Usability evaluation tools in the form of heuristic lists can be very helpful in software development. In the field of video game design, researchers are continuously developing new heuristic tools aimed specifically at video game productions. However, through previous studies, the authors have found that even though these tools are frequent and common, design issues regularly appear in video games. This study examines whether video game heuristics are able to capture and evaluate softer values of video game interaction, based on the challenges, flow and immersion of gameplay. By conducting a heuristic evaluation on low scoring and high scoring games the authors manage to show which kind of design issues are most frequent in both high and low scoring games. As a further result of the study, two new heuristics are presented.

In recent years, many video game researchers have developed domain specific heuristics for video games. Heuristic evaluation is a common way to measure software usability, both during development and to assess existing systems. Video games are very different from productivity software in terms of purpose, design and execution, and thus require specially developed heuristics. Heuristics developed for video games can however only guide the game developers, and are in themselves no guarantee of a positive game experience. The questions examined in this paper concern the extent to which heuristics developed by experts can address the issues that the end users – the players – experience. Furthermore, we examine what kinds of design issues are most frequent, and whether these issues are reflected in online user comments. The results show that users focus their criticism on narrative, game graphics and sound rather than the issues that the heuristics involved in this study were designed to counter.

Lasting player engagement is essential for pushing a video game beyond a successful release. While previous research on retention and engagement in games exists, this has mainly focused on general models and factors. Through a longitudinal study of players’ attitude on specific game elements we can in more detail determine how, why and how the appeal of a game changes.

In this paper, we present a longitudinal study of seven participants who played a newly released game. The participants played freely for 20 hours over five weeks, and were instructed to fill in player diaries at specified times. At the end of this period, the participants were interviewed about their experience. The results show that all participants felt less excited about the game, less inclined to play more, and more bored at the end of the period than at the start. No single satisfactory explanation for this development could be deduced from the data. Instead, this article suggests four retention mechanics that must be adhered to in order to maintain player retention.

This paper presents a method for gathering and evaluating user attitudes towards previously released video games. A three-part video game franchise was selected, and all user reviews of these games were collected. The most frequently mentioned words of the game were derived from this dataset through word frequency analysis. The words, called “aspects” were then further analyzed through a manual aspect based sentiment analysis. The final analysis show that the rating of user review to a high degree correlate with the sentiment of the aspect in question. This knowledge is valuable for a developer who wishes to learn more about previous games success or failure factors.