<p dir="ltr">Since the Electronic Software Association (ESA) began reporting data for the video game industry in 2002, women have represented nearly half of the game playing population. However, despite this stable statistic, the industry’s ideal “Gamer” is consistently depicted as a young, white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied male, and the games industry frequently targets this idealized identity through advertising and game design. This has resulted in a culture that is notably toxic towards women and marginalized players, built on an assumption of meritocracy within games—or the expectation that every player begins each game with the same advantages, disadvantages, and skills as every other player. While the construction of gamer identity has received extensive scholarly attention, gaming peripherals—such as video game controllers—are either minimized or left entirely out of the conversation. This dissertation, informed by feminist methodologies in technical communication and game studies, uses a mixed-methods approach involving archival research, visual analysis, surveys, and interviews to understand the intersections of video game controllers and gamer identity. Using Microsoft’s Xbox as a case study, the findings demonstrate how a dominant narrative has controlled controller design decisions through iterative processes. This has resulted in controllers that are more uncomfortable, more unusable, and more frustrating for and viewed more negatively by women and marginalized players. For each controller iteration, women and marginalized participants rated controllers significantly lower. Though the total improvement score (TIS) from first iteration to current iteration were similar between women and marginalized participants and cismale participants, the lower starting point for women and marginalized participants resulted in a lower ending point. Design decisions across controller iterations privilege cismale experiences, reifying gamer identity through controller design and resulting in not just an ideal gamer identity, but an ideal gamer body. </p>

Gaming experience refers to the players’ overall experience when playing agame. Both game and controller have an impact on it. This project exploreshow different element arrangements on a controller can affect the players’gaming experience. Four lo-fi prototypes were constructed and used to bothtest the reaction of players, but also to educate them into the possibleelements included in controllers. Participants were then invited to designtheir own controller while reflecting about aspects like embodiment,immersion, or latency. Throughout the whole process participants reportedabout their previous experiences with controllers through an interview. Theresearch showed that the elemental arrangements did in fact affect theplayers’ gaming experience but also that there is a cultural understanding ofgames and controllers that constrains the possibility of new designs. Theproject also explored the limitations of conducting research on distance, andreflects about how remote design can be conducted.

The present study investigates the obstacles encountered by people with motor impairments in their pursuit of playing and enjoying video games. The design process involved gathering valuable insights from relevant to the topic literature and observations, due to the lack of access to individuals with motor disabilities. The resulting controller prioritized button layout customization and incorporated ergonomic considerations to ensure comfort and easier interaction. The feedback and user testing conducted provided valuable insights, allowing for iterative improvements and refinement of the controller design in the future.

Many people in the world today own a smartphone. Smartphones of today usually have an advanced array of inputs in forms of tilting, touching and speaking, and outputs in forms of visual representation on the screen, vibration of the smartphone and speakers for sound. They also usually have different kinds of connectivity in forms of WLAN, Bluetooth and USB. Despite this we are still not seeing a lot of interaction between computers and smartphones, especially within games. We believe that the high presence of smartphones amongst people combined with the advanced inputs and outputs of the smartphone and the connectivity possibilities makes the smartphone a very viable option to be used as a game controller for the PC. We experimented with this developing the underlying architecture for the smartphone to communicate with the PC. Three different games were developed that users tested to see if the smartphone’s inputs are good enough to make it suitable for such purpose. We also attempted to find out if doing this made the gaming experience better, or in other words increased the enjoyment, of a PC game. The phone was suitable to be used as a game controller for the first two types of game, the space-racing game and the puzzle game, as our results shows in both terms of enjoyment and in terms of quality of the technical features of the phone such as accuracy and response time. The third game (First Person Shooter) however was better suited to be used with a keyboard and mouse, which our results shows in terms of both reduced enjoyment and complaints about response time of the phone. / Många människor äger idag en smarttelefon. Dagens smarttelefoner har oftast en mängd avancerade intag av data i form av lutning, pekskärm och mikrofon, och ut data i form av visuell representation på skrämen, vibration av telefonen samt högtalare för ljud. De har oftast också olika sorters anslutningar i form av WLAN, Bluetooth och USB. Trots detta så ser vi fortfarande inte särskillt mycket interaktion mellan datorer och smarttelefoner, speciellt inom spel. Vi tror att den höga förekomsten av smarttelefoner hos människor kombinerat med de avancerade in och ut data av smarttelefonen och anslutningsmöjligheterna gör smarttelefonen en bra kandidat till att användas som spelkontroll för datorer. Vi experimenterade med detta genom att utveckla den underliggande arkitekturen för kommunikationen mellan smarttelefonen och datorn. Vi utvecklade även tre olika spel som vi lät användare testa för att se om smarttelefonens intag av data är tillräckligt bra för att göra den användbar för ett sådant ändamål. Vi försökte även ta reda på om detta gjorde spelupplevelsen bättre, eller med andra ord om det var roligare att spela med hjälp av smarttelefonen. Smarttelefonen var lämplig för att användas som spelkontroll i de två första typen av spel som vi testade med, ett rymd-racing spel och ett puzzle spel, vilken kan ses i vårt resultat både när det gäller spelgäldje och kvaliten på de tekniska funktionerna av telefonen, som precision och responstid. Det tredje spelet (Första Persons Skjutare) var däremot bättre lämpat att spela med tangentbord och mus, vilket vårt resultat visar i form av minskad spelglädje och klagomål om responstiden med telefonen.

There is a growing interest in bringing online and streaming content to the television. Gaming platforms such as the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii are at the center of this digital convergence; platforms for accessing new media services. This presents a number of interface challenges, as controllers designed for gaming have to be adapted to accessing online content. We conducted a user study examining the limitations and affordances of novel game controllers in an interactive TV (iTV) context and compared them to "second display" approaches using tablets. We looked at task completion times, accuracy and user satisfaction across a number of tasks and found that the Wiimote is most liked and performed best in almost all tasks. Participants found the Kinect difficult to use, which led to slow performance and high error rates. We discuss challenges and opportunities for the future convergence of game consoles and iTV. We also analyzed the usability of the interfaces themselves with respect to each device. Accuracy ratings and context of task type were used to determine ideal component attributes such as button size and spacing. Additional strategies like snapping cursor to buttons in the case of small targets were also suggested. Paying attention to the strengths and weaknesses of each input method, we put forth a set of design recommendations for future iTV interfaces that leverage novel input devices. / Graduation date: 2012