Researchers

Katta Spiel

Visiting Researcher, Participatory Design and Experience

Profile Video

Publications

Year 2020

Development and validation of the player experience inventory: A scale to measure player experiences at the level of functional and psychosocial consequences

@article{Abeele2020,
abstract = {Games User Research (GUR) focuses on measuring, analysing and understanding player experiences to optimise game designs. Hence, GUR experts aim to understand how specific game design choices are experienced by players, and how these lead to specific emotional responses. An instrument, providing such actionable insight into player experience, specifically designed by and for GUR was thus far lacking. To address this gap, the Player Experience Inventory (PXI) was developed, drawing on Means-End theory and measuring player experience both at the level of Functional Consequences, (i.e., the immediate experiences as a direct result of game design choices, such as audiovisual appeal or ease-of-control) and at the level of Psychosocial Consequences, (i.e., the second-order emotional experiences, such as immersion or mastery). Initial construct and item development was conducted in two iterations with 64 GUR experts. Next, the scale was validated and evaluated over five studies and populations, totalling 529 participants. Results support the theorized structure of the scale and provide evidence for both discriminant and convergent validity. Results also show that the scale performs well over different sample sizes and studies, supporting configural invariance. Hence, the PXI provides a reliable and theoretically sound tool for researchers to measure player experience and investigate how game design choices are linked to emotional responses.},
author = {Abeele, Vero Vanden and Spiel, Katta and Nacke, Lennart and Johnson, Daniel and Gerling, Kathrin},
doi = {10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.102370},
issn = {10959300},
journal = {International Journal of Human Computer Studies},
keywords = {GUR,Game experience,Games user research,Means-End theory,Measurement instrument,PX,Player experience,Scale development,Scale validation},
number = {October 2019},
pages = {102370},
publisher = {Elsevier},
title = {{Development and validation of the player experience inventory: A scale to measure player experiences at the level of functional and psychosocial consequences}},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.102370},
volume = {135},
year = {2020}
}

Games User Research (GUR) focuses on measuring, analysing and understanding player experiences to optimise game designs. Hence, GUR experts aim to understand how specific game design choices are experienced by players, and how these lead to specific emotional responses. An instrument, providing such actionable insight into player experience, specifically designed by and for GUR was thus far lacking. To address this gap, the Player Experience Inventory (PXI) was developed, drawing on Means-End theory and measuring player experience both at the level of Functional Consequences, (i.e., the immediate experiences as a direct result of game design choices, such as audiovisual appeal or ease-of-control) and at the level of Psychosocial Consequences, (i.e., the secondorder emotional experiences, such as immersion or mastery). Initial construct and item development was conducted in two iterations with 64 GUR experts. Next, the scale was validated and evaluated over five studies and populations, totalling 529 participants. Results support the theorized structure of the scale and provide evidence for both discriminant and convergent validity. Results also show that the scale performs well over different sample sizes and studies, supporting configural invariance. Hence, the PXI provides a reliable and theoretically sound tool for researchers to measure player experience and investigate how game design choices are linked to emotional responses.

What is it Like to Be a Game?-Object Oriented Inquiry for Games Research, Design and Evaluation

@article{spiel2020like,
  title={What is it Like to Be a Game?-Object Oriented Inquiry for Games Research, Design and Evaluation},
  author={Spiel, Katta and Nacke, Lennart},
  journal={Frontiers in Computer Science},
  volume={2},
  pages={18},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Frontiers}
}

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers more and more challenge the notion of technologies as objects and humans as subjects. This conceptualization has led to various approaches inquiring into object perspectives within HCI. Even though the development and analysis of games and players is filled with notions of intersubjectivity, games research has yet to embrace an object oriented perspective. Through an analysis of existing methods, we show how Object-Oriented Inquiry offers a useful, playful, and speculative lens to pro-actively engage with and reflect on how we might know what it is like to be a game. We illustrate how to actively attend to a game's perspective as a valid position. This has the potential to not only sharpen our understanding of implicit affordances but, in turn, about our assumptions regarding play and games more generally. In a series of case studies, we apply several object-oriented methods across three methodological explorations on becoming, being, and acting as a game, and illustrate their usefulness for generating meaningful insights for game design and evaluation. Our work contributes to emerging object-oriented practices that acknowledge the agency of technologies within HCI at large and its games-oriented strand in particular.

Year 2019

" It Started as a Joke" On the Design of Idle Game

@inproceedings{spiel2019started,
  title={" It Started as a Joke" On the Design of Idle Games},
  author={Spiel, Katta and Alharthi, Sultan A and Cen, Andrew Jian-lan and Hammer, Jessica and Nacke, Lennart E and Toups, Z O and Tanenbaum, Tess},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play},
  pages={495--508},
  year={2019}
}

With idle games, active withdrawal from the game comprises an essential part of gameplay as players wait for the game state to change over time. This mode of interaction is paradigmatic for the change of roles technologies have in our lives. However, the design elements of idle games are less well understood, particularly from the perspectives of developers. We interviewed six designers of six different popular idle games and inquired into their individual approaches. Via thematic analysis, we refine and expand on existing definitions of idle games as a genre, shed light on ethically charged practices of care in their design, and identify shared core characteristics between the games and processes. We then generate intermediate-level knowledge on the design of idle games. Our work contributes designers' perspectives on idle games and their design to a growing body of literature on the genre.

Year 2018

Games and Play SIG: Engaging Small Developer Communities

@inproceedings{Nacke:2018:GPS:3170427.3185360,
 author = {Nacke, Lennart E. and Mirza-Babaei, Pejman and Spiel, Katta and Toups, Zachary O. and Isbister, Katherine},
 title = {Games and Play SIG: Engaging Small Developer Communities},
 booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
 series = {CHI EA '18},
 year = {2018},
 isbn = {978-1-4503-5621-3},
 location = {Montreal QC, Canada},
 pages = {SIG11:1--SIG11:4},
 articleno = {SIG11},
 numpages = {4},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3170427.3185360},
 doi = {10.1145/3170427.3185360},
 acmid = {3185360},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 keywords = {chi play, entertainment, games, gamification, hci, play, playful experience, video games},
} 

The Games-and-Play community has thrived at ACM SIGCHI with a consistent increase in games- and play-related submissions across research papers, workshops, posters, demos, and competitions. The community has attracted a significant number of academic researchers, students, and practitioners to CHI conferences in recent years. CHI 2018 is being held in Montréal, a major game development hub. Montréal is not only a home for major game studios but also more than 100 smaller game studios. In line with the "Engage With CHI" spirit of CHI 2018, this SIG aims to engage the Games and Play community in a discussion about the directions that we can take to advance towards demographics that will benefit from HCI games research but are currently underrepresented: small, independent developers, non-profit organizations, and academics that create mobile games, games for health, games for change, and/or educational games.