Feedback-based gameplay metrics

The application of gameplay metrics to empirically express a player’s engagement with the game system has become more appealing to a broader range of researchers beyond the computer sciences. Within game studies, the appropriation and use of gameplay metrics not only further shifts these methods beyond formalized user testing (e.g. with the aim of product improvement) but creates a demand for a more universal approach to game metric extraction that can be applied to a wider range of games and account for different social science research agendas. Set in the context of a study into player experiences with participants aged 14-16 years of age, a method of articulating and identifying key moments of game-play pertinent to an analysis of experience with simulated violence was required [38]. This paper describes a pragmatic solution to the need to study a range of games that were determined not by the researchers but the study’s participants. The solution exploits and examines the audio-video feedbacks presented to the player as part of their engagement with a game system. This paper broadly outlines this mode of metric extraction and its application to research that seeks to understand the nature of engagement and player motivations across a mixed methodology approach.