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Measuring Engagement In Games
Gamasutra is running an article written by Tim Hong of EmSense in which he describes the research his company did into the physiological reactions various games engender in players. In addition to outward cues like breathing and movement, EmSense also scans brainwaves and heart activity to provide a more complete picture of how a gamer is responding to what he sees and does. They collected hundreds of hours worth of data and made comparisons among a variety of shooters, such as Gears of War 2, F.E.A.R, and Half-Life 2. They found some interesting information on how pacing, tutorials, and cutscenes can affect a player's level of engagement with the games.
While this could no doubt lead to some more interesting shooter games (a welcome change since it's been a while since an FPS not made by Valve has really struck me as top-grade), I'd personally be more curious to see the difference in engagement across genres - FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. I know that I personally get much more engaged into RPGs.
One of the most engaging games I have played this year. I don't play too many games, but the single player campaign in modern warfare was extremely appealing to me. [I played COD 1 and then COD4 was the next COD game I played]
.............
NOTE: SPOILERS BELOW
SPOILERS BEGIN...............
The initial mission where you need to escape a ship which is drowning and make a desperate attempt to jump into the helicopter, being assassinated at close range and unable to do anything about it, the nuclear explosion thing, crawling in a field with just a sniper rifle and tens of troupes walking around you and the way the climax plays out with Price throwing you a gun, having to take headshots before finally killing the main antagonist.. Call of Duty 4 impressed me so much that I don't even want to buy COD 5 just in case it ruins the experience I had with COD 4.
END OF SPOILERS
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
With all the comments like "Predictably, Gears of War seems to get it right.", it seems to be more of a GoW praise article stating that this game has no flaws, but all the others do.
Also, the summary has a small error, article talks of games from 2007, namely GoW, not GoW2.
"They were actually surprised to see that people did react strongly when a seemingly important NPC gets killed. I guess they didn't play the original Half Life were people didn't want to get barney killed, even though the character has no consistence at all."
Of course I wanted Barney killed. That purple dinosaur has been vexing me for years.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Hundreds of hours? What does that translate to in number of players, distributed on age-groups and types of games? I could of course read the article, but experience makes me suspect it is unlikely to tell me. Even if is only about one type of game, or simply one game, full stop, "hundreds of hours" doesn't seem like much of a sample in statistical terms, which would make their results seem a bit dubious.
What I feel is the problem here is that there are far too many reports of results that have little weight on their own. This doesn't make the individual pieces of research invalid, but it does mean that we can't really conclude much from the results until enough projects have been conducted and somebody has done the proper "meta-research" on the combined dataset.
I bet his problem was he played it on the Xbox360, and we know of course that has mediocre graphics.
I thought it was a good game, played on the PC at least. Admittedly, I only really played the single player mode as I was unimpressed with the multiplayer.
I wonder if this is a case of "I hate the game because I bought the competing game" or "I hate the game because it isn't shiny, and I just on the shininess not gameplay."
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Again, another article talking about the matter of game-play vs storytelling...
The fact is, is that if you get the basic game-play right for the game and audience your aiming for, then you'll do well - and if you tell the story well, then you'll do even better. This, though, shouldn't be news to ANYONE here...
The thing they seem to be aiming for here - (though I'm not quite sure how well they've hit this target) - is to try and find out just what sort of emotional impact both can have upon certain types of gamers.
The market has already shown, however, that if you get the basic game-play right for most types of game, regardless of the plot or story, then you'll do ok. If you get the story right and the basic game-play wrong, however, then you probably won't...
Someone in a post above talked about Oblivion - this to me is a game where, for the market it was aimed at, it got it's priorities right - (plot/story with particular game-play) which is why it was successful.
Unfortunately for me, I'm more interested in the game-play than I am in the story, which generally puts me at odds with most of the market, especially considering I like RPG's... (The reason I like RPG's however, is the opportunity they have for scope and depth of game-play and game-play DEVELOPMENT over most other types of game. Unfortunately for me, the games which use this feature well are very few and far between :( ).
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
Yeah..... That's a much better article :)
P.S - I know... I'm sick.
I am -so- glad someone finally put this in writing. Hopefully every game developer from here out will read this article and have some clue how to keep a gamer entralled.
Some games already do it, and others utterly fail. At this point, I only have time to play the games that succeed at this (the ones that fail just can't keep me playing... There's always something better to do.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I think there is too much in this that's subjective though. One person may find a game highly engaging and allow themselves to become immersed, while someone else just plays games and ignores/doesn't allow themselves to get into it.
A simple movie example would be Blair Witch Project. There's nothing actually gorey/freaky in it, but if you allow the atmosphere and story to pull you in, it's very scary. On the other hand, I know several teens that told me it was completely lame/unscary because of that lack of visual content.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
So...
8 games for 90 minutes comes to 12 hours. 300 / 12= 25.
25-30 "male game players in the 18 to 34 year-old demographic" played 8 FPS games for 90 minutes while being monitored in following fashion:
Of course, you COULD HAVE set aside 15 minutes and read through those whole 5 pages of text.
Might have even picked up some insight from it, instead of just cold and dry numbers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They are measuring "emotional engagement", which, if correct, is still not a measure of "fun".
For instance, the reason engagement may have dropped for Halo 3's cinematic sequences, for me, is that combat up to that point had been intense enough that the cutscene was a chance to relax for a moment. So, less adrenaline, maybe even less emotion at the moment, but I'd still consider them to be some of the best cutscenes -- particularly the random Cortana moments.
Halo 2 even moreso -- I wonder what kind of reading they got from "Return to Sender".
Similarly, while it is nice to have a given boss exist only once, that doesn't necessarily mean that subsequent battles are not fun -- why else replay a game, for instance? Just because the novelty is gone doesn't mean the fun is.
It just goes to show that you cannot provide a single measure as to the quality of a game.
That said, ever since my first Gauntlet kill in Quake 3, I've always felt it extremely unsatisfying when a shooter doesn't provide some sort of meelee weapon. I love Nexuiz for what it is, but I would love it even more if, when I somehow managed to get in close behind someone, I could hit them with something more fun than shotgun alternate fire.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
- Dodged the RPG that's COMING RIGHT AT ME!!!
- Rotated the camera angle for fifteen minutes trying to look up a hot high-elf babe's robes
- Leaned left, right, and back while in a dog fight with a MIG
- Had their tummy do flip-flops when the character on screen jumps of an impossibly high cliff/building/etc
- Jumped waaaaay back out of the way when the spooky creepy wet-haired Japanese girl comes crawling out of the monitor
OK, I made that last one up- but if she ever does come crawling out of the monitor I'm gonna run like heck and not care who hears me scream like a girl.