Publications: Misc

Year 2009

Affective Ludology: Scientific Measurement of User Experience in Interactive Entertainment

@misc{Nacke2009h,
Abstract = {Digital games provide the most engaging interactive experiences. Researching gameplay experience is done mainly in the science and technology (e.g., human-computer interaction, physiological and entertainment computing) and social science (e.g., media psychology, psychophysiology, and communication sciences) research communities. This thesis is located at the intersection of these research areas, bringing together emerging methodological and scientific approaches from these multi-faceted communities for an affective ludology; a novel take on game analysis and design with focus on the player. The thesis contributes to game research with three important results: the establishment of a objective/subjective correlation methodology founded on psychophysiological methods, the creation of a formal theoretical framework in which to conduct user experience (UX) research related to games, and the combination of results regarding cognitive and emotional factors for describing, defining, and classifying the interactive relationship between players and games. Two approaches for measuring gameplay experience are used in this thesis. First, objective assessment of physiological user responses together with automated event-logging techniques, so called game metrics, allows collecting essential player- and game-related variables for a comprehensive understanding of their interaction. Second, using psychometric questionnaires allows a reliable assessment of players' subjective emotion and cognition during gameplay. The benefit of psychophysiological methods is that they are non-intrusive, covert, reliable, and objective. To fully understand psychophysiological results, a correlation between subjective gameplay experience ratings and psychophysiological responses is necessary and has been done in this thesis and prior work it builds on. This thesis explores objective and subjective assessment of gameplay experience in several experiments. The experiments focus on: level design implications from psychophysiological and questionnaire measurements, the impact of form and age on subjective gameplay experience, the impact of game audio and sound on objective and subjective player responses, and the impact of game interaction design on and the relationship between experience and electroencephalographic measures. In addition, the thesis includes a theoretical framework for UX research in games, which classifies gameplay experience along the dimensions of abstraction and time. One remaining conceptual and empirical challenge for this framework is the huge variety of vaguely defined experiential phenomena, such as immersion, flow, presence, and engagement. However, the results from the experimental studies show that by establishing correlations between psychophysiological responses and questionnaire data, we are approaching a better, scientifically grounded, understanding of gameplay experience. Many possibilities open from here. More detailed analyses of cognition will help us understand to what extent gameplay experience depends on emotional or cognitive processing. In addition, the inclusion of more complex and detailed gameplay metrics data together with psychophysiological metrics will enable a comprehensive analysis of player behavior, attention, and motivation. Finally, the integration of new measurement technologies in interactive entertainment applications will not only allow a detailed assessment of gameplay, but also improve physical and mental interaction with future games.},
Address = {Karlskrona},
Author = {L. E. Nacke},
Booktitle = {Ph.D. Thesis. Blekinge Institute of Technology},
File = {::},
Img = {http://hcigames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Affective-Ludology-Scientific-Measurement-of-User-Experience-in-Interactive-Entertainment.png},
Keywords = {emotion,game design,games,interaction design,media psychology,physiologic measures,physiological computing,psychology,psychophysiology,user experience},
MendeleyTags = {emotion,physiological computing,psychophysiology},
Title = {Affective Ludology: Scientific Measurement of User Experience in Interactive Entertainment},
Url = {https://hcigames.com/download/affective-ludology-scientific-measurement-of-user-experience-in-interactive-entertainment},
Year = {2009},
BdskUrl1 = {https://hcigames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Affective-Ludology-Scientific-Measurement-of-User-Experience-in-Interactive-Entertainment.pdf}}

Digital games provide the most engaging interactive experiences. Researching gameplay experience is done mainly in the science and technology (e.g., human-computer interaction, physiological and entertainment computing) and social science (e.g., media psychology, psychophysiology, and communication sciences) research communities. This thesis is located at the intersection of these research areas, bringing together emerging methodological and scientific approaches from these multi-faceted communities for an affective ludology; a novel take on game analysis and design with focus on the player. The thesis contributes to game research with three important results: the establishment of a objective/subjective correlation methodology founded on psychophysiological methods, the creation of a formal theoretical framework in which to conduct user experience (UX) research related to games, and the combination of results regarding cognitive and emotional factors for describing, defining, and classifying the interactive relationship between players and games. Two approaches for measuring gameplay experience are used in this thesis. First, objective assessment of physiological user responses together with automated event-logging techniques, so called game metrics, allows collecting essential player- and game-related variables for a comprehensive understanding of their interaction. Second, using psychometric questionnaires allows a reliable assessment of players' subjective emotion and cognition during gameplay. The benefit of psychophysiological methods is that they are non-intrusive, covert, reliable, and objective. To fully understand psychophysiological results, a correlation between subjective gameplay experience ratings and psychophysiological responses is necessary and has been done in this thesis and prior work it builds on. This thesis explores objective and subjective assessment of gameplay experience in several experiments. The experiments focus on: level design implications from psychophysiological and questionnaire measurements, the impact of form and age on subjective gameplay experience, the impact of game audio and sound on objective and subjective player responses, and the impact of game interaction design on and the relationship between experience and electroencephalographic measures. In addition, the thesis includes a theoretical framework for UX research in games, which classifies gameplay experience along the dimensions of abstraction and time. One remaining conceptual and empirical challenge for this framework is the huge variety of vaguely defined experiential phenomena, such as immersion, flow, presence, and engagement. However, the results from the experimental studies show that by establishing correlations between psychophysiological responses and questionnaire data, we are approaching a better, scientifically grounded, understanding of gameplay experience. Many possibilities open from here. More detailed analyses of cognition will help us understand to what extent gameplay experience depends on emotional or cognitive processing. In addition, the inclusion of more complex and detailed gameplay metrics data together with psychophysiological metrics will enable a comprehensive analysis of player behavior, attention, and motivation. Finally, the integration of new measurement technologies in interactive entertainment applications will not only allow a detailed assessment of gameplay, but also improve physical and mental interaction with future games.

Year 2019

Human-Computer Interaction–INTERACT 2019: 17th IFIP TC 13 International Conference

@book{lamas2019human,
  title={Human-Computer Interaction--INTERACT 2019: 17th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Paphos, Cyprus, September 2--6, 2019, Proceedings},
  author={Lamas, David and Loizides, Fernando and Nacke, Lennart and Petrie, Helen and Winckler, Marco and Zaphiris, Panayiotis},
  volume={11748},
  year={2019},
  publisher={Springer Nature}
}

Year 2017

The maturing of gamification research.

@article{nacke2017maturing,
  title={The maturing of gamification research},
  author={Nacke, Lennart E and Deterding, Christoph Sebastian},
  journal={Computers in Human Behaviour},
  pages={450--454},
  year={2017},
  publisher={York}
}

The editorial briefs about the issues of the gamification research. If the papers collected in this volume share one common trait compared to the first wave of gamification research, it is maturity. Each one in its own way marks a step forward in theoretical considerateness, methodological rigor, and differentiated conclusions. This maturity undoubtedly (hopefully!) owes to the extensive review and revision the articles have undergone since their submission, for which we thank our many reviewers and authors. However, as this volume holds even more papers submitted on an open call following Gamification 2013, it is also indicative of the field as a whole. If the first wave of gamification research was held together by fundamental questions of “what?” and “why?”, the current wave is asking differentiated questions around “how?”, “when?”, and “how and when not?” More specifically, the papers collected here mark a maturation in three research domains: (1) theory-driven empirical studies, (2) design methods, and (3) application areas. Gamification research promises no less than a science of how individual design elements, dimensions, and qualities affect user experience and engagement, with near-limitless applications. But to make good on that promise, we need validated theories how design elements function and interact with individual dispositions, situational circumstances, and the characteristics of particular target activities.

Year 2015

Designing and Evaluating Sociability in Online Video Games.

@article{ravaja2006spatial,
  title={Spatial presence and emotions during video game playing: Does it matter with whom you play?},
  author={Ravaja, Niklas and Saari, Timo and Turpeinen, Marko and Laarni, Jari and Salminen, Mikko and Kivikangas, Matias},
  journal={Presence: Teleoperators and virtual environments},
  volume={15},
  number={4},
  pages={381--392},
  year={2006},
  publisher={MIT Press}
}

The emergence of Online Video Games has led to new ways of socializing with friends. Nowadays a good online game is also associated with the pleasure of socializing and interaction with other players. One cannot play such a game solitarily in a meaningful sense without interacting with the other players. However, there are still no integrated ways of designing and evaluating the inherent sociability of online video games, nor are there methods or guidelines for designing and evaluating social user experiences. Designers of online video games are often left to use their intuition and experience, many times leading to design failures.

This workshop aims to further the understanding of designing for sociability and evaluating such designs for online video games. The goal is to exact a framework for the design of sociability structures in online games, and identify methods of effective evaluation of those structures that are practical and can be applied in the industry. With the wide reach of online video games, the time is ripe to codify and integrate the methods that have been developed for designing and evaluating social player experiences. The results will then be turned into a methodological framework that enables online video game designers to select appropriately existing methods and tools to design and evaluate systematically the social player experience of their online computer game prototypes and products.

2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the second ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play -- CHI PLAY'15. CHI PLAY is a new international and interdisciplinary conference series for researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games and human-computer interaction (HCI), we call it: "player-computer interaction." We see CHI PLAY as a great opportunity to highlight and foster discussion of current high quality research in games and HCI as foundations for the future of digital play. This year is the second year of this conference which is already proving to be a premier forum for presentation of research results and experience reports on leading edge issues of novel game interaction, player experience evaluations, neurogaming, gamification, exertion games, games user research, player psychology, social game systems, serious games, game developer applications, interaction design and theory. The mission of the conference is to share insights into game interaction design and analysis that fulfill the needs of developers, researchers and designers and identify new directions for future research and development in HCI and games. CHI PLAY gives researchers and practitioners a unique opportunity to share their perspectives with others interested in the various aspects of HCI in games. The conference provides a meeting place of practitioners and academics for presenting and discussing peer-reviewed academic papers and the latest breaking results and approaches from industry.

The call for papers attracted submissions from Asia, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States. We selected a program committee of experts in human-computer interaction and game research to lead the scientific review process. All full papers were blind reviewed by peer reviewers as well as a committee member. Accepted papers are published in the ACM Digital Library.

Year 2014

First ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play.

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the first ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play -- CHI PLAY'14. CHI PLAY is a new international and interdisciplinary conference series for researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games and humancomputer interaction (HCI), we call it: "player-computer interaction." This conference is the first of its kind and we see CHI PLAY as a great opportunity to highlight and foster discussion of current high quality research in games and HCI as foundations for the future of digital play. This year is the inaugural year of this symposium and is bound to set future traditions of being the premier forum for presentation of research results and experience reports on leading edge issues of novel game interaction, player experience evaluations, neurogaming, gamification, exertion games, games user research, player psychology, social game systems, serious games, game developer applications, interaction design and theory. The mission of the symposium is to share insights into game interaction design and analysis that fulfill the needs of developers, researchers and designers and identify new directions for future research and development in HCI and games. CHI PLAY gives researchers and practitioners a unique opportunity to share their perspectives with others interested in the various aspects of HCI in games. The conference provides a meeting place of practitioners and academics for presenting and discussing peer-reviewed academic papers and the latest breaking results and approaches from industry.

The call for papers attracted submissions from Asia, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States. We selected a program committee of experts in human-computer interaction and game research to lead the scientific review process. All full papers were blind reviewed by peer reviewers as well as a committee member. Accepted papers are published in the ACM Digital Library.

Year 2013

Gamification 2013: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications.

Gamification 2013 is a three-day, dual-track conference with the most comprehensive program of gameful thinking, research, analysis, and best practices ever assembled in Canada. This conference brings professionals from the gamification industry together with game design researchers interested in human motivation and the power of gameful design and digital games.

This conference is the first of its kind and we will use this opportunity to unite the burgeoning area of gamification. Our program is a blend of academic research and experimental applications with industry and non-profit examples, procedures, best practices, goals and results. It gives an idea of what all is now possible in the field of gamification. Our topics range from using citizen science games for motivation to best practices of exergames and classroom gamification. Not to forget the necessary discussion of the overlap between serious games and gamification.

Year 2018

How to publish research results for academic and non-academic audiences

@article{10.1145/3265921,
author = {Tondello, Gustavo Fortes},
title = {How to Publish Research Results for Academic and Non-Academic Audiences},
year = {2018},
issue_date = {Fall 2018},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {25},
number = {1},
issn = {1528-4972},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3265921},
doi = {10.1145/3265921},
abstract = {The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference coverage, to security and privacy, to CS theory. Selected blog posts, edited for print, are featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety. If you are interested in joining as a student blogger, please contact us.},
journal = {XRDS},
month = oct,
pages = {16–17},
numpages = {2}
}

The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference coverage, to security and privacy, to CS theory. Selected blog posts, edited for print, are featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety. If you are interested in joining as a student blogger, please contact us.

Year 2017

UMAP 2017 Fifty Shades of Personalization-Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gameful Interactions: Organizers' Welcome & Organization

@inproceedings{10.1145/3099023.3099109,
author = {Mattheiss, Elke and Busch, Marc and Orji, Rita and Tondello, Gustavo F. and Marczewski, Andrzej and Hochleitner, Wolfgang and Lankes, Michael and Tscheligi, Manfred},
title = {UMAP 2017 Fifty Shades of Personalization - Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gameful Interactions: Organizers' Welcome & Organization},
year = {2017},
isbn = {9781450350679},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3099023.3099109},
doi = {10.1145/3099023.3099109},
abstract = {It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the UMAP 2017 Fifty Shades of Personalization - Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gameful Interactions. Serious games (games for purposes other than entertainment) as well as persuasive games (games for promoting desirable behavior without coercion) are increasingly adopted by scholars and have also found their way into industry. Elements of games are also increasingly used to design gameful interactions (this is also referred to as gamification). Serious and persuasive approaches focus on imparting knowledge and raising awareness about topics or issues, and also fostering attitude or behavior change in a desirable direction, for example towards a healthier lifestyle.In an era when we are used to highly individualized, personal and ubiquitous interactions and with the possibility to collect an enormous amount of information about people's behaviors, habits and attitudes, personalization has increased much in significance since it became a topic in Human-Computer Interaction. Not only do we have advanced opportunities to personalize serious and persuasive games and gameful interactions, we have also scientific evidence that this is highly useful. Studies show that these technologies are more effective in educating users about certain topics and in supporting them in behavioral and attitudinal change, as well as in raising awareness and engaging them in specific topics, when they are personalized in contrast to employing a one-size-fits-all approach.Although personalization of serious and persuasive games and gameful interactions is a vibrant and highly promising area and has become an important researched field, many aspects of it are still underexplored. Thus, there is common understanding on the importance of personalization itself, but also an ongoing debate and a growing number of research on the approaches used for personalization: Will we use subjective or objective variables for personalization? Will we use continuous (such as traits) or categorical (such as types) dimensions? Will we personalize according to specific interactions (e.g. game dynamics) or ends of the interaction (e.g. different goals)? Will we rely on an a priori personalization or will we be able to personalize in real-time? The various shades of personalization in serious games and gameful interactions will be the central aspect of the workshop and will form the basis for participants' discussions.},
booktitle = {Adjunct Publication of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization},
pages = {395–397},
numpages = {3},
location = {Bratislava, Slovakia},
series = {UMAP '17}
}

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the UMAP 2017 Fifty Shades of Personalization-Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gameful Interactions. Serious games (games for purposes other than entertainment) as well as persuasive games (games for promoting desirable behavior without coercion) are increasingly adopted by scholars and have also found their way into industry. Elements of games are also increasingly used to design gameful interactions (this is also referred to as gamification). Serious and persuasive approaches focus on imparting knowledge and raising awareness about topics or issues, and also fostering attitude or behavior change in a desirable direction, for example towards a healthier lifestyle.

Positive Computing: A novel research field to promote human well-being

@article{10.1145/3100262,
author = {Tondello, Gustavo Fortes},
title = {Positive Computing: A Novel Research Field to Promote Human Well-Being},
year = {2017},
issue_date = {Summer 2017},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {23},
number = {4},
issn = {1528-4972},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3100262},
doi = {10.1145/3100262},
abstract = {After decades of remarkable leaps and bounds, is technology really helping to increase society's well-being?},
journal = {XRDS},
month = jun,
pages = {20},
numpages = {1}
}

After decades of remarkable leaps and bounds, is technology really helping to increase society's well-being?

Year 2016

An introduction to gamification in human-computer interaction

@article{10.1145/2983457,
author = {Tondello, Gustavo Fortes},
title = {An Introduction to Gamification in Human-Computer Interaction},
year = {2016},
issue_date = {Fall 2016},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {23},
number = {1},
issn = {1528-4972},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2983457},
doi = {10.1145/2983457},
abstract = {Improving user experience through game play.},
journal = {XRDS},
month = sep,
pages = {15–17},
numpages = {3}
}

Improving user experience through game play.

Year 2014

User Research for 3D Display Settings with EEG Frontal Alpha Asymmetry

The effectiveness of stereoscopic 3D displays in games
is currently debated for creating immersive player
experiences. In this project, we investigate how
stereoscopic 3D can work in games that make use of
depth information in 2D overlays and how this affects
physiological brain responses (EEG) indicating player
arousal. We conducted a pilot study to determine
whether stereoscopic 3D is more arousing than other
depth techniques such as shadow cues and heads-up
displays (HUD). Participants played a game with
multiple game maps in different display conditions:
stereoscopic 3D (S3D), heads-up display (HUD),
shadow (S), or none (N). The physiological results
showed no hemispheric activity difference by condition.

Synchronous Visualization of Video and Psychophysiological User Data

Evaluating video game players in games user research
uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. When a
Games User Researcher employs video recordings and
psychophysiological measures to collect player data
during a game, they need to correlate events from both
sources of data (physiological and video data). The
correlation of psychophysiological events with videos is
regularly done manually, which consumes time. We
propose a prototype for an application that combines
such data sources of player sessions, allowing a
researcher to visualize regions of interest of the video
in relation to the specified psychophysiological activity
parameters set.

Year 2013

Cycloshoot: Exergaming, Heart Rate, and User Experience.

Introducing a Biometric Storyboards Tool for Games User Research.

Evaluating and communicating affective user experience in games is an important component of the growing field of games user research (GUR). An important goal for the game industry and researchers alike is the successful unification of physiological measurements and player experience reports to generate meaningful insights, which is challenging due to the varying natures of the data. In this paper, we present a tool that facilitates GUR with a method called Biometric Storyboards (BioSt). The tool allows GUR professionals to visualize relationships between changes in a player's physiological state, a player's self-reported experience, and in-game events. This paper focuses on the BioSt development stages and the final BioSt tool that we present to facilitate the creation implementation of BioSt and its analysis procedure.

Games User Research using EEG Techniques.

Storyboarding for Games User Research

Year 2012

CycloShoot: A first-person shooter fitness game on a bicycle

Biometric Storyboards: An Industry-Friendly Method for Evaluating Affect and User Experience in Games

@misc{mirzabiometric,
abstract = {Evaluating affective user experience in games is an important component of the growing field of game user research. However, a major challenge for the game industry and researchers alike is tying physiological measures and player experience reports together, because of the different data quality. We developed a new method called Biometric Storyboards (BioSt) that helps user researchers to visualize meaningful relationships between a player's physiological changes and in-game events.},
author = {Mirza-Babaei, Pejman and Nacke, Lennart E},
title = {{Biometric Storyboards: An Industry-Friendly Method for Evaluating Affect and User Experience in Games}}
}

Lennart Nacke on Marketing through Gamification & Reciprocity

Year 2011

Designing Affective Games Using Psychophysiological Input.