SWaGUR: Saskatchewan-Waterloo Games User Research
The Saskatchewan-Waterloo Games User Research (SWaGUR) program brings together 11 researchers from 7 departments at the Universities of Waterloo and Saskatchewan with the long-term goal of training 85 HQP in GUR in an interdisciplinary environment in collaboration with our industrial partners to serve the needs of an important part of Canada's information technology sector. The team of world-leading games researchers draws upon their interdisciplinary perspectives across science, engineering, social science, and humanities to apply academic learning (courses) and experiential learning (projects) in an industrially-relevant context to train HQP in both research and professional skills.
The SWaGUR CREATE initiative addresses the Human Interaction with Digital Information research topic within the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) target area. With many computing applications (advancing game technology), the proposed program will generate technologies and provide training in the deployment of technologies that change how people interact with digital information, both for entertainment games and for the rapidly growing serious games sector.
People
Lead
Participants
Rina WehbePh.D. Student, Errors, Perception of AI, Health Games 
Colin WhaleyUndergraduate Researcher, Biomedical Sciences, Older Adults and Technology 
Dennis KappenPh.D. Student, Game Design and User Interaction for Older Adults 
Julia BrichVisiting Ph.D. Student, Game Development for Human Emotions 
Joseph TuUndergraduate Researcher, Game Design 
Kenny FungUndergraduate Researcher, Unity and Angular Development
Publications
Year 2017
Mike Schäkermann,
Giovanni Ribeiro, Guenter Wallner, Simone Kriglstein, Daniel Johnson, Anders Drachen, Rafet Sifa, and
Lennart E. Nacke. 2017. Curiously Motivated: Profiling Curiosity with Self-Reports and Behaviour Metrics in the Game “Destiny”. In
Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY '17. Amsterdam, Netherlands. ACM.
doi:10.1145/3116595.3116603 @inproceedings{Schaekermann2017,
abstract = {Identifying player motivations such as curiosity could help game designers analyze player profiles and substantially improve game design. However, research on player profiling focuses on generalized personality traits, not specific aspects of motivation. This study examines how player behaviour indicates constructs of curiosity-related motivation. It contributes a more discriminating operationalization of game-related curiosity. We derive a curiosity measure from established self-report survey methodologies relating to social capital, behavioural activation, obsessive/harmonious passion, and BrainHex player types. We present the results of a cross-sectional study with data from 1,745 players of Destiny—a popular shared-world first-person shooter (FPS) game. Behaviour metrics were paired with four curiosity factors: ‘social' curiosity, ‘sensory/cognitive' curiosity, ‘novelty-seeking' curiosity, and ‘explorative' curiosity. Our findings provide key insights into the relationships between players curiosity and their in-game behaviour. We infer curiosity-related motivational profiles from behaviour metrics, and discuss how this may impact game design and player-computer interaction.},
author = {Schaekermann, Mike and Ribeiro, Giovanni and Wallner, Guenter and Kriglstein, Simone and Johnson, Daniel and Drachen, Anders and Sifa, Rafet and Nacke, Lennart E},
booktitle = {The ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY 2017)},
doi = {10.1145/3116595.3116603},
isbn = {9781450348980},
mendeley-groups = {HCI Games Group Publications},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {{Curiously Motivated: Profiling Curiosity with Self-Reports and Behaviour Metrics in the Game "Destiny"}},
year = {2017}
}Identifying player motivations such as curiosity could help game designers analyze player profiles and substantially improve game design. However, research on player profiling focuses on generalized personality traits, not specific aspects of motivation. This study examines how player behaviour indicates constructs of curiosity-related motivation. It contributes a more discriminating operationalization of game-related curiosity. We derive a curiosity measure from established self-report survey methodologies relating to social capital, behavioural activation, obsessive/harmonious passion, and BrainHex player types. We present the results of a cross-sectional study with data from 1,745 players of Destiny—a popular shared-world first-person shooter (FPS) game. Behaviour metrics were paired with four curiosity factors: ‘social’ curiosity, ‘sensory/cognitive’ curiosity, ‘novelty-seeking’ curiosity, and ‘explorative’ curiosity. Our findings provide key insights into the relationships between players curiosity and their in-game behaviour. We infer curiosity-related motivational profiles from behaviour metrics, and discuss how this may impact game design and player-computer interaction.
Lennart E. Nacke, Zachary O. Toups, and Daniel Johnson. 2017. From Joysticks to Pokémon Go: Games and Play Research in SIGCHI. In
Proceeding of the 2017 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI 2017. Denver, CO, USA. ACM, 1330-1333.
doi:10.1145/3027063.3049284 @inproceedings{Nacke2017c,
address = {Denver, CO, USA},
author = {Nacke, Lennart E and Toups, Zachary O and Johnson, Daniel},
booktitle = {Proceeding of the 2017 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI 2017},
doi = {10.1145/3027063.3049284},
isbn = {9781450346566},
pages = {1330--1333},
publisher = {ACM},
title = {{From Joysticks to Pok{\'{e}}mon Go : Games and Play Research in SIGCHI}},
year = {2017}
}At CHI 2016, a record number of games-related papers were accepted into the conference proceedings and the SIG meeting for games attracted almost 100 people. The games and play subcommittee remained strong at CHI 2017 and showed a variety of submissions. In addition, we see games practitioners within the SIGCHI community running workshops and taking part in the CHI conference. This SIG will continue to be an important forum for everyone doing games research at CHI. We want to engage the community in a discussion about the directions that games research at CHI should take and gather feedback about current HCI research trends for games. To expand this community, we plan to discuss current HCI and games trends, academic dissemination, community outreach, and collaborations with practitioners.
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