations among game-playing children and their non-player parents, which directed us to have a closer look at the complex nature of gameplay experience. Our research led into a heuristic gameplay experience model that identifies some of the key components and processes that are relevant in the experience of gameplay, with a particular focus on immersion. The model includes three components: sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion (SCI-model). The classification was assessed with self-evaluation questionnaires filled in by informants who played different popular games. It was found that the gameplay experiences related to these games did indeed differ as expected in terms of the identified three immersion components.
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... The pilot study is a purposeful tool in research design, garnering further insight into important and meaningful characteristics of significance to the Ux design [47]. Emri and Mäyrä [43] cite the value of understanding Ux, acknowledging it is a foundation for "understanding what a game is" (p. 1). The pilot study provided the opportunity to explore and better understand differences in Ux, recognising variability in experience levels, interests, and game-appeal to provide a meaningful learning environment. ...
... Understanding user experience (Ux) is a significant factor when evaluating educational games. The Ux conveys the user's thoughts, feelings, and interactions during gameplay, which provides valuable insight into the game's effectiveness as a learning tool and the design of the game elements [43,60] from which it becomes possible to discern actionable insights that are significant to future iterations of the game design and an overall picture of the games potential for achieving a learning outcome. This understanding is important for RESSIL, as its effectiveness as a resilience-building tool has meaningful implications for undergraduate students' wellbeing and academic success. ...
... An exploration of Ux has illuminated the strengths and areas for enhancement in RESSIL's design as a DBGL intervention. The findings suggest that RESSIL's use of multisensory game elements meaningfully integrates entertainment with pedagogical content to promote engagement and learning [43,51]. However, we have learned there is a misalignment between graphics and text-heavy learning content that is disrupting the user experience and must be addressed in future game iterations to meet the games intended aims of developing resilience capacities in undergraduate student populations. ...
This study explores the effectiveness and design value of ‘Resilience Education Supports Students in Life’ (RESSIL), an adventure-based digital game for developing resilience capacities in undergraduate students at one UK University. RESSIL was designed in response to the increasing wellbeing needs of undergraduate students and in recognition of resilience as a pivotal factor in student success. A purposeful pilot study approach is used to explore the User Experience (Ux) to gain insights into the effectiveness and value of RESSIL’s design and its potential to achieve its intended aim. Three focus group discussions engage undergraduate students (N = 9) from diverse academic backgrounds to explore their experiences of gameplay. Thematic analysis is paired with constant comparison to reveal RESSIL’s effectiveness and design value. The findings demonstrate how digital environments can create psychologically safe spaces for practicing adaptive capacities and bring attention to the relationship between emotion, motivation, and knowledge internalization. They affirm the significance of narrative-driven gameplay and multisensory engagement to cultivate meaningful Ux and emphasize the importance of balancing pedagogical content with game elements to ensure game coherence and utility. Insights gained from this pilot study affirm RESSIL’s effectiveness and value for bolstering student resilience; they provide evidence-based insights that will guide design decisions for subsequent versions and establish a foundation for a more comprehensive large-scale study.
... For example, some studies consider immersion to be a determinant of presence (e.g., Berkman & Akan, 2019, pp. 1-10;Cummings & Bailenson, 2016), while others view presence as a predictor of immersion (e.g., Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005;Zhang, Perkis, & Arndt, 2017). In addition, some studies treat flow as a sub-concept of presence or immersion (e.g., Shin, 2019;Pianzola et al., 2021;Tcha-Tokey et al., 2018), while others separate flow from immersion (e.g., Agrawal et al., 2020;Jennett et al., 2008). ...
... However, the term immersion is also frequently used to describe a psychological and cognitive experience resulting from a technological process, as will be described in detail in the following sections (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005;Arsenault, 2005;Adams & Rollings, 2007;Agrawal et al., 2020;Witmer & Singer, 1998;Balcerak and Balcerak, 2024). This inconsistency in using the same term causes confusion. ...
... Although there is no universally accepted definition of immersion, there is general consensus in the literature that immersive experience is a multidimensional construct. As summarised in Table 1, researchers have proposed different dimensions of immersion using various descriptive words, e.g., perceptual and psychological immersion (Lombard & Ditton, 1997), sensory, imaginative and challenge-based immersion (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005), sensory, fictional and systemic immersion (Arsenault, 2005), narrative and ludic immersion (Ryan, 2003), narrative and strategic/tactical immersion (Adams & Rollings, 2007), and system, spatial, social/emphatic and narrative/sequential immersion (Han et al., 2024). ...
(XR), which encompasses virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Over the past few decades, extensive research
has been conducted on immersion. However, there remains a lack of consistency in how the term is defined and
applied in the literature. Additionally, there is no clear and consistent conceptual hierarchy of related terms
across different measurement models. To address these issues, this paper explores the multidimensionality of
immersion, as well as associated concepts such as presence and involvement. From this, a unified conceptual
model of immersive experience is proposed for future studies in XR. The model defines physical presence, social
presence, self presence and involvement as the core dimensions of an immersive experience, which arise from
sensorimotor, task/motor and narrative engagement. Plausibility, interactivity, and interestingness are identified
as key properties of immersive systems and content that fascilitate engagement, each of which is influenced by
subjective factors: internal reference, skills/knowledge and personal preference, respectively. This model provides
a comprensive framework for researchers to measure immersive experiences more consistently and build a
coherent body of research in XR.
... The pinnacle of engagement is often described as flow, a state of optimal experience where players' skills are wellmatched with the game's challenges [36], [37]. Flow is characterized by clear goals, balanced challenge-skill ratio, and immediate feedback. ...
Player engagement is crucial for the success of modern video games, yet its real-time measurement remains challenging due to the intrusive nature of traditional measurement methods. In this paper, we present a novel framework for non-intrusive, real-time and indirect measurement of engagement in multiplayer online games based on flow theory. Our approach combines Graph Convolutional Networks for modeling player interactions with Transformer networks for temporal processing, enabling indirect measurement of both player skill and game challenge, which in turn are used to classify player engagement. Using PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) as a case study, we demonstrate that our framework can effectively measure phase-specific engagement using one minute of gameplay telemetry data. Our framework achieves 73% accuracy and 0.83 ROC-AUC in engagement classification, matching the performance of traditional survey-based methods while operating non-intrusively and in real-time. Further cross-domain validation of the frameowrk, as is and without transfer learning, with the games FIFA’23 and Street Fighter V, leads to 66% accuracy, demonstrating the model’s stable performance despite the significant differences in the test domains. Interestingly, our results suggest that objective gameplay metrics may better reflect engagement than subjective player assessments, with skill estimates showing significant correlation with self-reports.
Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging and fascinating technology that promotes the humans to step into virtual worlds and interact with them as if they were real. It is a computer-generated simulation of an environment that allows users to interact with and experience a virtual world as if they were physically present within it. Virtual reality (VR) technology has appeared as a trans-formative tool in the field of healthcare, offering immersive and interactive experiences that have the potential to revolutionize patient care, medical training, and therapy. This chapter provides a depth exploration of VR technology and its useful implications for healthcare delivery. Beginning with an introduction to the fundamentals of VR, including its core components and principles, the chapter delves into the endless applications of VR in healthcare. These applications range from medical training and education to pain management, surgical planning, psychological therapy, and medicine. Through real-life examples and case studies, we’ll see how VR is making a difference in healthcare by providing more effective and engaging treatment options. Throughout the chapter, we’ll see how VR is generating a big gap between current healthcare facilities and the future trends. But, like all technologies, there are challenges too. Sometimes, VR can make people feel nauseous, and using VR safely means protecting people’s privacy and making sure the technology works for everyone. Looking to the future, we’ll go into the new ways that states how VR technology is evolving and how it could continue to revolutionize healthcare in the years to come. Overall, this chapter aims to provide a clear and accessible overview of VR in healthcare, helping readers understand its potential benefits and limitations in improving patient outcomes and medical training.
The work of Richard Duke is one of the seminal approaches to the design and use of simulation gaming. Duke started thinking and writing about how to develop and apply the language of simulation gaming in organizations in the 1970s, when the wide use of interconnected computers and communication devices was still a topic of Science Fiction novels.
However, Duke’s work already dealt with the complexities of organizations and a society where a number of stakeholders has to deal with complex work processes and societal challenges. While the complexity as well as the technology available to address those might have grown since Duke described them, many game elements and mechanics are still useful to create meaningful experiences for learning, training, decision-making, and systems design.
This chapter will highlight some of the aspects of Duke’s approach and compare it to novel design concepts for immersive technologies used in combination with games. The outcome of this chapter will propose an amended simulation gaming design framework that keeps the core values of Duke’s work and adds elements of novel technologies.
Similar to the classification rating of films, screen depictions of violence within digital games are issued with an age restriction rating. Such approaches still fail to adequately incorporate players’ experience of the screen, confounded by the medium’s interactive nature, in their assessments. The current failure to account for, or describe subsequent interactions between player and game text leaves the classification process largely inferential. This paper presents a framework that forms the basis for an empirical assessment of the interactive experience of games. In it, we aim to account for the processes and outcomes of play and the extent to which play relates to the design of the game text. By operationalizing game studies’ extensive theorization of the distinct quality of games, a new model of media ‘usage’ is sought to enhance regulation processes and better inform the public’s perception of games (specifically within New Zealand). In this paper we draw specifically on data produced from one part of a mixed methodology research design (Schott & Van Vught 2011). A structured diary method was employed to allow game players to chronicle different elements of their gameplay experience with a single text as they progressed through it. By demonstrating the applied value of game studies’ contribution to knowledge, the research project aims to contribute to a new paradigm that is capable of accounting for the ‘actual’ experience of play and the ways game texts are activated under the agency of players once they enter everyday life and culture.
In this paper we present the MDA framework (standing for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics), developed and taught as part of the Game Design and Tuning Workshop at the Game Developers Conference, San Jose 2001-2004. MDA is a formal approach to understanding games – one which attempts to bridge the gap between game design and development, game criticism, and technical game research. We believe this methodology will clarify and strengthen the iterative processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts.
Over the last 20 years repeated attempts have been made in HCI to put enjoyment into focus. However, it is only recently that the importance of enjoyment, even in serious applications, has been widely recognised by the HCI community. Typical of a relatively new area of investigation is the lack of an agreed set of terms: enjoyment, pleasure, fun and attraction are often used interchangeably. But do they really refer to the same experiences? Of course, in common speech pleasure, enjoyment and fun are almost synonymous and this is not an attempt to fix the language. None of these terms are reducible to single definitions but for the purposes of this chapter we will propose a difference between pleasure and fun in an attempt to delineate distinct forms of enjoyment.
Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999) 553-556
The title of this book perhaps looks merely catchy but is cogent to its argument: that compelling narratives from antiquity to the present, whether classical or popular, are perennial, but that the medium of narration changes in time and new narrative opportunities appear with emerging technologies. Fans of Star Trek will recognize the "holodeck" in question as a "universal fantasy machine," allowing a living person to enter into a world of story as if it were 3-D reality. At present the holodeck exists only in fiction, but Janet Murray examines in detail the way narratives produced in digital formats have begun to simulate imaginary worlds in which one can become immersed as an agent who has the power to transform a course of action. The author optimistically predicts that an emerging cyberdrama "need not resemble Huxley 'feelies'," in Brave New World, but can offer "satisfactions continuous with those we receive from established narrative formats," and perhaps the originality we recognize as art. Arguing strongly against the view that newer forms of expression are intrinsically inferior to earlier ones -- that film is inferior to drama, for example -- she asserts that we have focused inappropriately on the worth of various media in the last quarter century when we should instead have acknowledged "a general crisis in meaning." Finally, Murray is not asking if Hamlet will play on the holodeck but if in cyberspace we can attain to an artistic truth equivalent to that achieved by Shakespeare on the Elizabethan stage.
Hamlet on the Holodeck takes a long view of the technologies of narrative, pre- and post-Gutenberg, paying particular attention to forms of storytelling that seem to anticipate and legitimate those emerging in cyberspace, for example, those that play with the border between fiction and reality, those requiring the active participation of an audience, or those offering alternative plotlines. Reminding us that books printed before 1501 are called "incunabula," from the Latin word for swaddling clothes, Murray sets the stage for a detailed discussion of largely experimental composition on the narrative computer, "a technology still in its infancy." At considerable length she examines storytelling in electronic games, such as Mortal Kombat, role-playing in virtual environments on the Internet called MUDs and MOOs, dialogue engendered by ELIZA and her daughters, computer programs capable of responding to simple typed questions, and interactive stories composed by Murray's own students at MIT.
It is a strength of this book that Murray, trained as a Victorian scholar and a teacher of humanities for many years, brings to her study of electronic composition an Aristotelian sense of analytic categories and writes about new media with great clarity. Less satisfactory to this reader is her antipathy to contemporary theorists whom she sums up inaccurately as "denouncing meaning as something to be deconstructed into absurdity." Aversion to much postmodern theory, together with a conviction that we stand in the "infancy" of electronic writing, leads to a slighting of sophisticated work by hypertext writer-theorists such as Michael Joyce and Stuart Moulthrop and somewhat overextended appreciation of such phenomena as electronic games and the authorship of chatterbots (computer-generated "characters" programmed to mimic speech, or at least certain verbal tics). Though computer-generated characters may at this moment appear merely fanciful, the aim of their creators is to achieve what computer scientists call "emergent behavior," the ability to go beyond what these characters have been programmed to do. At present still an "exciting possibility," machines that exhibit emergence will bring us, Murray believes, to "a new threshold in our ability to represent complex systems . . . whether thermodynamics, war strategies, or human behavior."
The imaginative artist of cyberspace narrative will be a "procedural author," one who, godlike, defines rules of action rather than determining behavior itself. Relying strongly on analogy with past success in narrative form, Murray argues that successful cybernarrative must establish its own conventions, "rules by which things should happen," and structures for...
How do you turn a great idea into a game design? What makes one design better than another? Why does a good design document matter, and how do you write one? This book answers these questions and stimulates your creativity!Game design consists of four essential tasks: imagining a game, defining the way that it works, describing its internal elements, and communicating this information to others. This book examines each of these tasks and shows you not only what issues you will need to address in your design, but how to think about games and gameplay. After reading this book, you will have the tools you need to both design many kinds of games and to create a professional-quality game design document.Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design will show you: The key design elements of every computer and video game, and how to think about them. How to write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. The essentials of user interface design and how to use them to define your game's look and feel. How to construct and balance your game's internal mechanics to make sure the game is both fun and fair. The relationship between interactivity and narrative, and how to write compelling stories. The unique design problems in each of the major game genres. How to design multi-player games to maximize player interaction and minimize cheating.
To summarise, this chapter has argued that although words like fun and pleasure are closely related and may each function
as a superordinate category for the other, there are experiential and cultural differences between them. Fun has been considered
in terms of distraction and pleasure in terms of absorption. This is not to suggest that pleasure is a more worthy pursuit
than fun, it is rather an attempt to delineate different but equally important aspects of enjoyment. It is possible to appreciate
Shakespeare and still acknowledge that The Simpsons is the greatest achievement of western civilisation. Both offer rich and fulfilling experiences but they are very different
kinds of pleasures. As Peter Wright and John McCarthy argue elsewhere in this book, it is not possible to design an experience,
only to design for an experience; but in order to do this it is necessary to have an understanding of that experience as it relates to and differs
from others.