Developing Measures of Wireless Game Quality: A Three-Step Approach

The potential market for m-commerce now consists of 2.5 billion users worldwide. In addition, as with more traditional computer-mediated environments, games are once again proving to be a dominant application. In particular, games are predicted to become the main driver in the m-commerce entertainment space. A key ingredient to the success of these wireless games is destined to be their quality. This is an area that has thus far been neglected by literature. The research performed in this paper develops, validates and demonstrates the usefulness of an instrument that specifically evaluates the quality of wireless games. Data collected by the instrument is grounded in subjective impressions. However, this data can be applied in quantitative analysis for the production of wireless game metrics such as the Wireless Game Quality Index. These objectives are carried out through a three-step methodology. First, an instrument to measure the construct of interest, wireless game quality is developed. Then the instrument’s validity is examined and usefulness demonstrated in two phases of testing on wireless games. A five dimension structure of wireless game quality is revealed along with a validated 23-item instrument. The paper rounds off with conclusions and future directions for research and practice in this area.