Abstract
Games User Research (GUR) has gained a lot of ground recently in game development. It has become apparent just how beneficial knowing your target audience really is. More and more, studios and publishers integrate user-oriented methods in their development process and report direct benefits from this practice, above and beyond simple focus group feedback. This because GUR is a field that is all about the user: their experience, their game, their feeling of fun, etc. As users are also customers, it has become a widely accepted notion that GUR helps to improve games and thereby sales, so the investment and growth in this area is currently considerable (Pagulayan et al. 2003; Pagulayan and Keeker 2007; Isbister and Schaffer 2008; Kim et al. 2008; Drachen and Canossa 2009a, b; Lewis-Ewans 2012).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Canossa, A., & Drachen, A. (2009). Patterns of play: Play-personas in user-centered game development. DIGRA. London: DIGRA Publishers.
Canossa, A., Drachen, A., Sørensen, J. R. M. (2011). Arrgghh!!! – Blending quantitative and qualitative methods to detect player frustration. In Proceedings of the 2011 foundations of digital games conference. Bordeaux: ACM Publishers.
DeRosa, P. (2007, August 7). Tracking player feedback to improve game design. Gamasutra. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1546/tracking_player_feedback_to_.php
Drachen, A., & Canossa, A. (2009a). Towards gameplay analysis via gameplay metrics. In Proceedings of the 13th MindTrek. Tampere: ACM-SIGCHI Publishers.
Drachen, A., & Canossa, A. (2009b). Analyzing spatial user behavior in computer games using geographic information systems. In Proceedings of the 13th MindTrek. Tampere: ACM-SIGCHI Publishers.
Drachen, A., & Canossa, A. (in press). Evaluating motion. Spatial user behavior in virtual environments. In O. Stammaa, A. Lugmayr, H. Franssila, P. Näränen, & J. Vanhala (Eds.), Special issue on ACM Academic MindTrek 2009: Everyday life in the ubiquitous era. Inderscience Publishers. International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART), 4(3), 294–314. doi:10.1504/IJART.2011.041483 (2011 issue).
Drachen, A., Canossa, A., & Yannakakis, G. (2009). Player modeling using self-organization in Tomb Raider: Underworld. In Proceedings of the IEEE computational intelligence in games (pp. 1–8). Milan: IEEE Publishers.
Han, J., Kamber, M., & Pei, J. (2005). Data mining: Concepts and techniques. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Isbister, K., & Schaffer, N. (2008). Game usability: Advancing the player experience. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman. Available from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Usability-Advancing-Player-Experience/dp/0123744474
Kennerly, D. (2003, August 15). Better game design through data mining. Gamasutra. Available from: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2816/better_game_design_through_data_.php
Kim, J. H., Gunn, D. V., Suhuh, E., Phillips, B. C., Pagulayan, R. J., & Wixon, D. (2008). Tracking real-time user experience (TRUE): A comprehensive instrumentation solution for complex systems. Florence: Computer–Human Interaction (CHI).
King, D., & Chen, S. (2009). Metrics for social games. In Proceedings of the social games summit, San Francisco.
Kuniavsky, M. (2003). Observing the user experience: A practitioner’s guide to user research. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman Publishers.
Lameman, B. A., Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., Foster, W., Moura, D., & Aghabeigi, B. (2010). User studies – A strategy towards a successful industry-academic relationship. In Proceedings of future play 2010 (pp. 1–9). Vancouver: ACM Publishers. doi:10.1145/1920778.1920798.
Lewis-Ewans, B. (2012, April 24). Finding out what they think: A rough primer to user research, parts 1 and 2. Gamasutra. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/169069/finding_out_what_they_think_a_.php
Longley, P., Goodchild, M. F., Macquire, D., & Rhind, D. (2005). Geographic information systems and science. Chichester: Wiley.
Mahlman, T., Drachen, A., Canossa, A., Togelius, J., Yannakakis, G. (2010, 18–21 August). Predicting player behavior in Tomb Raider: Underworld. In: Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE symposium on computational intelligence and games, CIG’10 (pp. 178–185), Copenhagen.
Mellon, L. (2009). Applying metrics driven development to MMO costs and risks. Versant Corporation. http://www.maggotranch.com/gdc2004.ppt
Pagulayan, R. J., & Keeker, K. (2007). Measuring pleasure and fun: Playtesting. In C. Wilson (Ed.), Handbook of formal and informal interaction design methods. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Pagulayan, R. J., Keeker, K., Wixon, D., Romero, R. L., & Fuller, T. (2003). User-centered design in games. In The HCI handbook. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Seif El-Nasr, M., & Zammitto, V. (2010). User experience research for sports games. In GDC submit on games user research.
Silverman, D. (1993). Interpreting qualitative data. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Sterne, J. (2002). Web metrics, proven methods for measuring web site success. London: Wiley.
Thompson, C. (2007). How Microsoft labs invented a new science of play. Wired Magazine 15(9). URL: http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/ff_halo?currentPage=all
Vercellis, C. (2009). Business intelligence: Data mining and optimization for decision making. Chichester: Wiley.
Zoeller, G. (2010). Game development telemetry. Presentation at the game developers conference, San Francisco
Zoeller, G. (2011). MMO rapid content iteration. Presentation at GDC Online 2011, San Francisco, CA. URL: http://gdc.gulbsoft.org/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
About the Authors
Anders Drachen, Ph.D. is a veteran Data Scientist, currently operating as Lead Game Analyst for Game Analytics (www.gameanalytics.com). He is also affiliated with the PLAIT Lab at Northeastern University (USA) and Aalborg University (Denmark) as an Associate Professor, and sometimes takes on independent consulting jobs. His work in the game industry as well as in data and game science is focused on game analytics, business intelligence for games, game data mining, game user experience, industry economics, business development and game user research. His research and professional work is carried out in collaboration with companies spanning the industry, from big publishers to indies. He writes about analytics for game development on blog.gameanalytics.com, and about game- and data science in general on www.andersdrachen.wordpress.com. His writings can also be found on the pages of Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra.com.
Alessandro Canossa, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University, he obtained a MA in Science of Communication from the University of Turin in 1999 and in 2009 he received his PhD from The Danish Design School and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. His doctoral research was carried out in collaboration with Io Interactive, a Square Enix game development studio, and it focused on user-centric design methods and approaches: prototypical player behaviors are described procedurally and from those profiles game environments emerge that are able to accommodate all of the possibilities for action. In the course of his research, Dr. Canossa has published more than 30 articles, book chapters, and journal contributions, he has presented at several international conferences including Future Play, GDC San Francisco, GDC Canada, Mindtrek, IFIP Interact, IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, ACM Foundations of Digital Games and DiGRA discussing topics from game user research, HCI, game metrics analysis and player experience. He has also received a Best Paper award at the largest media conference in Northern Europe, MindTrek, in 2009. Beside his academic activities he still maintain contact with the industry: his work has been commented on and used by companies such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Square Enix. Within Square Enix he carries on an ongoing collaboration with IO Interactive, Crystal Dynamics and Beautiful Games Studio, where he has worked on titles such as Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Kane & Lynch: Dog Days.
Janus Rau Møller Sørensen: User Research Manager at Crystal Dynamics and IO Interactive (Eidos/Square Enix), managing games user research activities in the US and Europe. Janus has a multidisciplinary academic background in Information Studies and Ethnography & Social Anthropology, and he has worked in the game industry since 2004 – first in Denmark at IO Interactive, and since 2009 in the US at Crystal Dynamics – on titles such as Hitman Absolution, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Tomb Raider, and Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light. Janus’s chief work-objective is to help enable great game experiences by putting a deep understanding of real people at the center of design decision-making; seeing gamers as human beings, not just behaviors or numbers in a spreadsheet.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Drachen, A., Canossa, A., Sørensen, J.R.M. (2013). Gameplay Metrics in Game User Research: Examples from the Trenches. In: Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., Canossa, A. (eds) Game Analytics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4768-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-4769-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)