New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

This paper presents a brief review of current playability and game usability models. This leads to the conception of a high-level game usability framework model that integrates current usability approaches in game industry and game research.

New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Schema theory provides a foundation for the analysis of game play patterns created by players during their interaction with a game. Schema models derived from the analysis of play provide a rich explanatory framework for the cognitive processes underlying game play, as well as detailed hypotheses for the hierarchical structure of pleasures and rewards motivating players. Game engagement is accounted for as a process of schema selection or development, while immersion is explained in terms of levels of attentional demand in schema execution. However, schemas may not only be used to describe play, but might be used actively as cognitive models within a game engine. Predesigned schema models are knowledge representations constituting anticipated or desired learned cognitive outcomes of play. Automated analysis of player schemas and comparison with predesigned target schemas can provide a foundation for a game engine adapting or tuning game mechanics to achieve specific effects of engagement, immersion, and cognitive skill acquisition by players. Hence, schema models may enhance the play experience as well as provide a foundation for achieving explicitly represented pedagogical or therapeutic functions of games.

New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

Understanding gameplay requires a consideration of basic epistemological questions about the nature of understanding. Grounded in a tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, it is possible to approach the understanding of gameplay as a matter of generating mappings to explanatory frameworks in alternative interpretation paradigms. It is especially useful to consider gameplay from perspectives of cognitive science, semiotics, consciousness studies and aesthetics. Each of these approaches provides a different but compatible perspective on understanding play. Integrating these perspectives without losing their differences provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for play analysis.

New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:

There are innumerable concepts, terms and definitions for user experience. Few of them have a solid empirical foundation. In trying to understand user experience in interactive technologies such as computer games and virtual environments, reliable and valid concepts are needed for measuring relevant user reactions and experiences. Here we present our approach to create both theoretically and methodologically sound methods for quantification of the rich user experience in different digital environments. Our approach is based on the idea that the experience received from a content presented with a specific technology is always a result of a complex psychological interpretation process, which components should be understood. The main aim of our approach is to grasp the complex and multivariate nature of the experience and make it measurable. We will present our two basic measurement frameworks, which have been developed and tested in large data set (n=2182). The 15 measurement scales extracted from these models are applied to digital gaming with a head-mounted display and a table-top display. The results show how it is possible to map between experience, technology variables and the background of the user (e.g., gender). This approach can help to optimize, for example, the contents for specific viewing devices or viewing situations.