• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
HCI Games Group

HCI Games Group

Researching Affective Systems and Engaging Interactions

  • Home
  • Blog
  • People
  • Opportunities
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Teaching
  • Contact
  • CLICK ME!!!
The HCI Games Group in 2020.

Collection Interfaces for Digital Game Objects

You are here: Home / Game Design / Collection Interfaces for Digital Game Objects
February 26, 2017 by Gustavo Tondello
Sample favourite digital game objects. Please see linked original publication for credits.
Sample favourite digital game objects. Please see linked original publication for credits.

Written by Gustavo Tondello.

The HCI Games Group collaborated with a research project that also involved the Play & Interactive Experiences for Learning Lab at the New Mexico State University and the University of California at Irvine to investigate player behaviour regarding the collection of digital objects in games. The study aimed to understand what kinds of objects players collect and why. It was firstly presented at the CHI PLAY 2016 Conference, where it received an Honorary Mention as one of the best works present, and will be presented again next week at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.

The results suggested that collection interfaces currently available on most commercial games do not fully support players’ desires regarding their digital objects. Therefore, the research led to several design implications aimed to improve these interfaces in future games. These findings also have implications for serious games and gameful applications that use collections as one of the elements aimed at engaging and motivating the players.

Regarding the types of objects that players usually collect in games, the most frequent were gear, critters, characters, skins, vehicles, and information, as depicted on the chart:

Types of Digital Games Objects

Considering why players value their digital game objects, the most prevalent reasons seem to be utility and enjoyment, followed by investment, memory, and self-expression:

Reasons why player value their Digital Game Objects

The data also showed that players value the social elements of collecting: 65% of the participants responded that they had shared their digital game objects with other players at least once by showing them to other players in-game, using them in-game, or publicly displaying them to others. Furthermore, these behaviours seem to be influenced by the player’s age or player type, a matter that will require further investigation in the future, according to the researchers.

Based on these results, the authors suggested the following design implications, aimed at guiding the design of better collection interfaces for digital game objects.

Enable Curation

Current collection interfaces in games are often boring catalogues, where players unlock the objects they have already collected. However, curation is much more than a simple catalogue: curation is a form of authoring and creation in which the author carefully selects which objects to acquire and makes meaningful decisions on how to display and combine them. Thus, collection interfaces in games could allow players to curate the objects they have already unlocked, allowing players to create personalized ways to display their collections to others.

Preserve Game Rules and Mechanics

The results have shown that mechanics drive value; thus, players often collect objects that change gameplay in some way — for example, a piece of gear that provides a special ability. Therefore, players often collect objects because they wish to use the abilities that the object provide; however, this opportunity is lost when the object is later sold or traded. To counter this, the researchers suggest that games could implement interfaces that preserve the mechanics of collected objects, for example, by allowing players to easily record videos of their object use, or even by allowing players to simulate the usefulness of an object even after said object is not in the player’s possession anymore. This simulation could even involve allowing players to replay some scenarios or challenges while using a particular object.

Preserve Context of Play

Digital game objects often represent an investment made by the player and are collected to represent and achievement or the result of an effort or to remind the player of a particularly emotional experience within the game. Thus, collection interfaces could help players in preserving the context in which the objects were acquired or used, for example, by allowing players to attach metadata to objects or by saving information about how the object was acquired. This would allow players to more easily preserve the memory of the experiences attached to each object in their collection.

Enable Sharing

Many games already provide some means of sharing or displaying objects to other players and this is something that more than half the surveyed players seem to enjoy. However, the study suggests that players might have different preferences on how to share their objects with other, so the researchers suggest that future investigation could reveal ways to provide more personalized sharing experiences.

Conclusion

The paper concludes by suggesting that collection interfaces in games could potentially rise to a meta-game level, similarly to how meta-game rewards are organized in modern gaming platforms. In the authors’ opinion, individual games could begin by implementing collection interfaces that are meaningful to players according to the proposed design implications; this could later evolve toward a unified system to accumulate player-curated collections across games. The researchers also suggest that designing better collections interfaces can be of benefit to gameful applications and educational software because these interfaces could potentially help in deepening player investment and engagement with these platforms.

Original publication: Zachary O. Toups, Nicole K. Crenshaw, Rina R. Wehbe, Gustavo F. Tondello, and Lennart E. Nacke. 2016. “The Collecting Itself Feels Good”: Towards Collection Interfaces for Digital Game Objects. Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play — CHI PLAY ’16, ACM. http://doi.org/10.1145/2967934.2968088

Gustavo's Profile Pic
Gustavo Tondello
Co-Founder, Software Engineer, Gamification Specialist at MotiviUX | Website | + posts

Dr. Gustavo Tondello was an instructor and support coordinator for the Cheriton School of Computer Science. He was a Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke and Dr. Daniel Vogel and a graduate researcher at the HCI Games Group. He is a co-founder of MotiviUX and a member of the International Gamification Federation. His research interests include gamification and games for health, wellbeing, and learning, user experience in gamification, and gameful design methods. His work focuses on the design and personalization of gameful applications. His publications advanced the current knowledge on player and user motivations in games and gameful applications and introduced new frameworks and approaches to designing personalized gameful applications and serious games. He periodically blogs about gamification for the HCI Games Group and on his personal blog, Gameful Bits. Before coming to Canada, Gustavo earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science and his B.Sc. in Information Systems from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and worked for several years as a Software Engineer in Brazil. Gustavo is also a Logosophy researcher affiliated with the Logosophical Foundation of Brazil and North America.

  • Gustavo Tondello
    https://hcigames.com/author/gustavo/
    The Use of Games and Play to Achieve Real-World Goals
  • Gustavo Tondello
    https://hcigames.com/author/gustavo/
    The Gameful World
  • Gustavo Tondello
    https://hcigames.com/author/gustavo/
    The HCI Games Group will be at CHI PLAY 2015
  • Gustavo Tondello
    https://hcigames.com/author/gustavo/
    Playful Interactions at CHI PLAY 2015
Category: Game Design, Games User Research, HCI, ResearchTag: Collection, game design, gamification, GUR

About Gustavo Tondello

Dr. Gustavo Tondello was an instructor and support coordinator for the Cheriton School of Computer Science. He was a Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Lennart Nacke and Dr. Daniel Vogel and a graduate researcher at the HCI Games Group. He is a co-founder of MotiviUX and a member of the International Gamification Federation. His research interests include gamification and games for health, wellbeing, and learning, user experience in gamification, and gameful design methods. His work focuses on the design and personalization of gameful applications. His publications advanced the current knowledge on player and user motivations in games and gameful applications and introduced new frameworks and approaches to designing personalized gameful applications and serious games. He periodically blogs about gamification for the HCI Games Group and on his personal blog, Gameful Bits. Before coming to Canada, Gustavo earned his M.Sc. in Computer Science and his B.Sc. in Information Systems from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and worked for several years as a Software Engineer in Brazil. Gustavo is also a Logosophy researcher affiliated with the Logosophical Foundation of Brazil and North America.

Previous Post: « CHI-2016-keynote Jamie Madigan’s 30 Ideas Keynote at CHI PLAY 2016
Next Post: Designing Keyboards for an Aging Population »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • HCI Games Group’s Field Guide to CHI 2021
  • The Challenge of Knowledge Translation
  • An Interview With Horror Sound Designer Orest Sushko || Part III – What Horror Games Can Learn From The Sound Design of Horror Movies

Archives

  • May 2021
  • February 2021
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • February 2016
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • March 2015

Categories

  • Book Review
  • Conferences
  • Game Design
  • Games User Research
  • Gamification
  • Gaming Experiences
  • HCI
  • Interviews
  • News
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Social Media Update/Blog
  • Talks
  • Teaching

Archives

  • May 2021
  • February 2021
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • February 2016
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • March 2015

Categories

  • Book Review
  • Conferences
  • Game Design
  • Games User Research
  • Gamification
  • Gaming Experiences
  • HCI
  • Interviews
  • News
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Social Media Update/Blog
  • Talks
  • Teaching

Archives

  • May 2021
  • February 2021
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • February 2016
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • March 2015

Categories

  • Book Review
  • Conferences
  • Game Design
  • Games User Research
  • Gamification
  • Gaming Experiences
  • HCI
  • Interviews
  • News
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Social Media Update/Blog
  • Talks
  • Teaching
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2023 · HCI Games Group · All Rights Reserved. We acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. We wish to honour the ancestral guardians of this land and its waterways: the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the Neutrals. Many Indigenous peoples continue to call this land home and act as its stewards, and this responsibility extends to all peoples, to share and care for this land for generations to come.