Investigation of Complex Strategy Games on Console: Evaluating the Potential Possibilities of One User Interface to Rule Them All

Home , 4X, Civilization VI, Console game, Digital tabletop game, Endless Legend, Frostpunk

Aron Nisbel

Department of Applied Physics and Electronics Umeå University, Sweden [email protected]

In collaboration with Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio Abstract. Building complex games like Grand Strategy Games for both PC and console is a costly endeavour. Normally, two different platforms imply two different User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) designs, even though it is the same game. If the game’s UI could have similar designs for both platforms, this costly obstacle could be overcome. This study aimed to take the first steps to look at “one UI to rule them all”. Due to the lack of existing research on this topic, this study had to begin from scratch. This led to a focus on existing strategy games on consoles, and an evaluation of the User Experience (UX) of these games. Con- sidering the lack of Grand Strategy Games on consoles, eleven existing strategy games on console similar to Grand Strategy Games were chosen to be investigated further with the aim to find possible best practices and/or the most important aspects of the player’s experience in these games. Through discussion with game industry experts (experienced and senior UX designers), the UI and UX of strategy games on console were broken down and grouped as specific game interactions, with emphasis on the similarity to Grand Strategy Games. By using the defined game interactions, a quantitative survey was carried out to pinpoint the game interactions with the biggest impact on the player’s experience. The analysis of the results from the 864 respondents in the quantitative survey showed the importance of console first. It could be determined by looking how well the only console first game of the survey did. Halo Wars 2 had the overall best perceived experience in five out of the eight defined game interactions. Yet the participants preferred playing Halo Wars 2 on PC to equal extent as they preferred to play it on consoles, concluding that console first seems to be the design approach to use when a game studio wants to ship a game simultaneously to both PC and consoles since it gives the overall best player experience. Furthermore, the pace, meaning the speed with which the player can execute specific in-game actions and reach their goals, was found to be a major factor to the player’s experience of the chosen strategy games on console. This led to a further developed definition of the pace through discussion and workshops with industry experts. Research then continued with remote and unmoderated playtests (qualitative usability testing) of two of the chosen games being most similar to Grand Strategy Games; Stellaris and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. These playtests aimed to find what are the most important aspects of the pace and how the pace affects the player’s experience. When the participants were asked to rank what they thought has the biggest impact on the pace in the game, game mechanical aspects were ranked higher than UI and UX aspects of the pace. This shows the game mechanics to be more important than the UI and UX aspects of the pace when designing the pace in a game like Stellaris and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

Keywords UX Research, Console Game Design, UI Design, Pace, Playtests, Strategy Games, User Interfaces, Pandemic Sammanfattning Svenska (Abstract Swedish)

Att bygga komplexa spel som Grand Strategy spel för både PC och konsol är en kostsam uppgift. Normalt innebär två olika plattformar två olika User Interface (UI) och User Experience (UX) designs, för ett och samma spel. Om spelets UI skulle kunna ha liknande design för båda plattformarna skulle utvecklingskost- naden bli mindre. Denna studie har som målsättning att ta de första stegen av att undersöka mörjligheterna för "ett UI för att härska dem alla". På grund av bristen på befintlig forskning inom området måste denna studie börja från grunden. Detta ledde till ett fokus på befintliga strategispel på konsol, och en utvärdering av användarupplevelsen (UX) för dessa spel. Med tanke på bristen på Grand Strategy spel på konsol valdes elva befintliga strategispel på konsol ut som liknar Grand Strategy spel för att undersökas vidare i syftet att hitta möjliga bästa praxis och/eller de viktigaste aspekterna av spelarens upplevelse (UX) av dessa spel. För att hitta specifika aspekter måste aspekterna först definieras. Genom diskussion med experter inom spelindustrin (erfarna och seniora UX-designers) delades UI och UX aspekterna i strategispel på konsol upp i mindre bitar och grupperades i specifika spelinteraktioner, med betoning på deras likhet med Grand Strategy spel. Genom att utgå ifrån de definierade spelinteraktionerna genomfördes en enkätundersökning för att identifiera vilka spelinteraktionerna som har störst påverkan på spelarens upplevelse.

Spelens tempo visade sig vara en viktig faktor för spelarens upplevelse av de valda strategispelen på konsol. Detta ledde till en vidareutvecklad deﬁnition av tempot genom diskussioner och workshops med branschexperter. Forskningen fortsatte sedan med omodererade speltester (kvalitativ användbarhetstestning) av två av de valda spelen som mest liknar Grand Strategy Games; Stellaris och Sid Meiers Civilization VI. Dessa speltester hade målsättningen att hitta de viktigaste aspekterna av tempot och hur tempot påverkar användarupplevelsen. När deltagarna ombads att rangordna vad de ansåg har störst inverkan på tempot i spelet rankades spelmekaniska aspekter högre än UI- och UX-aspekter av tempot. Detta visar att spelmekaniska aspekter är viktigare än UI- och UX-aspekter av tempot när du designar tempot i spel som Stellaris och Sid Meiers Civilization VI.

Genom ytterligare analys av resultaten från de 864 respondenterna i den första kvantitativa undersökningen kunde vikten av console first bestämmas genom att se hur bra det enda console first-spelet i undersökningen rankades. Detta spel var Halo Wars 2, och det hade den övergripande bäst upplevda upplevelsen i fem av de åtta definierade spelinteraktionerna. Fastän ett högt betyg på konsolversionen av Halo Wars 2 så föredrog deltagarna varken PC- eller konsolversionen över den andra, vilket resulterar i slutsatsen att console first verkar vara design- metoden att använda när en spelstudio vill bygga ett spel samtidigt till både PC och konsol eftersom det ger den övergripande bästa spelarupplevelsen för båda platformarna. Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to everyone at Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio for the warm welcome and inclusion they have shown me even during the COVID-19 pandemic with everyone for the most part working remotely. While I did get to work from the Stockholm oﬃce for a couple of weeks in September/October, it would have been diﬃcult to connect and meet anyone without the warm and including working culture at the game studio.

I especially want to thank Doyle Daigle and Henrik Hansson at Paradox De- velopment Studio for taking me under their arms and mentoring me through this, and including me in every meeting and discussion, making me feel part of the Paradox family. Also, for helping me grow both professionally and as a person.

Additional thanks to my supervisor at Umeå University, Mattias Andersson for his active guidance and that he put up with my almost never ending discussions.

Likewise, I am highly thankful for the input and feedback from Alice Risholt when peer reviewing this paper.

Furthermore, I would like to send a special thanks to Mattias Hagberg and Emil Söderlind for the great input, suggestions, and lively discussions which has signiﬁcantly improved the quality of this thesis.

Last but not least, I want to extend my appreciation to my friends and family who encouraged me and put up with me during the most diﬃcult and frustrating times. Table of Contents

1 Introduction...... 1 2 Background...... 2 2.1 User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX)...... 2 2.2 PC Inputs and Screen Distances...... 2 2.3 How the Consoles Differ...... 4 2.3.1 Controllers...... 4 2.4 One UI to Rule Them All...... 4 2.5 Paradox Interactive...... 6 3 Objective...... 8 3.1 Purpose...... 8 3.2 Brief Structure...... 8 4 Theoretical Framework - Part One...... 9 4.1 Strategy Video Games...... 9 4.2 The Four Xs (4X)...... 9 4.2.1 Grand Strategy Games...... 10 4.3 User Experience (UX) in Video Games...... 10 4.4 Quantitative Research Methods...... 11 4.4.1 Likert Scales...... 11 4.4.2 T-test...... 12 4.5 The Game Interactions...... 13 4.5.1 Cursor...... 13 4.5.2 Indicator...... 14 4.5.3 Map Navigation & Control...... 14 4.5.4 Menu Navigation...... 14 4.5.5 User Interface (UI) Size...... 14 4.5.6 Font-Size...... 14 4.5.7 Tooltips...... 14 4.5.8 Tutorial...... 14 4.5.9 Pace...... 15 4.6 The Games...... 15 4.6.1 Real-time Strategy (RTS) Games...... 15 4.6.2 City Building Games...... 16 4.6.3 4X Games...... 19 5 Theoretical Framework - Part Two...... 21 5.1 The Pace...... 21 5.1.1 The Pace in Stellaris...... 21 5.1.2 The Pace in Civilization VI...... 23 5.2 Qualitative Research...... 24 6 Methodology...... 26 6.1 Pre-Study...... 26 6.1.1 Console Questions...... 27 6.1.2 PC vs. Console Questions...... 28 6.2 Analysis...... 29 6.2.1 T-test...... 29 6.2.2 The open-ended question...... 31 6.3 Follow-up Playtests...... 31 6.3.1 Tasks and Questions for Stellaris...... 32 6.3.2 Tasks and Questions for Civilization 6...... 36 6.3.3 Ending Questions...... 37 6.3.4 Platform Comparing Playtests...... 37 6.4 Evaluation...... 37 7 Results...... 39 7.1 Pre-study...... 39 7.1.1 Console Likert Scale Questions...... 39 7.1.2 Console vs. PC Likert Scale Questions...... 40 7.1.3 Biggest Impact...... 41 7.2 Analysis...... 41 7.2.1 Comparing The Game Interactions...... 43 7.2.2 Biggest Impact...... 44 7.3 Follow-up Playtests...... 44 7.3.1 Stellaris Console Playtest...... 44 7.3.2 Stellaris PC Playtest...... 46 7.3.3 Civilization 6 Console Playtest...... 51 7.3.4 Civilization 6 PC Playtest...... 53 8 Discussion...... 58 8.1 Pace...... 59 8.1.1 Stellaris Pace Definition...... 59 8.1.2 Civilization 6 Pace Definition...... 59 8.2 Turn-based vs. Real-time...... 60 8.2.1 Linear Navigation & Cursor...... 61 8.2.2 Console First...... 61 8.2.3 One UI to Rule Them All...... 63 8.3 Limitations & Sources of Error...... 63 8.3.1 T-test...... 63 8.3.2 Early Game Pace...... 63 8.3.3 Overlapping and Intertwining Tasks...... 64 8.3.4 Covid-19...... 64 9 Conclusion...... 65 9.1 Future Work...... 65 10 Paradox Interactive Requirements...... 66 A Appendix...... 73 A.1 Pre-Study Survey...... 73 A.2 Stellaris Console Playtest...... 74 A.3 Stellaris PC Playtest...... 75 A.4 Civilization 6 Console Playtest...... 76 A.5 Civilization 6 PC Playtest...... 77

VI 1. INTRODUCTION

1 Introduction

Since its birth in the 1950s, video games have become part of day-to-day life for a majority of the developed world’s population. A majority of the European population aged 6 - 64 play video games according to the European statistics agency ISFE [1]. Of those, 54 percent play video games on a console. Consoles take up 43 percent of the 14 billion EUR video game market in Europe as of 2020. That means console video games have a total revenue of 6 billion EUR only in Europe. The leading actors on the global console market are Sony Entertain- ment with PlayStation at 52 percent, Nintendo with Switch at 25 percent, and Microsoft with Xbox at 23 percent [2]. For a video game to reach this large console market it appears proﬁtable to be in the action-shooter, sports, or adventure genre, since they contain nearly all the current top selling titles [1]. Compared to the console market share of 43 percent (6 billion EUR), the PC revenue only contributes with 16 percent (2.24 billion EUR) of the total video game revenue in Europe whilst 51 percent of European gamers play their games on PC, which is almost the same amount as the amount of console players (54 percent). The PC market therefore seems like a less proﬁtable market than the console market.

The game publisher Paradox Interactive specializes in the game genre of grand strategy games, which is a genre that have seen great success on the PC market with over ten games on the top 100 list of most played games on the indisputably largest PC game distributor and platform, Steam [3]. But grand strategy games are among the less explored genres on consoles, with no console game having the privilege to call itself a grand strategy game. Some may argue that the strategy game Stellaris is considered a grand strategy game, making it the only grand strategy game for console, but it is described to belong to the closely related 4X genre by the developers themselves [4]. To understand the genre of grand strategy games, one must first understand the genre of strategy games and then the 4X genre, which are described in the theoretical framework in section4. At the moment, there are only a handful of 4X games on consoles, a few examples being Stellaris: Console Edition and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI [4][5]. There are no grand strategy games on consoles, even though some may consider Stellaris to be a grand strategy game, as mentioned earlier, it is not labeled a grand strategy game by the developers and founders of the grand strategy games genre themselves, Paradox Development Studio. In this study, Stellaris will not be re- garded as a grand strategy game, only as a 4X game. The lack of 4X and grand strategy games on consoles raises the question, what are the causes to the 4X and grand strategy games absence on consoles? This may be a product of high game complexity. Where less complex games have a less complicated control scheme that fits to the console’s fewer inputs of the controller versus the higher complexity in 4X and grand strategy games conceivably better suited for the PC controls of mouse and keyboard. This needs further investigation to find out why it is difficult to make 4X and grand strategy games for consoles, and to find a sustainable way for 4X and grand strategy games to be made for both PC and consoles.

1 2. BACKGROUND

2 Background

Considering the complex nature of 4X and grand strategy games, the User Inter- face (UI) becomes massive in scale and complexity. This makes the UI especially crucial to the player’s experience of a 4X and grand strategy game. This perceived experience is referred to as the User Experience (UX) of the game.

2.1 User Interface (UI) & User Experience (UX) In the context of video games, UI refers to the methods (keyboard control, mouse control, controller) and interfaces (menus, buttons, map views, etc.) through which a user interacts with the game. UX refers to how intuitive and enjoyable all components in the game are, including the UI interactions [6]. A 4X or grand strategy game requires a high number of interfaces for the player to be able to interact with the game’s abundant number of strategic options. The 4X game Stellaris consist of more than twenty essential in-game interfaces, compared to only a few in the sports game Fifa [7,8]. In Stellaris, these interfaces are filled with hundreds of different options for strategic decisions. While making these strategic decisions, many factors and values such as the amount of resources required, other empires actions, and the player’s goal with that game session, etc. needs to be taken into consideration. This leads to a complex web of options tied to different values that all are required to be shown on the limited area of the computer screen. Common UI designs of 4X and grand strategy games utilizes different menus to display these options, while at the same time having to display the map of the player’s empire and its wonders. Additionally, there are intricate controls associated with having a high number of options available to the player.

2.2 PC Inputs and Screen Distances A setup of a standard English keyboard and mouse comprises around 105 keyboard key inputs and 4 mouse button inputs plus the mouse movement input. An example of the keyboard layout can be seen in the following fig.1 and the mouse layout shown in fig.2. This applies when the inputs are defined without combinations of inputs [9,10]. Regardless of the definition, there are standard- ized keyboard and mouse schemes used in most modern games. One of the most common ways is the usage of the W-A-S-D keys to move around and the mouse to control the camera view, a mouse pointer, or both [11]. In 4X and grand strategy games the keys, other than the W-A-S-D keys, are used as shortcuts for commands and can be utilized in different combinations. This provides an ex- tensive amount of available inputs for the game designer to utilize as commands for the strategic options available to the player. The mouse is mainly used as a cursor, also known as a mouse pointer, which enables the UI-designer to design the icons, buttons, and menus to suit the high accuracy of the cursor. This high accuracy of the cursor may be essential to fit the high number of interfaces within the screen’s limit. Higher accuracy could enable smaller interfaces.

2 2. BACKGROUND

Fig. 1. A standard keyboard layout. Created by Mysid distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0 [12].

Fig. 2. A standard mouse button layout. Created by author.

3 2. BACKGROUND

The possible sizes of the UI is also determined by the distance from the user to the screen. This distance plays a significant role in the preferred size of the UI. The further away the user is from the screen, the larger the UI has to be. According to Vincenzo Milella at the Esport Tales, on a 16:9 ratio, 24 inch, and 1080p resolution display the optimal viewing distance should be between 0.38 and 0.96 metres when playing PC games [13], which is similar to the earlier set standard by the Environment, Health and Safety Division and the University of California when they defined office ergonomics [14]. Their standard lays within Milella’s interval which is shown at the Environment, Health and Safety Division’s website [14].

2.3 How the Consoles Diﬀer

In console games, this screen-to-user distance mentioned in the previous section is increased signiﬁcantly. On a 50 inch and 1080p resolution TV, the suggested optimal viewing distance lies between 2.0 to 3.2 metres [15]. This means that both the screen is bigger and the distance from the screen is greater than the PC, but the ratio of increased screen size and increased viewing distance is not a linear change. The closest suggested value of 2.0 metres for viewing a TV corresponds to the furthest value of 0.96 metres for the PC when the distance is divided by screen size. This means that the TV viewing distance will go beyond what is supposedly the optimal viewing distance for a PC game. The designers of a PC game will undoubtedly have the PC screen’s optimal viewing distance in mind when designing a game, not the TV screen. This means that the average console player, who presumably plays on a TV, will be sitting further away from the screen than the PC players. This increased distance between the user and the display aﬀects the size of the UI, possibly forcing a larger UI and less space for the UI-designer to work with.

2.3.1 Controllers In addition to the larger UIs, the design team has to overcome an input scheme with fewer inputs to utilize. Both PlayStation and Xbox uses controllers, as shown in ﬁgures3 and4, with fewer inputs compared to the PC’s mouse and keyboard, leading to yet another major diﬀerence when designing a game for PC and designing the same game for consoles.

2.4 One UI to Rule Them All

When building 4X games and grand strategy games for both PC and console, the limited input controls and the increased viewing distance makes for a signiﬁcant challenge to the game studio’s UX design team [18]. To take the convenience of mouse and keyboard, and narrow it down to a handful of buttons, triggers, and joysticks may require separate UX approaches and UI designs for each platform (PC, PlayStation, and Xbox). It is a costly matter to create and maintain two, possibly more, diﬀerent UI designs of a video game, both time- and money-wise.

4 2. BACKGROUND

Fig. 3. The button layout of a Xbox One controller. Figure created by designers at dlf.pt and distributed freely [16].

Fig. 4. The button layout of a PlayStation 4 controller [17]. Figure created by SEGA and redistribution is approved, see copyright notice in section 10.

5 2. BACKGROUND

Game studios making action-shooters, sports games, and other less complex games are solving this issue by opting for the approach of one UI design across multiple platforms. Examples of this endeavour can be seen in games like Des- tiny and Fifa [19][8]. This raises the question: is there “one UI to rule them all” in 4X and grand strategy games, and can it maintain the same level of User Experience across all platforms?

As mentioned, a similar UI design on PC and consoles is possible in less complex games, proven by the game studio Bungie, in their effort to implement the same functionality of a PC-like cursor in the console version of Destiny [20], enabling the UI design to remain the same across all platforms with similar menu navigation. Destiny proved to be a success on all platforms as they received praise from the gaming community [21], which indicates that a high level of UX was maintained across all platforms (PC, PlayStation, and Xbox) [22]. However, the complexity of Destiny is significantly less than a normal 4X or grand strategy game. The complexity of a game can be measured in many ways, but five fre- quently used measures are [23]: – State-space complexity – Game-tree size – Decision complexity – Game-tree complexity – Computational complexity 4X and grand strategy games exceeds Destiny in all of these complexity measurements. The increased complexity of these games may require additional means to be able to maintain the same level of UX across all the gaming platforms.

To identify which measures that needs to be taken, the game interaction with the biggest impact on the user experience of the UI in 4X and grand strategy games on console needs to be identiﬁed. In this context, a game interaction refers to an in-game element or feature that the player can interact with.

2.5 Paradox Interactive Paradox Interactive is a Swedish video game publisher composed of nine first- party game development studios [24]. The company has mainly found success in the niche markets of grand strategy games, but also 4X and city-building games. Paradox Development Studio, their flagship studio, is the studio responsible for the majority of their best-selling grand strategy games [25], and well-known for their deep, complex, and ambitious games on PC. They are now exploring ways for their 4X games and grand strategy games to enter the console market. With Stellaris: Console Edition being their first 4X game to be ported from PC to console [4]. Stellaris: Console Edition received acceptable but not great reviews from players on both Xbox One [26] and PlayStation 4 [27]. Stellaris: Console Edition has a significantly different UI design compared to its PC-version result- ing in Paradox Development Studio designing and maintaining two very different

6 2. BACKGROUND

UI designs for the same game. As Paradox Interactive says in an interview, this results in higher workloads of both their UI and UX department having to test and iterate on two different designs, essentially much like working on two different games [28]. A sustainable solution could be to find specific aspects and game interactions in the game, which could be implemented with similar UI design, gradually building on a holistic solution for the entire UI design. This could become the so called “one UI to rule them all”. Referring to a quote from the movie and books of Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, with a twist: "One UI to find them. One UI to bring them all and in the game bind them".

7 3. OBJECTIVE

3 Objective

To investigate the feasibility of implementing similar User Interface (UI) design on both PC and consoles (PlayStation and Xbox) in 4X and grand strategy games, the following research questions were addressed:

Primary 1. How can we measure the User Experience of speciﬁc game interactions? 2. Which game interaction has the biggest impact on the User Experience of existing strategy games for consoles? 3. How can we further deﬁne this game interaction? 4. What are the most important aspects of this game interaction?

Secondary/Explorative – How can this game interaction be implemented with similar UI design for both platforms?

3.1 Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of implementing similar UI design in 4X and grand strategy games on PC, PlayStation and Xbox. The aim was to identify the game interaction with the biggest impact on the User Experience (UX) of existing strategy games on consoles, and investigate it further. The goal was to have taken the ﬁrst steps towards a more sustainable multi-platform development of 4X and grand strategy games.

3.2 Brief Structure This study was done in two parts, a pre-study followed by playtests. The results from the pre-study were used to build and implement the playtests. Part one of the theoretical framework is before the pre-study. Part two is after the pre-study when the results from the pre-study are used.

8 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

4 Theoretical Framework - Part One

In this section, the required theory to grasp and fully understand the ﬁrst pre- study survey is explained and motivated.

4.1 Strategy Video Games If there is any format of video games that is closest to the original pre-computer form, it is strategy video games [29]. They focus on skillful thinking and planning to achieve victory and emphasizes strategic, tactical, and sometimes logistical challenges. The genre originates from tabletop strategy games such as Go, Chess, and Risk. Considering the broad nature of this deﬁnition, the genre, strategy video games, have been divided into numerous sub-genres. Among these are 4X and Grand Strategy Games.

4.2 The Four Xs (4X) As a sub-genre to strategy games and board games, 4X games are complex games with their core gameplay being to build and manage an empire [30]. The term “4X” originates from a 1993 preview of Master of Orion in Computer Gaming World by editor Alan Emrich, where he rated the game “XXXX” [31]. "I give MOO a XXXX rating because it features the essential four X’s of any good strategic conquest game: EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EX- terminate. In other words, players must rise from humble beginnings, finding their way around the map while building up the largest, most ef- ficient empire possible. Naturally, the other players will be trying to do the same, therefore their extermination becomes a paramount concern”. Emrich applied the four Xs as an abbreviation for “EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate”. This idea of describing complex empire-building games grew to become the standard [32]. Now, the game community have adopted the term, 4X, to describe games of similar scope and design with Emrich’s coined game conventions: – Explore, players send scouts across a map to reveal surrounding territories. – Expand, players claim new territory by creating new settlements, or sometimes by extending the influence of existing settlements. – Exploit, players gather and use resources in areas they control, and improve the efficiency of that usage. – Exterminate, players attack and eliminate rival players. Since in some games all territory is eventually claimed, eliminating a rival’s presence may be the only way to achieve further expansion. There have been numerous 4X games produced throughout the years with a few well-known examples such as the Sid Meier’s Civilization series, Stellaris, and Endless Legend. Compared to grand strategy genre, the 4X genre has made it to the consoles.

9 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

4.2.1 Grand Strategy Games (also Grand Strategy Wargames) are the intricate relatives to 4X games. They are generally more focused on the war aspect (EXterminate) of the game and less focused on the explore part. Essentially re- moving one of the four X’s in 4X. A grand strategy game typically starts with the map fully explored where the player controls one nation and decides its goals. The genre utilizes the real-world term Grand Strategy to describe its games, with the same goals and agendas as Grand Strategy represents when applied in the real world. As a sub-category of real-world politics and political systems in the encyclopedia Britannica, Razvan Sibii defines Grand Strategy as "a country’s most complex form of planning toward the fulfillment of a long-term objective" [33]. Sibii continues by describing that "the formulation and implementation of a grand strategy require the identification of a national goal, a thorough assessment of the state’s resources, and, ultimately, the marshaling of those resources in a highly organized manner to achieve the goal. Although a grand strategy is con- cerned with national affairs both in times of war and in times of peace, national strategies historically have been predicated on the existence of an enemy that needs to be overcome. To that end, policy makers attempt to develop the best possible way of coordinating military prowess, political leverage, diplomatic ability, and economic might within a cohesive national strategy." The same principles define the grand strategy games genre with a clear focus on military prowess in one way or another, as Sibii mentions. Most grand strategy games are set during real historic periods such as the classical antiquity, middle ages, or during world wars, in which the players can bend and shape history to their will. The players can declare war on neighboring nations, expand and develop cities, engage in diplomatic relations with other nations, research technology and build trade routes [34].

Both 4X games and grand strategy games include a high number of menus and icons that have to be crammed into the User Interface (UI) of the game. As mentioned in the background (section2), this gives a great challenge to design the User Experience (UX) of the game with a high number of options and in- teractable elements available to the player, but what is this so called "UX" and how can it be measured for this investigation to move forward?

4.3 User Experience (UX) in Video Games In his introduction to UX in game design, game designer Alex Harbuzinski mentions, there is no exact deﬁnition of what UX in a game is, as this discipline is mainly about improving the experience and the way players interact with a game [35]. Fundamentally, it is a subjective term where the player’s experience of a game is aﬀected by a high number of factors. For example, how easily the player can navigate between interfaces and elements, how the sound is tied into the experience of each situation in the game, and the feedback the player is given when

10 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE he has performed an action correctly/incorrectly. All these examples and many more factors affect the player’s experience, and all factors should be considered by a UX designer to be able to design a good player experience. If the scope of UX is expanded to a more general term than only within video games, a survey study by Effie Lai-Chong Law et al. [36] highlights four key characteristics of UX: 1. UX has an aspect of temporal dynamics, which means UX is changing over time. 2. UX is context-dependent, which means that each experience is influenced by the situational characteristics of its occurrence. Hence, each experience is unique. 3. UX is something inherently subjective and individual. Hence, even when confronted with the same system in the same situation, two different persons will experience the system differently and give a different meaning to it. 4. UX is something positive emphasizing the pleasantness and joy of interacting with a system. Here Law et.al strengthens the argument of UX being an individual and subjective term. If these characteristics are applied to UX in video games, this subjec- tivity makes it a challenging task to objectively define a good player experience in a game. It essentially boils down to a player’s subjective liking or disliking of the game. This liking or disliking can be collected and analyzed by quantitative research methods to generalize the UX with the use of Mean Opinions.

4.4 Quantitative Research Methods In his paper exploring quantitative research, Roger Watson states that some items are easy to measure, such as height and weight; other items, such as what people think or how people feel, are diﬃcult to measure [37]. This is where quantitative research shines. According to Watson, quantitative research encompasses this entire spectrum of measuring what people think and how people feel. One of the most common quantitative research method in UX design is the use of surveys to investigate how people feel about, think about, and perceive a product or design [38]. The intention is to generalize the results and objectively relate to the studied variables or objects. A quantitative approach is intended to describe re- lationships between variables and does not go into the underlying phenomenons. According to John J. Shaughnessy et al., designing these surveys to be unbiased and with a clear purpose is key to receive valuable answers [38]. Furthermore, Geoﬀ Norman motivates the good use of Likert scales in quantitative research surveys in his paper about debunking criticism of the Likert scales [39].

4.4.1 Likert Scales Likert scales spreads the answers to a statement or question by giving the respondent a scale of options to choose from, usually answers of how strongly the respondent disagrees or agrees with the statement or question [40]. The scale

11 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE normally contains 5 or 7 options from strongly agree to strongly disagree, with a middle N/A or Don’t know option. In cases of a high number of respondents in combination with an attitudinal question rather than a factual question, Alexan- der Dobronte argues that including a N/A option increases satisficing by the respondents (a heavy cognitive load leading to choosing the easy-way-out option) more than the data would be skewed by the none-inclusion of a N/A option [41]. This argues for the use of an even numbered 4 or 6 option Likert scale, excluding the N/A option, but only if there will be a high number of respondents to the attitudinal questions using the Likert scales. Therefore, by using a high quantity of respondents combined with 6-optioned Likert scales, the mean values can be analyzed and give an accurate average opinion of what is researched. This is a way to measure the player’s opinions of different aspects of the UX and UI in strategy games. In order to use these measurements, the different mean values of the Likert scales can be analyzed with the use of a T-test.

4.4.2 T-test To statistically be able to say that one game’s aspect is more or less liked than the same aspect in another game, a one-sided two-sample T-test can be performed on the mean values from each likert scale question, with the assumption that each sample size is normally distributed [42]. If each sample size (the amount of respondents) for each question is larger than 30, the assumption of normal distribution can be made [43]. The formula for the T-test can be seen in equation 1.

Y − Y T = 1 2 (1) q s2 s2 1 + 2 N1 N2

2 Where N1 and N2 are the sample sizes, Y1 and Y2 are the sample means, and s1 2 and s2 are the sample variances.

When testing two samples against each other with the formula in equation1, what is being tested is whether the difference between the two means is zero or not. The null hypothesis (initial assumption H0) is that this difference is zero i.e. that the isolated variable had no effect, until proven otherwise. The hypothesis is normally used with a significance of 5% and a confidence interval of 95%. In our case, the null hypothesis would be that there is no significant difference of the two games’ mean values of each likert scale question. The T-test only need to be seen from one side depending on how we want the alternative hypothesis Ha to be formulated, also known as a one-tailed T-test. Depending on which one is chosen, the alternative hypothesis Ha either says that one game’s mean is higher (better):

Ha : µ1 > µ2 or lower (worse):

Ha : µ1 < µ2

12 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

than the other game’s mean value. Regardless of which, the null hypothesis H0 will always be that there is no diﬀerence between the mean values:

H0 : µ1 = µ2 The T-test gives a T-value: Ha : µ1 > µ2 we can reject the null hypothesis Ha if:

|T | > t1−α/2 where: t1−α/2 = 1.65 when: α = 0.05

According to the Rejecting the null hypothesis H0, implies that the mean value µ1 is signiﬁcantly higher or lower than the mean value of µ2.

4.5 The Game Interactions To accurately measure the players’ opinions of the User Interface (UI) design in existing strategy games on console, the User Experience (UX) of the UI in 4X and grand strategy games was broken down into smaller tangible groups of game interactions. This aided in finding other strategy games with similar game interactions as 4X and grand strategy games which was necessary to increase the number of available and testable games considering the small number of existing 4X and grand strategy games on console. The defined game interactions are what the player interacts with in the game, such as menus, buttons, texts, and units through player input via a controller. In discussion with the UX department at Paradox Interactive [28], the following game interactions were defined as the essential game interactions in strategy games for console: – Cursor or Indicator – Map Navigation & Control – Menu Navigation – User Interface (UI) Size – Font-Size – Tooltips – Tutorial – Pace

4.5.1 Cursor A cursor in console strategy games is a simulation of a mouse-like cursor, typically controlled via a thumbstick. Either locked to the middle of the screen or free-moving. Depending on the game, this could be used to interact with menus and/or the game world.

13 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

4.5.2 Indicator An indicator is very similar to a cursor, but locked to the currently highlighted element. The indicator snaps to the next element when using the thumbstick or directional pad. This is typically used for menus and/or tile-based game worlds instead of a cursor.

4.5.3 Map Navigation & Control The map navigation and control contains one of the most essential views in 4X and grand strategy games, the map view. This Map view is the game-world that the player interacts with. The game-world can be tile-based, fully 3D, or both! Navigation and control of the Map/Game-World require the player to move and/or zoom the camera as well as interact with the units, buildings, etc. within the game-world itself.

4.5.4 Menu Navigation The menu navigation is a major part of the experience in strategy games. The menu navigation refers to how the player interacts inside the menus and between them. A menu is anything holding several elements which the player can view or interact with. Examples are an inventory system, a list of building options, or an action menu of a selected unit.

4.5.5 User Interface (UI) Size The UI size is the size of each element on the screen. These elements include the icons, menus, buttons, and everything else that you can interact with. A properly sized UI element should be easily readable and identiﬁable from your couch. No eye strain required!

4.5.6 Font-Size The font-size determines the size of texts and titles in the game. The aim is to enable the player to see all diﬀerent texts and titles clearly without having to move closer to the screen or getting a headache.

4.5.7 Tooltips The tooltips are the UI elements commonly found in most games which displays a descriptive text of the element the cursor or indicator is highlighting, in order to help the user gain clarity of an element in the game.

4.5.8 Tutorial The tutorial teaches the player the rules and the controls of the game. Some tutorials are integrated into the game itself, while others are completely separate and optional.

14 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

4.5.9 Pace The pace of the game determines how fast or slow the game feels. How fast or slow are the players able to execute actions and reach their goals. The overall pace is dependent on all the other game interactions. In return, each game interaction as aﬀected by the pace in one way or another.

4.6 The Games To ﬁnd which of the above game interactions that are the major inﬂuential factors on players’ experiences of 4X and grand strategy games, a number of popular console strategy games were selected for further investigation. Each of these games is comparable to 4X and grand strategy games when looking at all the game interactions earlier described. The genres included were Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games and city building games. Both are similar to 4X and grand strategy games since both have similar map navigation and require a large amount of menus to be available to the player. All the games had to be available on consoles which reduced the number of available games. Here is a list of the games investigated, followed by a description of each genre and game.

– Halo Wars 2 – Red Alert 3 – Sudden Strike 4 – Grand Ages: Medieval – Frostpunk – Cities Skylines – Surviving Mars – Tropico 6 – Stellaris – Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Sudden Strike 4 and Grand Ages: Medieval are not further described since they were discarded from the study due to the low number of respondents as shown in table1 in the results.

4.6.1 Real-time Strategy (RTS) Games The chosen RTS games revolve around building units through unit-producing buildings and defeat your opponent(s) (AIs or humans) on the same map as the player, much like 4X and grand strategy games. This is done by commanding the units to move and attack from a top-down perspective. Combat is a combination of simulation and player control. Units can attack by themselves when in range of an enemy, but can also be controlled by the player by moving in and out of range or the use of abilities. Due to the focus on console titles, the chosen RTS games were Halo Wars 2 and Red Alert 3.

Halo Wars 2 is an RTS set in the science ﬁction universe of the Halo franchise in 2559 [44,45]. It is a sequel to Halo Wars (2009) [46]. Halo wars 2 was

15 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE designed with a perspective of console ﬁrst and shows the other part of the spectrum where a game is ported to PC from console compared to the 4X and grand strategy games normally ported to console from PC.

Fig. 5. Screenshot by author from Halo Wars 2 on Xbox one.

Red Alert 3 is an RTS set in an alternate reality from World War II, in which the Western Allies ﬁght the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership, facing defeat, goes back in time to kill Albert Einstein and prevent him assisting the allies, paving the way for Soviet domination in the present. However, as an unintended consequence, a third world power, the Empire of the Rising Sun, is created and all three sides go to war [47]. This game is an older RTS but was ahead of its time with the type of cursor and map navigation it uses for console, similar to today’s games.

4.6.2 City Building Games City building games are self-explanatory. They revolve around constructing and managing cities. They are games about processes. The player’s goal is not to defeat an enemy, but to build something within the context of an ongoing process. The better the player understands and controls the process, the more success he will have at building. They include a wide range of menus and options to be displayed at the same time as giving as much space as possible to a top-down view of the map. This results in a very similar complexity of their UIs to the UIs found in 4X and grand strategy games. With this similarity, they face much of the same problems and solutions as 4X and grand strategy games.

16 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

Frostpunk As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and its infrastructure. The game revolves around the scarcity of resources in a cold winter world. It is as much a survival game as it is a city building game. The survival game is always against the clock. Will you run out of food or freeze to death in the long run? It utilizes a real-time game speed where the player can adjust the speed from pause, normal, faster, and fastest. This game speed is automatically adjusted when important events happen and when the day and night cycle resets.

Fig. 6. Screenshot by author from Frostpunk on Xbox one.

17 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

Cities Skylines Unlike Frostpunk, Cities Skylines is a true city builder without any major hints of survival other than the money you gain and spend. In Cities Skylines, you manage a city with all its thrills and hardships. The game tries to simulate an experience close to reality.

Fig. 7. Screenshot by author from Cities Skylines on Xbox one. Source: [48].

Surviving Mars Similar to Frostpunk, Surviving Mars has a high element of survival since it is set in the more hostile world of Mars. You manage a colony and try to survive while unlocking the mysteries of this alien world.

Tropico 6 The player assumes the role of “El Presidente”, the leader of the Caribbean island nation of Tropico. The game resembles Cities Skylines but with a main theme of the Caribbean islands. It focuses on city building and management of the island city with limited space to build on. Less focus on the survival aspect.

18 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

4.6.3 4X Games Referring to subsection 4.2, each of these games has a wide range of features. The player usually has to consider a wide range of options and alternatives in each stage of the game. A wider range than any other type of game, except for grand strategy games as described in subsection 4.2.1.

Stellaris Stellaris is a futuristic sci-ﬁ game, simulating space as solar systems to claim. The game lets the player explore and conquer solar systems with any type of intelligent life form, growing his or her empire while at the same time managing and developing it. Stellaris have more than 20 individual menus which underlines the complexity of the game. Similar to Frostpunk, Stellaris utilizes a real-time game speed where the player can adjust the speed and pause. The time is measured and displayed in months and days when showing how long until something is completed, like producing a ship or researching a technology.

Fig. 8. Screenshot by author from Stellaris on Xbox one.

19 4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART ONE

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Civilization 6 is turn-based. This means that Civilization 6 has a different progression of time than Stellaris. The time and how long until something is completed is measured by the number of turns. However, this can be compared with the number of months used in Stellaris to convey the time on a continuous time- line, where the player would pause Stellaris, perform his or her orders, and then un-pause to let them unfold before the player pauses again. Not every player plays Stellaris in this way, but it is a way to compare the turn-based aspect of Civilization 6 with the real-time aspect of Stellaris. Each turn in Civilization 6 counts as a number of years depending on the age, normally with a turn limit between 250 - 500. Civilization 6 also differ from Stellaris by focusing on the real history of mankind instead of futuristic sci-fi space. In this game the player gets to re-write history from the ancient age up until the near future.

Fig. 9. Screenshot by author from Civilization 6 on Xbox one.

20 5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART TWO

5 Theoretical Framework - Part Two

In this section, the game interaction with the biggest impact on the player’s experience is deﬁned and the theory needed to understand the further investigation is presented.

5.1 The Pace Presented in subsection 7.2.2, the results of the analysis of the pre-study survey showed the importance of the pace in strategy games on consoles. This motivated a deep-dive into the pace of a few selected games to answer how the pace is impacted, why it is important, and to answer the third question of the objec- tive3. Due to the time limit of this thesis, the deep-dive was limited to a few games. The games selected for further analysis were Stellaris and Civilization 6 considering they are two of few console games being part of the 4X genre, and the games had a high number of players among the respondents to the pre-study survey. To evaluate the pace, each game needed its own definition of its pace. In one way or another, the pace is affected by nearly everything in the game. There- fore, the pace was boiled down to core features and core player interactions in each game. These core features and core player interactions can be summarized as the UX design of each game. The definitions of each game’s pace were prod- ucts of one internal workshop at Paradox Development Studio (PDS) conducted virtually through Google meet, and further discussions and iterations with the UX-team at PDS, which resulted in four UX and UI aspects of the pace and four game mechanical aspects, with a fifth game mechanic added in the definition for Civilization 6. The UI and UX aspects are things that depend on how the player interact with the game, while the game mechanics are aspects that are set by the game and will always be there whatever the player does. The definition focuses on the pace in the early game since it has to be testable. That means a playtest have to have enough in-game play time to cover the aspect, but no more than that since a too big of a test would take too much time. The game mechanic War and Combat have been removed in Stellaris but added in Civilization 6 considering that war and combat can be tested in a playtest within two hours while it is too far into the game in Stellaris; above 3 hours in.

5.1.1 The Pace in Stellaris Below are the game aspects/player interactions that Paradox Development Stu- dio believe [28] have a major impact on the pace in Stellaris:

UI and UX Aspects:

Figuring out what to do and how to do it How fast the player can ﬁgure out what to do next and how fast the player can ﬁnd the information needed to perform his or her next course of action. Examples of places to get this information from are tooltips, events, the outliner, and the

21 5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART TWO situation log. Examples of how the tooltips and the outliner looks in the Xbox version of Stellaris can be seen in ﬁgure 10. The outliner includes all the selectable elements like planets, stations, ships, etc.

Fig. 10. Screenshot by author from Stellaris on Xbox one showing the outliner and a tooltip.

Menu navigational speed The time it takes to navigate to and inside each menu within the User Interface (UI). How many clicks to ﬁnd and select a speciﬁc menu button/item and the chance of miss-clicking, also the time to recover from a miss-click.

Camera movement speed The speed and ease of moving, turning, and zooming the camera view.

Unit selection and moving The time to select a unit and move it to a desired location. Includes the unit’s travel time. The movable units in Stellaris are most often space ships.

Game Mechanics:

The unit, starbase, and planet production The time it takes to produce units, buildings, and districts, etc. In Stellaris, the units are usually ships built from the shipyard in starbases1. On planets, buildings and districts of diﬀerent sorts can be built and managed. 1 A starbase is the primary space station used throughout the game and is used for determining the ownership of a given star system, construction, repair and mainte-

22 5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART TWO

Game speed/time How fast the in-game time passes on each speed-level and how fast you can pause or change the game-speed level.

Tech progression The time it takes to complete the research of a tech. A tech is a technology the player can research and is one major aspect of progressing in the game. It unlocks new ways for the player to interact with the universe or simply boosts certain already known features like increasing the eﬃciency and output from mining station.

Events and explorative/story progression How long until an event happens (finding anomalies, excavation sites, etc.) or something interesting happens like encountering another empire. This includes all the things that drive the game’s story forward. The usual way for events to happen is to find anomalies or other random things with the player’s science ships when they are exploring nearby unknown solar systems. Science ships are usually how the player encounters other empires for the first time, either by the player’s own exploration or by encountering other empire’s science ships.

5.1.2 The Pace in Civilization VI The definition for Civilization 6 includes one additional game mechanic that was removed in the Stellaris definition - War and Combat. Furthermore, which game speed you choose to play on affects the pace of Civilization 6 significantly. Therefore, this definition focuses specifically on the standard game speed. Below are the game features and player interactions that Paradox Development Studio believes have a major impact on the pace in Civilization 6:

UI and UX Aspects:

Figuring out what to do and how to do it How fast the player can figure out what to do next and how fast the player can find the information needed to perform his or her next course of action. Examples of places to get information from are the next turn prompts (unit has orders etc.), the tooltips, the notifications, and the map animations, etc.

Camera movement speed The speed and ease of moving and zooming the camera view.

nance of ships, collection and transportation of Trade Value in addition to it acting as a strategic fortress during warfare [49].

23 5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART TWO

Unit selection and moving The time to select a unit and move it to the desired location.

Game Mechanics:

The unit, building, and wonder production The time it takes to produce units, buildings, wonders, and districts etc. All of these things are produced in a city center by selecting a city and going to its production menu.

Loading times between turns How fast the game ﬁnishes the calculations and loading between each turn.

Tech and civic progression The time it takes to complete the research of a tech or civic. A tech is a technology researched through science. The player gains an amount of science per turn. It is the total sum of science gained from many diﬀerent sources. Civics are similar but they focus on the cultural side of the player’s civilization and the player research it by gaining an amount of culture per turn. Each tech and civic then have a speciﬁc amount of science or culture required for it to be completely researched.

Explorative/story progression How long until something interesting happens like a natural disaster, historic moment, ﬁnding a tribal village, ﬁnding a barbarian camp, a new place to settle a city, or encountering another civilization, etc. This includes all the things that drive the game’s story forward.

War and combat How long until a war/skirmish is over. The time it takes for units to die and how fast they can heal.

5.2 Qualitative Research

To answer the last primary research question in the objective (section3), "What are the most important aspects of this game interaction?", and to validate our deﬁnition of the pace in each game, the pace will be investigated with the help of qualitative research methods. The diﬀerences of qualitative and quantitative research are typically the number of participants and how the research is exe- cuted. While quantitative research relies on shallow short answers and analysis with the help of statistics, qualitative research often uses open-ended answers with a more in-depth approach. This qualitative research will be carried out in the form of playtests. According to the authors of “Playtesting for Indie Stu- dios”, playtests are essential to improve games and are commonly used as an evaluation approach from Games User Research (GUR), which is building upon

24 5. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - PART TWO psychology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) [50]. GUR aims to improve on a game’s design and player experience by performing a series of usability and user experience (UX) playtests. Playtests can be designed to test speciﬁc parts of a game or the entire experience. Normally, playtests are performed in-person with a moderator moderating and guiding the participants. This is an incredi- bly time-consuming work for the game studio or a single person to set up and moderate. Another approach is for the playtests to be unmoderated, freeing the studio from having to moderate each playtest. This can increase the participa- tion considering the participants now can complete the test whenever they have time, no need for a designated time or appointment. The downside with unmoderated playtests are that less will be known if the participants understood and answered the questions as intended.

See how the playtests of the pace were implemented in subsection 6.3.

25 6. METHODOLOGY

6 Methodology

This research was carried out in four stages. 1. First, a pre-study in the form of a survey to map how people perceive their experience of the game interactions (see subsection 4.5) in strategy games on consoles, with the goal to find which game interaction that impact the player’s experience the most. 2. Second, an analysis of the obtained data from the pre-study to find the game interaction with the biggest impact on the player’s experience, and to further define this game interaction. 3. Third, remote and unmoderated play-tests, performed with a focus on the game interaction with the biggest impact, and on the most relevant strategy games to 4X and grand strategy games. 4. Fourth and last, an evaluation of the received answers from the playtests to validate the definition and find the most important aspects of this game interaction.

6.1 Pre-Study The pre-study was carried out as a quantitative survey to investigate what players like and dislike with the UI design in existing strategy games on console. The following games were used:

– Civilization VI – Stellaris: Console Edition – Halo Wars 2 – Sudden Strike 4 – Grand Ages: Medieval – Tropico 6 – Frostpunk – Cities Skylines – Age of Wonders: Planetfall – Surviving Mars – Red Alert 3

A more in-depth description of these games can be found in the subsection 4.6. The web survey was structured by one initial question asking the respondents which of the 11 games they have played on console. Depending on the answer, they then got questions related to each of the games they have played. The following questions were identical between each game, with only the game name changed in each question. There were in total 400 questions with logical skips to each page of questions, skipping the pages with questions about games which the respondent have not played. In order to obtain the respondent’s experience of the UI in each game, the questions were focused on the liking or disliking of each game interaction seen in subsection 4.5. Before each question asking about a speciﬁc game interaction, that game interaction was brieﬂy summarized. In

26 6. METHODOLOGY

ﬁgure 11, an example of how the question for the menu navigation in Civiliza- tion 6 can be seen.

Fig. 11. The menu navigation question of Civilization 6 in the pre-study survey.

6.1.1 Console Questions The questions were as follows: 1. Did you like or dislike the cursor in the game? 2. Did you like or dislike the map navigation & control in the game? 3. Did you like or dislike the menu navigation in the game? 4. Did you like or dislike the User Interface (UI) size in the game? 5. Did you like or dislike the font size in the game? 6. Did you like or dislike the tooltips in the game? 7. Did you like or dislike the tutorial in the game? 8. Did you like or dislike the pace in the game? 9. Thinking holistically about the controls of the game, how was your overall experience with them? 10. Did you like or dislike playing the game? 11. Which one of the game interactions above had the biggest impact on your experience of the game? Why? Please try to be as speciﬁc as possible! 12. Have you played the PC-version of the game? The like or dislike questions (questions 1 - 10) had 6 options weighted from 1 - 6 as can be seen in ﬁgure 11. This Likert scale excludes a N/A option considering the arguments stated in subsection 4.4.1. After these like and dislike questions there was an open-ended question (question 11), followed by the last question (question 12), asking if they have played the PC version of the game too. This last question would initialize another page of questions for the respondents if they answered "Yes". That page included questions asking the respondents if they prefer the PC or console version of each game interaction. Essentially, the same structured questions apart from the wording with the same amount of weighted options as before.

27 6. METHODOLOGY

6.1.2 PC vs. Console Questions The questions if the participant preferred the PC version or console version were as following:

1. Did you prefer the cursor in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 2. Did you prefer the map navigation & control in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 3. Did you prefer the menu navigation in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 4. Did you prefer the User Interface (UI) size in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 5. Did you prefer the font size in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 6. Did you prefer the tooltips in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 7. Did you prefer the tutorial in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 8. Did you prefer the pace in the PC-version of the game or in the console version? 9. Thinking holistically about the controls of the game, did you prefer the overall controls in the PC-version or in the console version? 10. Did you prefer playing the PC-version of the game or the console version? 11. Which one of the game interactions above had the biggest impact on your preference of version? Why? Please try to be as speciﬁc as possible!

The weighted options can be seen in ﬁgure 12.

Fig. 12. The cursor preference question of Civilization 6 in the pre-study survey.

The survey ended with a page of demographic questions asking for the respondent of age and gender.

In total, the survey included 400 questions on 29 pages. With cascading logical jumps from each page depending on which games the respondents have played and if they have played the PC version or not. These logical jumps en- abled skipping of question about irrelevant games that the respondents have not played.

28 6. METHODOLOGY

6.2 Analysis

The aim of the pre-study was to map how people perceive the game interactions (subsection 4.5) in strategy games on consoles, and to ﬁnd which of the game interactions impacts the average player’s experience the most. With the goal to ﬁnd which games and which game interaction to investigate further with playtests. To aid in the analysis, the following questions were investigated:

– How do each game’s game interaction compare with the other games? – When comparing the games, which game’s game interaction is the most disliked and the most liked? – Which game interaction is perceived as having the biggest impact on the player’s experience?

Since the questions related to each game are not linked in any way, they need to be manually compared using a Google sheet or excel document. By adding the games as rows and the game interactions as columns, the mean values of each corresponding question’s answers could be manually added to give an overview. A comparison could then be made to answer the ﬁrst two questions. Which game’s game interaction is the most disliked, and the most liked, and how each weighted mean value for a speciﬁc game interaction of each game scores compared to the other games. Since the weighted values are between 1-6 the middle value will be 3.5. A mean value below 3.5 implies that a higher share of respondents disliked that game interaction in that game. Values higher than 3.5 implies that most respondents liked that game interaction in that game. The higher or lower the value, the stronger the average opinions are, this is commonly referred to as a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) [51]. If the mean value of a game is higher than another game’s, it indicates that the game with the higher value is more liked, thus indicating a better User Experience (UX). Google Spreadsheets were used to get an overview of all the data.

6.2.1 T-test To be able to statistically say that one game’s speciﬁc game interaction better or worse than the same game interaction in another game, a one-sided two-sample T-test can be performed as seen in subsection 4.4.2. If the sample size is greater than 30, the sample can be assumed to be normally distributed according to Sang Gyu Kwak and Jong Hae Kim [43].

In our case, the null hypothesis H0 would be that there is no significant difference between the two game’s mean values of each question, µ1 and µ2. These values being the means of the weighted answers to the same question in each game. For example, if the mean value of the question "Did you like or dislike the menu navigation in the game?" for Stellaris is 4.0 with standard deviation of 1.1, and the mean value for the same question in Civilization 6 is 5.0 with the standard deviation of 1.2, can it be said that there is a significant difference of the means? Thus, implying that the menu navigation in Stellaris is significantly

29 6. METHODOLOGY worse than the menu navigation in Civilization 6. To calculate this, the t-test with the formula in equation1 can be used. In order to use the formula, the sample sizes of the two means needs to be known. Let the sample sizes be 100 for Stellaris and 80 for Civilization 6.

SAMPLE 1 (Stellaris - Menu navigation question): Number of answers = 100 Mean = 4.0 Standard deviation = 1.1 Standard error of the mean = 0.11

SAMPLE 2 (Civilization 6 - Menu navigation question): Number of answers = 80 Mean = 5.0 Standard deviation= 1.2 Standard error of the mean = 0.13

The null hypothesis H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha are set to:

H0 : µ1 = µ2

Ha : µ1 < µ2 Using the T-test formula in equation1 gives:

4.0 − 5.0 T = = −5.764 q 1.12 1.22 100 + 80

The T-value is then compared with:

|T | > t1−α/2 which means that the null hypothesis H0 can be rejected since:

5.764 > 1.9673

Therefore, there is a significant difference of the means. Thus, this example is implying that the menu navigation in Stellaris is significantly less liked than the menu navigation in Civilization 6.

With the use of this T-test, the ﬁrst two questions of the analysis can be answered:

– How do each game’s game interaction compare with the other games? – When comparing the games, which game’s game interaction is the most disliked and the most liked?

30 6. METHODOLOGY

By examining the means from each game and the answers of that speciﬁc game interaction, the highest and lowest mean values for each game interaction can be determined. The statistical signiﬁcance of each highest value and lowest value can be obtained by comparing the means using the T-test.

6.2.2 The open-ended question Now, on to the last question to answer: – Which of the game interactions is perceived as having the biggest impact on the player’s experience? The open-ended console question 11 in the survey asks speciﬁcally about this: – Which one of the game interactions above had the biggest impact on your experience of the game? Why? Please try to be as speciﬁc as possible! By summarizing the answers to this question in the Google spreadsheet, the perceived biggest impact on the player’s experience can be determined.

6.3 Follow-up Playtests In the results from the pre-study survey, the pace was found to have the biggest impact on console strategy games. These results are presented in detail in subsection 7.2.2. To investigate the question of what are the most important aspects of the pace (the 4th research question in the objective3), six playtests were created and conducted.

Due to the pandemic of 2020, the playtests were designed as remote playtests. Furthermore, the pros and cons of unmoderated playtests mentioned in subsection 5.2 were evaluated. It was decided to design the playtests as unmoderated, considering the increased time it would take to moderate each playtest remotely. This required some extra thought and design iterations on the quality of the playtests to ensure the participants understood each task and question correctly without moderation.

The games tested were Stellaris and Civilization 6. This decision was based on the following factors, they are two of few console games being part of the 4X genre, and had a high number of respondents in the pre-study survey. The playtests were initially designed to have the participants test the pace on both PC and console (Xbox or PlayStation). This would require the participants to have access to the games on both platforms. Later, permutations of these playtests were created to include participants who only own one version of the game. In the end, three playtests were created for each game, one for PC, one for consoles, and one including both platforms. The aim was to obtain players’ experiences of the pace in speciﬁc User Interfaces (UIs) and player interactions. The goal was

31 6. METHODOLOGY to be able to answer the question of how the pace impact each game and why it is important.

Each playtest were designed as surveys for the participants to complete. From the survey, the participants got an in-game task to complete and when they had completed the task, they would pause the game and go back to the survey to answer a few questions. After they had answered the questions, they received a new task and proceeded to play the game and tried to complete the new task, and this was repeated for each task. However, before they received their ﬁrst task, an introduction of the playtest and its purpose was in place. After an intro to the purpose and requirements of the playtest, the participants received one initial question. The question asked how many hours the participant estimate that he or she have played the game on each platform included in that playtest - PC, console, or PC and console. The options were: – Less than 1 – 1 - 10 – 11 - 100 – 101 - 500 – 501+ If the participant answered "Less than 1" on any of the included platforms, the participant was disqualiﬁed and could not proceed any further. This question was essential to remove any inexperienced participants who would have had a higher risk to misinterpret or misunderstand questions and tasks in the playtests.

Following the initial question there was an introduction to the subject of pace without deﬁning it. The participants were then asked three open-ended questions about pace:

(Insert the game being tested instead of )

– How would you deﬁne the term pace in a game like ? – If you had to choose one thing, what do you think aﬀects the pace the most in ? – Why do you think that?

The intention was to get the participant thinking about pace and how it can be defined before moving on. After these questions, the games playtests took somewhat different paths, the structure was essentially the same but the tasks and the given definition of the pace differ for each game. Due to the complex nature of these games, the tasks had to be carefully thought out to not overlap or intertwine which could lead to a later task being completed before the intended task by the participants.

6.3.1 Tasks and Questions for Stellaris After the initial questions described above, all three Stellaris playtests continued

32 6. METHODOLOGY with defining the pace of Stellaris. The participants were given a lighter version of the definition seen in subsection 5.1.1 in the Theory. This definition was lighter considering the participants’ experience of the game. Certain aspects of the game need no explanation to an experienced player and less time spent reading instructions is more time to answer questions. The lighter definition given was as following: "Below are the game features and player interactions that Paradox Development Studio think have a major impact on the pace in Stellaris:

Figuring out what to do and how to do it

– How fast you can ﬁgure out what to do next. – How fast you can ﬁnd the information needed to perform your next course of action. – Examples of places to get information from are tooltips, events, the outliner, and the situation log.

Menu navigational speed

– The time it takes to navigate to and in each menu in the User Interface (UI). – How many clicks to ﬁnd and select a speciﬁc menu button/item. – Chance of miss-clicking and the time to recover from a miss-click.

Camera movement speed

– The speed and ease of moving, turning, and zooming the camera view.

Unit selection and moving

– The time to select a unit and move it to the desired location. Includes the unit’s travel time.

The unit, starbase, and planet production

– How fast the in-game time passes on each speed-level.

Game speed/time

– The time it takes to produce units, buildings, and districts etc. – How fast you can pause or change the game-speed level.

Tech progression

– The time it takes to complete the research of a tech.

33 6. METHODOLOGY

Events and explorative/story progression – How long until an event happens (finding anomalies, excavation sites, etc.) or something interesting happens like encountering another empire." After seeing this definition of the pace, they were asked if they think we missed or forgot something when defining the pace. This could give insights to any major flaws of our definition.

The participants were now introduced to the tasks and how this playtest would work. First the participants received the instructions and then they got the initial task of starting a new game with a few deﬁned settings. The participants were instructed to complete a task and then jump back to the survey/form to answer a few questions before getting the next task. They were instructed to try to complete each task as fast as possible while still playing as they normally would. The 8 tasks for each Stellaris playtest, including the initial task, were as follows:

The Stellaris Tasks

Task 0 - Start a new game on 1. Start a new game on with: (a) The pre-deﬁned United Nations of Earth (b) Default settings 2. Have the game ﬁnish loading in. 3. Then press "Next" in this form.

Task 1 - Order your ships and unpause 1. Order your construction ship to construct any type of mining station. 2. Chain-order your science ship to go and survey at least 2 unknown solar systems. 3. Unpause the game. 4. Have your construction ship ﬁnish building the mining station. 5. Then press "Next" in this form.

Task 2 - Your third science ship 1. Complete building your third science ship. 2. Have assigned leaders to all three of them. 3. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

Task 3 - 2 starbases 1. Complete building 2 new starbases. 2. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

34 6. METHODOLOGY

Task 4 - New research lab on Earth

1. Finish building a research lab on planet Earth. 2. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

Task 5 - Research a tech

1. Complete the research of a tech. 2. Assign a new tech to research 3. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

Task 6 - Colonizing a planet

1. Find a colonizable planet. 2. Have a colony ship reach the planet and start colonizing it. 3. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

Final Task - Encounter another empire

1. Encounter another empire. 2. Close your borders toward that empire. 3. Then pause the game and press "Next" in this form.

After completing each task and before moving on to the next task, the participants would be prompted to answer one page of questions. The tasks were chosen so that if the participants had completed the task, the participant must have been exposed to the questioned player interaction. The structure of the questions stayed the same throughout the playtest, with the only the questioned player interaction changing. The questions were as following:

Which game speed(s) did you use while completing this task? (several answers possible)

– Slowest – Slow – Normal Speed – Fast – Fastest

Do you like or dislike your experience of playing Stellaris at this moment? (weighted Likert scale)

1. Strongly dislike it 2. Dislike it 3. Somewhat dislike it 4. Somewhat like it 5. Like it 6. Strongly like it

35 6. METHODOLOGY

What do you think of the pace of the ?

– Too slow – Just right – Too fast

Why do you think the pace of the feels that way?

– Open-ended answer

was replaced in each question with versions of the para- graphs in the lighter deﬁnition of the pace in Stellaris above. Each of these were tooltiped with further information from the deﬁnition which the participant could simply hover over to see in case he or she was unsure what was questioned. The formulation of these tooltiped player interactions were as following:

The pace...

(A) when selecting a unit and moving them around (B) of producing units and navigating the shipyard menu (C) of the camera movement (D) when producing buildings on a planet (E) of selecting the next tech to research (F) of the tech progression (G) of the game speed/time (H) of controlling the game speed/time (I) of events and explorative/story progression

See the exact composition of each question in the appendixA.

6.3.2 Tasks and Questions for Civilization 6 The three playtests of Civilization 6 have essentially the same structure as the playtests of Stellaris. The participants of the Civilization 6 playtests were given another defintion of the pace adapted to Civilization 6 instead of Stellaris. Similar to the Stellaris playtests, the definition is a lighter version to the definition found in subsection 5.1.2.Which game speed you choose to play on affects the pace of Civilization 6 significantly. Therefore, the Civilization 6 definition of the pace had to take this into account and focused specifically on the standard game speed. The two games differ slightly in their definition of the pace, and since the definition determines what player interactions are in the questions, the formulation of the questions differ as well, but the structure of the questions were basically the same. To not repeat to much of the same, the only part shown here in the methodology of the Civilization 6 playtests are the formulation of the tooltiped player interactions in the questions. To see more on these and the differences of these playtests compared to the Stellaris playtests, see the appendices A.4 and A.5.

36 6. METHODOLOGY

The pace...

(A) of producing units and navigating the city menu (B) when selecting a unit and moving them around (C) of the camera movement (D) when producing buildings on a planet (E) of selecting the next tech to research (F) of the tech and civic progression (G) of the explorative/story progression (H) of the general pace of each turn (I) of the loading between each turn (J) of war and combat

6.3.3 Ending Questions All playtests’ game sessions ended when the ﬁnal task’s questions were answered. After the game session, the participants were asked if they like or dislike the overall pace in the game. This question was followed by a question where the participants were asked to rank the paragraph titles/player interactions in the deﬁnition of the pace of the game, from having the lowest impact to the highest impact to their experience of the pace.

6.3.4 Platform Comparing Playtests The ﬁrst playtests were platform comparing playtests. The intention was for the participants to play the game on both PC and console and then be able to compare the console version’s pace with the PC version’s pace. The concern with this playtest was that it required the participants to have access to the game on both platforms. This led to the permutations of the single platform playtests which have been described above.

In this platform comparing playtest, the participants played the PC version ﬁrst and then got the same tasks again on console. However, the console questions were more focused on comparing the experience of the pace between the PC and console version of the game. The participants were asked whether they prefer the pace of that game interaction in the PC or console version of the game. The participants were then asked to tell why they have that preference. This playtest was intended to be the main test for each game and had the most valuable questions because of its comparing nature.

6.4 Evaluation

By analyzing the answers to each specific player interaction in combination with how the participants ranked them in the final question of the game session, the most important player interactions to their experience of the pace could be obtained. The player interactions could be further defined with characteristics mentioned by the participants when answering the why-question, coupled with

37 6. METHODOLOGY if that player interaction were perceived as being too slow, just right, or too fast. Furthermore, the deﬁnition of the pace could be validated by how many participants that mentioned aspects that were lacking in the deﬁnition. This was especially mentioned in the introduction of the playtests where the participants answered:

– How would you deﬁne the term pace in a game like ? – If you had to choose one thing, what do you think aﬀects the pace the most in ? – Why do you think that?

Some participants also added additional comments on the playtest and the definition of the pace in the end of the survey where they were asked if they had any more thoughts.

38 7. RESULTS

7 Results

In this section, the results from the pre-study survey described in subsection 6.1 and the playtests described in subsection 6.3 will be presented. The pre-study survey is followed by the results from its analysis.

7.1 Pre-study

The pre-study survey had a total of 864 respondents with a 49% completion rate. Out of the 864 respondents, there were 423 completed responses and 441 uncompleted responses. However, many of the uncompleted responses still had valuable information. In this section, the most important results will be summarized. Find all the summarized results in a table format here. Furthermore, exact details of the results can be found in the appendix A.1.

7.1.1 Console Likert Scale Questions The means from the 1 - 6 weighted answers in the pre-study survey can be seen in table1. The columns represent the game interactions described in section 4.5. Each row represent each game described in section 4.6 where the grayed out rows are games with less than 30 respondents. The columns has a colour scale from red to green where the lowest mean value of that column is represented by the strongest red and the highest is represented by the strongest green. The stronger green or red the higher or lower the mean value is compared to the others. The colours displays an overview of which game had the highest and lowest mean value for each game interaction. Each of the mean values in table 1 have a corresponding standard deviation which are shown in table2.

Table 1. The table of means from the console likert scale questions (like-dislike).

39 7. RESULTS

Table 2. The table of each corresponding standard deviation to each mean in table1.

7.1.2 Console vs. PC Likert Scale Questions The results of the console vs. PC preference questions are shown in table3 with the corresponding standard deviations shown in table4.

Table 3. The table of means from the console vs. PC preference questions.

40 7. RESULTS

Table 4. The table of each corresponding standard deviation to each mean in ﬁgure3.

7.1.3 Biggest Impact The only open-ended question of survey was a question asking which of the earlier deﬁned game interactions the player perceive as having the biggest impact on their experience of playing the game and why. In table5, each answer to this open-ended question is counted in mentions. One respondent mentioning one of the game interactions counts as 1, adding up to an accumulated number of mentions. Respondents mentioning several game interactions were disregarded unless they emphasised on one of them being more signiﬁcant than the other game interactions. The row "Average Amount" uses a colour scale to display the game interaction with the most mentions in all games using the most saturated colour. However, table5 gives no insight to whether the respondent was referring to the game interaction’s impact as being positive or negative. This positive or negative aspect of the answer could be determined directly in their text answer or in combination with examining the respondent’s answer to the earlier questions. If the respondent answers the menu navigation as having the biggest impact on their experience with the game with no other context, the respondent’s answer on the previous question, if he or she like or dislike the menu navigation, can say if the impact was positive or negative. For example, a respondent answers that the menu navigation has the biggest impact on their experience with the game by simply writing "menu navigation" and nothing more. This respondent had previously answered that he or she strongly liked the menu navigation in the game, thus, the impact of the menu navigation should be positive to that respondent. Using this method, the positive mentions can be seen in table6 and the negative in table7. Each row in the positive and negative tables uses the same colour scale as row "Average Amount" in table5 to display the game interaction with the most mentions in each game using the most saturated colour.

7.2 Analysis

In the analysis, the following questions were answered to aid in deciding which games and which game interaction to investigate further.

– How do the collected opinions of each game interaction diﬀer between games? – For a speciﬁc game interaction, which game have the highest mean value?

41 7. RESULTS

Table 5. The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest impact on their experience with each game.

Table 6. The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest positive impact on their experience with each game.

Table 7. The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest negative impact on their experience with each game.

42 7. RESULTS

– Which of the game interactions are perceived as having the biggest impact on the player’s experience in all games?

7.2.1 Comparing The Game Interactions When comparing the mean values, the games with a too low number of respondents (below 30) have been disregarded since the answers can not be assumed to be normally distributed [43]. The games with the highest mean values for each game interaction in table1 are shown in table8.

Table 8. The games with the highest mean values for each game interaction.

Game Interaction: Highest Mean Value: Game: Cursor 4.82 Halo Wars 2 Map Navigation & Control 4.94 Stellaris Menu Navigation 4.74 Halo Wars 2 User Interface (UI) size 5.0 Halo Wars 2 Font-size 4.91 Halo Wars 2 Tooltips 4.64 Surviving Mars Tutorial 4.53 Halo Wars 2 Pace 4.90 Red Alert 3 Overall Controls 4.78 Halo Wars 2 General Experience 4.45 Stellaris

Each of these mean values except for Surviving Mars on Tooltips, have a significant diﬀerence to the second highest mean value when a T-test is applied. This strengthens the statistical validity to each of the highest mean values (except for the Tooltips). Halo Wars 2 is the game with the highest mean values in 6 out of the 10 game interactions. How about the worst mean values? They are shown in table9.

Table 9. The games with the lowest mean values for each game interaction.

Game Interaction: Lowest Mean Value: Game: Cursor 4.16 Age of Wonders: Planetfall Map Navigation & Control 4.23 Age of Wonders: Planetfall Menu Navigation 4.08 Civilization 6 User Interface (UI) size 4.28 Age of Wonders: Planetfall Font-size 4.16 Stellaris Tooltips 4.64 Surviving Mars Tutorial 3.58 Civilization 6 Pace 3.86 Age of Wonders: Planetfall Overall Controls 4.19 Age of Wonders: Planetfall General Experience 4.28 Age of Wonders: Planetfall

43 7. RESULTS

When looking at the lowest mean values, the statistical significance of the T-test is only valid for the lowest mean value in the Map Navigation, Overall Controls, and General Experience. All the other game interactions have two or three other games where no statistical significant difference can be determined, it is too close to call. However, it is certain that Age of Wonders: Planetfall did not get any high mean values with it ranking lowest in 6 out of 10 game interactions.

7.2.2 Biggest Impact In table5, Pace has the highest amount of mentions in all games but Surviving Mars, where Menu Navigation has one more mentioning. Considering the average amount of mentions for each game interaction (the bottom row in table5), the Pace has the highest amount of mentions with Menu Navigation in second place, and Map Navigation in third place.

7.3 Follow-up Playtests

Unfortunately, the platform comparing playtests did not receive any completed responses. Therefore, it is not possible to investigate them further in this study. The platform comparing playtests had the most valuable questions to this study with their platform comparing questions of PC and console. However, all the single platform playtests received completed responses. Therefore, the results below will focus on the single platform results, and the discussion in section8 will focus on comparing these results. Following are the results from the single platform playtests.

7.3.1 Stellaris Console Playtest The console playtest of Stellaris had a total of 10 completed responses. As shown in ﬁgure 13, all participants had an estimated experience of at least 11 hours of playing Stellaris on console. As mentioned in subsection 6.3.1, the player interactions used in the questions were:

The pace...

44 7. RESULTS

Fig. 13. Previous Stellaris experience as estimated by the participants in the Stellaris console playtest.

Table 10. Participants experiences of the Stellaris console player interactions.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 3 7 0 B 1 9 0 C 1 9 0 D 2 8 0 E 1 9 0 F 5 4 1 G 3 7 0 H 0 10 0 I 3 6 1

Table 11. Participants experiences of the Stellaris console player interactions in percentages.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 30% 70% 0 B 10% 90% 0 C 10% 90% 0 D 20% 80% 0 E 10% 90% 0 F 50% 40% 10% G 30% 70% 0 H 0 100% 0 I 30% 60% 10%

45 7. RESULTS

Using the indexing of the list above, table 10 includes the participants answers to each player interaction. Presented as percentages in table 11. Each task was completed with a certain game speed and when asked which game speed(s) the participants used to complete each task the answers were as in table 12. They were allowed to select multiple answers at once since they may have used several game speeds to complete the task. Compared to the 5 game speeds in the PC version of Stellaris, the console version only have 3 levels of game speeds.

Table 12. The percentage of used game speeds to complete each task by the participants in the Stellaris console playtest.

Task: Normal: Fast: Fastest: 1 0 20% 100% 2 0 0 100% 3 0 0 100% 4 0 0 100% 5 0 10% 100% 6 0 0 100% Final 0 0 100%

Following the game session the participants were asked if they like or dislike the overall pace of the game, the results are shown in figure 14. The rating of each player interaction is shown in figure 15. The higher the value for each player interaction, the higher they were rated. In figure 15, the Game speed/time seems to have the biggest impact to the pace according to the participants, and the Unit selection and moving looks to have the lowest impact.

7.3.2 Stellaris PC Playtest The PC playtest of Stellaris had a total of 65 completed responses. As can be seen in ﬁgure 16, all participants had an estimated experience of at least 11 hours of playing Stellaris on PC. Identical to the console playtest, the player interactions used in the PC playtest’s questions were:

The pace...

46 7. RESULTS

Fig. 14. The participants opinions on the overall pace of Stellaris on console.

47 7. RESULTS

Fig. 15. The results from ranking each player interaction in Stellaris on console.

Fig. 16. Previous Stellaris experience as estimated by the participants in the Stellaris PC playtest.

48 7. RESULTS

(H) of controlling the game speed/time (I) of events and explorative/story progression Following in table 13 are the answers to each player interaction using the indexing of the list above. Presented as rounded percentages in table 14.

Table 13. Participants experiences of the Stellaris PC player interactions.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 6 59 0 B 11 53 1 C 8 56 1 D 24 40 1 E 8 53 4 F 27 30 8 G 13 47 5 H 2 62 1 I 17 40 8

Table 14. Participants experiences of the Stellaris PC player interactions in percentages.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 9% 91% 0 B 17% 82% 1% C 12% 86% 2% D 37% 62% 1% E 12% 82% 6% F 20% 72% 8% G 42% 46% 12% H 3% 95% 2% I 26% 62% 12%

Each task was completed with a certain game speed and when asked which game speed(s) the participants used when completing each task the results were as in table 15. They were allowed to choose multiple answers since they may have used several game speeds to complete the task. Following the game session the participants were asked if they like or dislike the overall pace of the game, the results are shown in figure 17. The rating of each player interaction is shown in figure 18. The higher the value for each player interaction, the higher they were rated. In figure 18, the Game speed/time seems to have the biggest impact to the pace according to the participants, and the Camera movement speed seems to have the lowest impact.

49 7. RESULTS

Table 15. The percentage of used game speeds to complete each task by the participants in the Stellaris PC playtest.

Task: Slowest: Slow: Normal: Fast: Fastest: 1 1% 0 11% 20% 80% 2 0 0 8% 23% 74% 3 0 0 3% 24% 85% 4 0 0 3% 17% 85% 5 0 0 4% 16% 84% 6 0 0 3% 20% 85% Final 0 0 3% 21% 82%

Fig. 17. The participants opinions on the overall pace of Stellaris on PC.

50 7. RESULTS

Fig. 18. The results from ranking each player interaction in Stellaris on PC.

7.3.3 Civilization 6 Console Playtest The console playtest of Civilization 6 only had 2 completed responses. This is too few to give any signiﬁcant insights, but a brief summary of the open-ended answers and the ranking of the player interactions may still be of interest. There- fore, following are the results of the Civilization 6 console playtest.

As mentioned in subsection 6.3.2, the player interactions used in the questions were:

The pace... (A) of producing units and navigating the city menu (B) when selecting a unit and moving them around (C) of the camera movement (D) when producing buildings on a planet (E) of selecting the next tech to research (F) of the tech and civic progression (G) of the explorative/story progression (H) of the general pace of each turn (I) of the loading between each turn (J) of war and combat Following the game session the participants were asked if they like or dislike the overall pace of the game, the results are shown in figure 19. The rating of each player interaction is shown in figure 20. The higher the value for each player interaction, the higher they were rated. In figure 20, the War and

51 7. RESULTS

Fig. 19. The participants opinions on the overall pace of Civilization 6 on console.

52 7. RESULTS

combat seems to have the biggest impact to the pace according to the participants, and the Camera movement seems to have the lowest impact.

Fig. 20. The results from the participants when ranking each player interaction in Civilization 6 on console.

7.3.4 Civilization 6 PC Playtest The PC playtest of Civilization 6 had a total of 31 completed responses. As shown in ﬁgure 21, all participants had an estimated experience of at least 11 hours of playing Stellaris on PC. The participants prefer playing on the standard game speed, shown in ﬁgure 22 Identical to the console playtest, the player interactions used in the PC playtest’s questions were:

The pace...

(A) of producing units and navigating the city menu (B) when selecting a unit and moving them around (C) of the camera movement (D) of selecting the next tech to research (E) of the tech and civic progression (F) of the explorative/story progression (G) of the general pace of each turn

53 7. RESULTS

Fig. 21. Previous Civilization 6 experience as estimated by the participants in the Civilization 6 PC playtest.

Fig. 22. The preferred game speed by the participants in the Civilization 6 PC playtest.

54 7. RESULTS

(H) of the loading between each turn (I) of war and combat Following in table 16 are the answers to each player interaction using the indexing of the list above.

Table 16. Participants experiences of the Civilization 6 PC player interactions.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 4 25 2 B 3 28 0 C 2 27 2 D 2 28 1 E 5 14 12 F 6 20 5 G 4 23 4 H 10 21 0 I 11 16 4

Presented as rounded percentages in table 17:

Table 17. Participants experiences of the Civilization 6 PC player interactions in percentages.

Player Interaction: Too slow: Just right: Too fast: A 13% 81% 6% B 10% 90% 0 C 6.5% 87% 6.5% D 7% 90% 3% E 16% 45% 39% F 19% 65% 16% G 13% 74% 13% H 32% 68% 0 I 35% 52% 13%

Following the game session the participants were asked if they like or dislike the overall pace of the game, the results are shown in figure 23. The rating of each player interaction is shown in figure 24. The higher the value for each player interaction, the higher they were rated. In figure 24, the Game speed/time seems to have the biggest impact to the pace according to the participants, and the Camera movement speed seems to have the lowest impact.

55 7. RESULTS

Fig. 23. The participants opinions on the overall pace of Civilization 6 on PC.

56 7. RESULTS

Fig. 24. The results from ranking each player interaction in Civilization 6 on PC.

57 8. DISCUSSION

8 Discussion

To break down complex games like 4X games and grand strategy games, or any type of game for that matter, into smaller significant parts is a difficult task. Each individual part plays into the entire User Experience (UX) of a game, and it may be difficult to accurately measure the player experience of a smaller part individually, since each part may heavily depend on other parts to create the full experience. This could be compared to the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Princi- ple in quantum physics. “The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instance, and vice versa.” - Heisen- berg, 1927. Here Heisenberg refer to the measuring of a particle’s momentum and position, which both can not be accurately measured at the same time. This is similar to the measuring of the experience of a game, where the experience of smaller parts of the game may not accurately convey the same experience as the holistic experience of the game. The smaller parts will not necessarily reflect the rest of the game unless they are all put together. This is where the pace of the game becomes an interesting topic. The pace is something affected by most parts in a game, but in return and according to the pre-study analysis (7.2.2), it seems to have the biggest impact on the experience of strategy games on consoles. Though, the question of accuracy still remains with the pre-study survey’s purpose of trying to break down the experience into smaller parts. Is the player accurately aware of the impact of individual smaller parts of the experience when comparing it to other parts? This is a dilemma where we have chosen to believe the player to know his or her experience the best, but can these individual parts accurately measure the holistic experience of the game?

In this study, the experience of strategy games’ User Interface (UI) designs for consoles were broken down into smaller parts with focus on the UX. These parts were deﬁned as game interactions. The list of game interactions deﬁned in subsection 4.5 were developed in discussion with experienced UX designers at Paradox Development Studio. Even though the accuracy can be questioned, the perceived experience of these game interactions helped to measure the experience and give indications of what are good or bad practices in existing game titles. It may not be as black and white as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle when it comes to strategy games on consoles.

In the pre-study survey, when the participants answered the pace as having the biggest impact to their experience of the selected strategy games in subsection 4.6, the definition was up for interpretation. Since the pace had not yet been defined to more than that it "determines how fast or slow the game feels, and how fast or slow the players are able to execute actions and reach their goals.(4.5)". This was one of the main reasons to investigate the pace further and define it to see why the participants say the pace impacts their experience the most and what their perception of pace is.

58 8. DISCUSSION

8.1 Pace When defining the pace in 4X games like Civilization 6 and Stellaris, every aspect of the games had to be considered, but the focus of this study had been heavily leaning towards the User Experience (UX) of the User Interface in strategy games on consoles. Therefore, the definitions of the pace also had a focus within these disciplines. The pace is affected by game concepts and mechanics, but also by UI and UX aspects, such as the controls and the menus. A few of the major factors of the pace were discussed during a design workshop with game designers and UX designers at Paradox Development Studio. As mentioned, the final definitions in subsection 5.1 can be divided into two groups of player interactions, one group more within the UX and UI disciplines, and the other group containing game mechanics which is more game specific. The following are the player interactions of the pace in a clearer overview of both categories:

8.1.1 Stellaris Pace Deﬁnition

Within the UX and UI disciplines – Figuring out what to do and how to do it – Menu navigational speed – Camera movement speed – Unit selection and moving Game Mechanics – The unit, starbase, and planet production – Game speed/time – Tech progression – Events and explorative/story progression

8.1.2 Civilization 6 Pace Deﬁnition

Within the UX and UI disciplines – Figuring out what to do and how to do it – Menu navigational speed – Camera movement speed – Unit selection and moving Game Mechanics – The unit, building, and wonder production – Loading times between turns – Tech and civic progression – Explorative/story progression – War and combat

59 8. DISCUSSION

If we consider this division of the player interactions, the results of the Stellaris playtests in figures 15 and 18 indicate a difference of impact to the pace between the categories. All of the player interactions within the UX and UI disciplines are ranked lower on average than the game mechanics. The participants rank the UX and UI player interactions as having a lower impact on the pace of Stellaris for both PC and consoles than the game mechanics. Similar results can be seen in the Civilization 6 PC playtest in figure 24, with the exception to Figuring out what to do and how to do it. The UX and UI player interactions may not be as important for the pace as the game mechanics. This would argue for a deeper investigation of these game mechanics when it comes to the pace.

8.2 Turn-based vs. Real-time One major diﬀerence between Civilization 6 and Stellaris is the game mechanic of how the in-game time moves forward, which is fundamental to the pace according to Paradox Development Studio, but yet the games are similar. According to the open-ended answers in both the Stellaris PC playtest and console playtest seen in the appendix A.2 and A.3, some participants mentions pausing the game when major actions are required, leading to a play-style of pause and play. This play-style becomes similar to the turn-based play-style of Civilization 6 where the paused moment would be the turn and the unpaused state is the actions unfolding until the player pauses again, much like the loading between turns in Civilization 6. Hints of this play style of pause and play can also be found in the results of the Stellaris playtests (12 and 15) when looking at the game speeds used to complete each task. On PC, above 80% of the participants completed each task using the fastest game speed, and on console, a 100% of the participants used the fastest game speed on every task. Pairing this with comments of the pause-and-play play-style reveals a turn-based alike play-style in Stellaris, even though it is considered being a Real-Time strategy game, but of course not every player plays this way and no statistical signiﬁcant results were obtained in this study to strengthen this hypothesis. Still, it is an interesting observation.

The similar factor in Civilization 6 to the game speed in Stellaris is the turn counter. Each and every action has a number of turns tied to its completion. In the playtests of Civilization 6, the Standard game speed was used. This speed seem to be the preferred speed for the participants in the Civilization 6 PC playtest as shown in ﬁgure 22. If we look at how many turns each task took to complete (see results of "What is the current turn?" for each task in appendix A.5), the number diﬀer between the participants. This may be the cause of a wide range of factors which could not be recorded since the playtest was remote and unmoderated.

When comparing the game speeds used for Stellaris on PC and console by the participants, the console version seem to be played on the fastest at almost all times, while the PC version have at least some variation of game speeds. The PC version also have 5 game speed options compared to only 3 in the console

60 8. DISCUSSION version. This could indicate that the console version have a slower game speed setting overall, nudging or even forcing players to play on the fastest to get the same critically acclaimed good experience as the PC version has. If this is the case, the reason for lowering the overall game speed is unknown, but it may have been a design decision to compensate for a more linear navigation, more on this below.

8.2.1 Linear Navigation & Cursor One of the limiting factors to console design compared to PC is when designing a console game’s User Interface the designer must consider that the amount of input available is lower than on PC as shown in subsection 2.3. A linear navigation requires less input but more clicks. An example is a menu where the user dives in deeper and deeper into it for every chosen option. To go back out from the menu, the player simply backs out to each previous depth level, eventually ending up at the beginning. This navigation would require a high number of clicks to perform. In a more open navigation, each level of a menu can be accessed at any moment and then only one or two clicks to get to the starting point again. The open navigation is commonly found in 4X and grand strategy games on PC with the use of a hub-scene like the map view and a free- moving cursor to select every menu from all the different interfaces at any time. In contrast, the console version of Stellaris uses the D-pad as the only option to navigate menus with. Then the number of clicks usually goes beyond 7-8 while the same option on the PC would take 2-4 mouse-clicks. This may not be a bad feature, but it affects the menu navigational speed which in return affects the pace according to the definition of pace presented in this thesis. To tie this to the difference of the number of game speed options between the PC and console version of Stellaris, having five options on the console could be a difficult task to make it easily navigable, which works good with a free-moving cursor on PC. Then a more linear approach of stepping into the menu for the game speed, select the desired game speed, and then back out again could be a way to make it more convenient for the controller.

8.2.2 Console First A topic that was hard to leave out while investigating the difference between PC and console games. Stellaris and Civilization 6 are PC first games, meaning the developers initially designed the game for PC with PC in mind. The console version was then ported to consoles, meaning they took what they had on PC and re-designed some parts to fit better for consoles, but the perspective of PC first never changed. The fundamental design choices had less or no consideration of consoles from the beginning. This can be compared to the approaches of mobile or desktop first in web-design. If the designers of a website used the approach of desktop first when designing the website, the mobile version of that website may suffer from less responsiveness with its dimensions not considered when designing each detailed icon or button on the website. In return, if a mobile first approach was used, the desktop versions scale and responsiveness may

61 8. DISCUSSION suffer from less consideration and a worse outcome. However, the mobile is used by the majority of the Internet users. According to Adam Enfroy, 52% of the In- ternet’s traffic is from mobile users [52]. Therefore, it is essential for the website to work good on mobiles to have a good User Experience for most of its visitors. Enfroy continues with stating that mobiles have a more complex design with more limitations than desktops, this entails an easier conversion from mobile to desktop if the mobile design is done first. The responsiveness is already in place with each different size of mobiles considered.

Having a console first approach to games can be stated to have the same prop- erties as the mobile first approach. As shown in the Introduction (1), consoles have the majority of the gaming market share, and they have more limitations to their design than PCs as mentioned in subsection 2.3. This would argue for a console first approach to any game studio wanting to make a good game for consoles. To further strengthen this argument, the pre-study survey had one game known to have used the console first approach when it was designed. That game was Halo Wars 2. If this argument stands, Halo Wars 2 should be scoring the highest out of all games in most of the game interactions when compared to the other games of the survey. According to the analysis of the results in the pre-study shown in the subsection 7.2.1, Halo Wars 2 scores the highest in 5 out of the 8 game interactions When it is not the best-scoring game, it is the second best. This shows how a console first approach when designing a game may be essential to make the console players like the console version of the game.

However, this study does not exactly show how a PC version of a game is affected when a console first approach is practiced. As shown in table3, Halo Wars 2 was equally preferred on both platforms when participants were asked if they prefer the PC or console version of Halo Wars 2. Since the console version of Halo Wars 2 scored high compared to other console versions of other games, it is interesting that console is still not the preferred platform to play the game on, implying an equally good experience of the game interactions on PC. Halo Wars 2’s platform preferences were highly different from the platform preferences of the other games. This may be explained by worse console versions than PC versions or simply biased participants. When it comes to how the PC version would be affected by a console first approach, the arguments of mobile first in web-design may be applicable. If a game studio wants to simultaneously ship a game to both platforms and wants both versions to be as good as they can be, according to web-design, the more complex and limited of the two platforms should be the initial focus, which in this case is console. Console have limiting controls and less screen-space when compared to PC as further described in section 2.3, leading to a complex problem of fitting every menu and icon on the screen. Although it is only one data point, Halo Wars 2 further indicate the importance of console first with a strong console version and an equal number of players who still prefer the PC version over the console version.

62 8. DISCUSSION

8.2.3 One UI to Rule Them All Now that the most interesting findings in this study have been unveiled and discussed, the final more explorative question of the Objective3 can be explored. How can the pace be implemented with similar UI design for both platforms? When comparing the PC version with the console version for both Stellaris and Civilization 6, the free-moving cursor in the PC versions and the locked cursor in the console versions is one of the major differences. This free-moving cursor is something that is inevitable in the PC versions, considering the essential part a mouse plays in the setup of a PC. It would not make sense to remove it. To design a similar UI to both the PC version and the console version of these games requires the designer to always consider the free-moving cursor on PC. If a similar free-moving cursor would be implemented in the console version, the UI of the console version could indeed be very similar to the PC version’s UI. This could be a way to successfully implement similar UIs on both platforms. As mentioned in subsection (2.4), Bungie made a free-moving cursor for the menus in Destiny 2 on both platforms, and with that, successfully implemented similar UIs on all platforms, but this raises the more important question of how will the player’s experience of 4X and grand strategy games be affected by a free-moving cursor on consoles? There must be a reason why it has not been done already.

According to the pre-study results (7.1.3), the locked cursor did not play a major role to the respondents’ experience of each game, but menu navigation and map navigation did. A free-moving cursor would re-invent both the way the player would navigate the menus and the map, can it be done with a good player experience? If yes, a free-moving cursor could be the solution, but this is something for future studies to investigate further.

8.3 Limitations & Sources of Error Following are the limitations and possible sources of error to this study, how they came to be and how it may have aﬀected the results.

8.3.1 T-test When using a two-sample T-test, it is assumed that the subject/topic for both means are the same. Meaning that both samples are within the same overarching concept, like comparing one sort of apples with another sort of apples, here the overarching concept is "Apples", which makes them comparable. Even though it is said that the overarching concept of the game interactions between the games are the same, it might still be a diﬀerence in what they actually represent.

8.3.2 Early Game Pace Considering how lengthy a game of Stellaris or Civilization 6 often are, the playtests were mostly focused on the early game pace. A full game of Stellaris or Civilization 6 could take well beyond 8 hours to complete. Especially for Stellaris, which lacks an actual end goal. From discussions with Paradox interactive’s User

63 8. DISCUSSION

Research (UR) department, the participants’ attention span was estimated to lie between 1 - 2 hours. This shortened the potential of the playtests in order for it to even get completed responses to start with. Even though these games tend to change drastically towards the end with a lot for the player to do, the player have already been exposed to most of the UIs and player interactions early in the game. This should make the participant able to have a fair opinion on the pace of that UI or player interaction early in the game, but the opinions of the pace could change towards the late game.

8.3.3 Overlapping and Intertwining Tasks Both Stellaris and Civilization 6 have a wide range of options and paths for the player to choose from, right from the start of each new game. This type of uniqueness and sprawling action tree of each new game made it a difficult endeavour to have tasks in the playtests to not overlap. Whereas it seems to have worked out okay for the most parts, some participants in the Stellaris PC playtest did comment on this and made it clear that they had completed some tasks before they were prompted to do so. Leading to one participant answering several pages of questions at once. This gives no less credibility to the opinions of the pace from that participant, but it could affect the liking and disliking of different moments in the game since the in-game moment when he or she was answering the different pages of questions were the same.

8.3.4 Covid-19 Considering the inability to ask follow-up questions when having remote playtests, the playtests moved more towards being quantitative than qualitative. Less depth to the research was possible, but they still had valuable insights of the pace. This remoteness was due to the pandemic of Covid-19 and the playtests could have been more rewarding and given more depth if performed in-person.

64 9. CONCLUSION

9 Conclusion

This study set out with the major task to find possibilities of "one UI to rule them all" in 4X and grand strategy games. It ended up with defining the aspect of the UI in console strategy games that has the biggest impact for the player’s experience, the pace. This aspect was further investigated and defined. After defining the pace and when investigated further through playtests, the UX and UI player interactions in the definition of the pace were found to not affect the pace as much as the more game mechanical player interactions do according to the participants of the playtests (7.3). However, a free-moving cursor could have a profound impact on the navigational pace in console strategy games which alters both the game mechanical and UX/UI aspects of any strategy game, as mentioned in the discussion 8.2.3. If the free-moving cursor can be considered as the main difference between the PC version and the console version of 4X and grand strategy games, then implementing a free moving cursor on console could be a way to achieve similar UI on both platforms. The impact this implementation would have on the player’s experience of each 4x and grand strategy game remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain, when implementing a free-moving cursor or any other type of console design, the pace needs to be considered since it is perceived as having the biggest impact on the experience of strategy games on consoles. Furthermore, a console first approach seems to have less impact on the PC version of a game than one might think. At the same time, it has a profound impact on the player’s experience on the console version of the game according to the results from the pre-study survey 7.1. As mentioned in the discussion 8.2.2, if a game studio wants to simultaneously ship a game to both platforms and wants both versions to be as good as they can be, according to web-design, the more complex and limited of the two platforms should be the initial focus, which in this case is console. Add the significant results of Halo Wars 2 in the pre-study survey and console first seems to be the way for simultaneous shipping games on both PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.

9.1 Future Work

This study only touches the tip of an iceberg. Considering the closed and se- cure environment of game development, there are not many published papers on game research. Most research is paid by the game studios themselves, and why should they hand out such handy and competitive data for free to others? This is the reason why this study had to start from the beginning. To have backing data to each statement is time-consuming. The pre-study survey had a total of 400 questions with included skipping logic, all manually created. While this pre-study revealed the respondent’s experience of the game interactions in each game, there was not enough time to explore any further than to identify the game interaction with the biggest impact on the player’s experience. In a future study, a remake of the survey could be made with an improved and reevaluated list of game interactions and the ability for the respondents to leave their e-mail

65 10. PARADOX INTERACTIVE REQUIREMENTS addresses and then get followed up with the playtests. This could ensure partic- ipation in the playtests with a possibly higher completion rate. Then each game interaction could be explored in detail, much like the pace has been in this study. This could essentially give a more holistic view on the overall User Experience (UX) of the games.

Furthermore, in another year than 2020, the playtests could hopefully be done in-person to ask much needed follow-up questions and grant the ability to ob- serve how the participants play each game.

No matter if the other game interactions are further explored or not, the next step would be to explore solutions and iterate on how viable a free-moving cursor could be when implemented on consoles.

10 Paradox Interactive Requirements

This study was carried out according to the signed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) by Paradox Interactive and the author and has not disclosed any information covered by the agreement. Furthermore, the author received no ﬁnancial support for the research and authorship of this paper.

66 List of Figures List of Figures

List of Figures

1 A standard keyboard layout. Created by Mysid distributed under CC BY-SA 3.0 [12]...... 3 2 A standard mouse button layout. Created by author...... 3 3 The button layout of a Xbox One controller. Figure created by designers at dlf.pt and distributed freely [16]...... 5 4 The button layout of a PlayStation 4 controller [17]. Figure created by SEGA and redistribution is approved, see copyright notice in section 10...... 5 5 Screenshot by author from Halo Wars 2 on Xbox one...... 16 6 Screenshot by author from Frostpunk on Xbox one...... 17 7 Screenshot by author from Cities Skylines on Xbox one. Source: [48].. 18 8 Screenshot by author from Stellaris on Xbox one...... 19 9 Screenshot by author from Civilization 6 on Xbox one...... 20 10 Screenshot by author from Stellaris on Xbox one showing the outliner and a tooltip...... 22 11 The menu navigation question of Civilization 6 in the pre-study survey. 27 12 The cursor preference question of Civilization 6 in the pre-study survey. 28 13 Previous Stellaris experience as estimated by the participants in the Stellaris console playtest...... 45 14 The participants opinions on the overall pace of Stellaris on console... 47 15 The results from ranking each player interaction in Stellaris on console. 48 16 Previous Stellaris experience as estimated by the participants in the Stellaris PC playtest...... 48 17 The participants opinions on the overall pace of Stellaris on PC...... 50 18 The results from ranking each player interaction in Stellaris on PC... 51 19 The participants opinions on the overall pace of Civilization 6 on console...... 52 20 The results from the participants when ranking each player interaction in Civilization 6 on console...... 53 21 Previous Civilization 6 experience as estimated by the participants in the Civilization 6 PC playtest...... 54 22 The preferred game speed by the participants in the Civilization 6 PC playtest...... 54 23 The participants opinions on the overall pace of Civilization 6 on PC. 56 24 The results from ranking each player interaction in Civilization 6 on PC...... 57

67 List of Tables List of Tables

List of Tables

1 The table of means from the console likert scale questions (like-dislike). 39 2 The table of each corresponding standard deviation to each mean in table1...... 40 3 The table of means from the console vs. PC preference questions..... 40 4 The table of each corresponding standard deviation to each mean in ﬁgure3...... 41 5 The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest impact on their experience with each game...... 42 6 The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest positive impact on their experience with each game...... 42 7 The table showing how many respondent mentioned each game interaction as having the biggest negative impact on their experience with each game...... 42 8 The games with the highest mean values for each game interaction... 43 9 The games with the lowest mean values for each game interaction.... 43 10 Participants experiences of the Stellaris console player interactions.... 45 11 Participants experiences of the Stellaris console player interactions in percentages...... 45 12 The percentage of used game speeds to complete each task by the participants in the Stellaris console playtest...... 46 13 Participants experiences of the Stellaris PC player interactions...... 49 14 Participants experiences of the Stellaris PC player interactions in percentages...... 49 15 The percentage of used game speeds to complete each task by the participants in the Stellaris PC playtest...... 50 16 Participants experiences of the Civilization 6 PC player interactions.. 55 17 Participants experiences of the Civilization 6 PC player interactions in percentages...... 55

68 List of Tables List of Tables

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72 List of Tables A. APPENDIX

A Appendix

Considering the large size of each survey and playtest (only the ﬁrst survey are 332 pages of results), only the ﬁrst page of each survey’s and playtest’s results will be displayed here. Check the links for the entire results.

A.1 Pre-Study Survey

Link to the complete results PDF: http://bit.ly/3bXQXvV

A Study about Strategy Games on Console

Q1 Which of these strategy games have you played on PlayStation or Xbox? Each answer adds between 3-6 minutes of survey-time. If you do not have time for all of them, prioritize the ones you have played the most and/or played both on PC and console.

Answered: 864 Skipped: 0

Civilization VI

Stellaris: Console Edition

Halo Wars 2

Sudden Strike 4

Grand Ages: Medieval

Nobunaga's Ambition:...

Tropico 6

Frostpunk

Cities Skylines

Age of Wonders:...

Surviving Mars

Red Alert 3

0 100 200 300 400 500

1 / 332 A. APPENDIX List of Tables

A.2 Stellaris Console Playtest Link to the complete results PDF: http://bit.ly/3tyGqgo

A Remote Playtest of the Pace in Stellaris on console

Q1 How many hours do you estimate that you have played Stellaris on console?

Answered: 10 Skipped: 0

Less than 1

1-10

11-100

101-500

501+

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Less than 1 0.00% 0

1-10 0.00% 0

11-100 30.00% 3

101-500 50.00% 5

501+ 20.00% 2 TOTAL 10

1 / 44 List of Tables A. APPENDIX

A.3 Stellaris PC Playtest Link to the complete results PDF: http://bit.ly/38Ti6Ou

A Remote Playtest of the Pace in Stellaris on PC

Q1 How many hours do you estimate that you have played Stellaris on PC?

Answered: 65 Skipped: 0

Less than 1

1-10

11-100

101-500

501+

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Less than 1 0.00% 0

1-10 0.00% 0

11-100 7.69% 5

101-500 24.62% 16

501+ 67.69% 44 TOTAL 65

1 / 83 A. APPENDIX List of Tables

A.4 Civilization 6 Console Playtest Link to the complete results PDF: http://bit.ly/3vFo5An

A Remote Playtest of the Pace in Civilization 6 on console

Q1 How many hours do you estimate that you have played Civilization 6 on console? (Xbox or PlayStation)

Answered: 2 Skipped: 0

Less than 1

1-10

11-100

101-500

501+

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Less than 1 0.00% 0

1-10 0.00% 0

11-100 0.00% 0

101-500 50.00% 1

501+ 50.00% 1

TOTAL 2

1 / 46 List of Tables A. APPENDIX

A.5 Civilization 6 PC Playtest Link to the complete results PDF: http://bit.ly/3lvTcK2

A Remote Playtest of the Pace in Civilization 6 on PC

Q1 How many hours do you estimate that you have played Civilization 6 on PC?

Answered: 31 Skipped: 0

Less than 1

1-10

11-100

101-500

501+

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Less than 1 0.00% 0

1-10 0.00% 0

11-100 9.68% 3

101-500 48.39% 15

501+ 41.94% 13 TOTAL 31

1 / 65