Player-Centered Game Environments: Assessing Player Opinions, Experiences, and Issues

Abstract

Game developers have identified, explored and discussed many of the key issues that arise for players interacting in game worlds. However, there is a need to assess the thoughts and opinions of game-players on these issues, through structured, empirical studies. This paper reports the results of two player-centered studies aimed at investigating these issues from the player’s perspective. The first study, a focus group, supports some of the issues identified by game developers; consistency, intuitiveness and freedom of expression, and identifies new issues; immersion and physics. The second study, a questionnaire, examined the relationship of these issues to game-type preference and game-playing experience. This paper represents important initial exploratory research that supplements the existing literature by focusing on the player’s perspective and exploring which issues and context have the most impact on player enjoyment.