Game reviews play an important role in both the culture and business of games the
words of a reviewer can have an influential effect on the commercial success of a video game. While reviews are currently used by game developers to aid in important decisions such as project financing and employee bonuses, the effect of game reviews on players is not known. Additionally, the use of game reviews to improve evaluation techniques has received little attention. In this thesis we investigate the effect of game reviews on player experience and perceptions of quality. We show that negative reviews cause a significant effect on how players perceive their in-game experience, and that this effect is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the play experience with the previously-read review text. To address this effect we designed and deployed a new heuristic evaluation technique that specifically uses game reviews to create a fine-grained prioritized list of usability problems based on the frequency, impact, and persistence of each problem. By using our technique we are able to address the most common usability problems identified by game reviews, thus reducing the overall level of negativity found within the review text. Our approach helps to control and eliminate the snowballing effect that can be produced by players reading reviews and subsequently posting their own reviews, and thus improve the commercial success of a game.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-07112011-153827 |
| Date | 15 July 2011 |
| Creators | Livingston, Ian James |
| Contributors | Stanley, Kevin, Mandryk, Regan, Muri, Allison, Gutwin, Carl |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-07112011-153827/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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