Beyond the HUD: User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS
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Beyond the HUD User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games Master of Science Thesis ERIK FAGERHOLT MAGNUS LORENTZON Department of Computer Science and Engineering Division of Interaction Design CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Göteborg, Sweden, 2009 The Author grants to Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg the non-exclusive right to publish the Work electronically and in a non-commercial purpose make it accessible on the Internet. The Author warrants that he/she is the author to the Work, and warrants that the Work does not contain text, pictures or other material that violates copyright law. The Author shall, when transferring the rights of the Work to a third party (for example a publisher or a company), acknowledge the third party about this agreement. If the Authors has signed a copyright agreement with a third party regarding the Work, the Author warrants hereby that he/she has obtained any necessary permission from this third party to let Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg store the Work electronically and make it accessible on the Internet. Beyond the HUD User Interfaces for Player Immersion in FPS Games ERIK FAGERHOLT MAGNUS LORENTZON © ERIK FAGERHOLT, September 2009. © MAGNUS LORENTZON, September 2009. Examiner: STAFFAN BJÖRK Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96, Göteborg, Sweden Telephone + 46 (0)31-772 1000 Cover: A conceptual view of the visual UI conventions of FPS games, see page 32. Department of Computer Science and Engineering Göteborg, Sweden September 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank Anna Wendelin, our tutor at EA DICE, for her support and guidance as well as all the other employees at DICE who contributed to our work in some way. We would also like to thank Staffan Björk, our tutor at Chalmers, for his support and for all the knowledge he has shared with us, as well as all the people, from Chalmers and elsewhere, that took part in the user studies making this thesis possible. Finally we would like to thank our friends and family for putting up with us while we spent a little over six months doing little else than writing about, talking about and playing games – Of course all in the name of science. This thesis is dedicated to all the people who work, have worked or will someday work with creating games that entertain, engage, thrill, scare, humor, intrigue, educate, challenge and annoy millions of people throughout the world. ABSTRACT The concept of immersion has been adapted by game developers and game critics to describe a deep and positive game experience. While the definition of this concept varies, the user interface of the game is often said to affect the degree to which players can immerse themselves in a game experience. In cooperation with game developer EA DICE, this master thesis aims to investigate how the notion of immersion affects, and is affected by, the user interface (UI) of first-person shooter games, with the ultimate purpose of delivering user interface guidelines for increased immersion. By conducting a study of contemporary first-person shooter (FPS) games, the current state of user interfaces in FPS games is documented. With the addition of a subjective study of FPS games as well as games of other genres, a design space for UI designers is mapped out in order to provide a structure upon which the guidelines can be built. A literature study of various resources within the fields of ludology, cognitive science and media studies is conducted in order to gain increased understanding of what immersion is and its relation to the game experience. The knowledge acquired is used to formulate various hypotheses of how player immersion is connected to the user interfaces of FPS games. These hypotheses are evaluated by user studies and user tests. Looking at the results of the user tests and the literature study, a final definition of immersion is proposed, upon which the guidelines are based. The first guideline, Know Your Design Space , explains the user interface design space of FPS games and encourages UI designers to look at it as a set of tools. Know Your Game discusses how the competitive focus of the game and the game fiction affects the user interface from an immersion point of view. The guideline Establish Player Agency focuses on how the player can be transferred into the game world by acting within it as an agent rather than simply a player of the game. Finally, Strengthen the Player-Avatar Perceptual Link suggests how the user interface can link the player closer to his in-game character on a perceptual level. TABLE OF CONTENTS Terminology........................................................................................................................ 1 1 Introduction................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Purpose................................................................................................................ 3 1.2 Delimitations....................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Specification of Question Formulation............................................................... 4 2 Background................................................................................................................. 5 2.1 EA DICE............................................................................................................. 5 2.2 The FPS Game Genre and how it has Evolved................................................... 6 2.3 Current Generation Game Consoles ................................................................... 8 2.4 Voices of the Game Industry .............................................................................. 9 3 Theory....................................................................................................................... 11 3.1 Ludology........................................................................................................... 11 3.2 Cognitive Science ............................................................................................. 13 3.3 Media Studies.................................................................................................... 16 3.4 Design Methodology......................................................................................... 19 4 Project Plan ............................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Planned Method ................................................................................................ 23 4.2 Time Plan.......................................................................................................... 24 5 Execution .................................................................................................................. 25 5.1 Preliminary Examination .................................................................................. 25 5.2 Idea Generation in Iterations............................................................................. 26 6 Results of Preliminary Game Study.......................................................................... 30 6.1 Objective Game Study ...................................................................................... 30 6.2 Subjective Game Study..................................................................................... 34 7 Mapping Out the Design Space ................................................................................ 46 7.1 Analysis of the Preliminary Studies.................................................................. 46 7.2 Different Design Space Approaches................................................................. 47 7.3 The UI Design Space of FPS Games ................................................................ 51 8 Towards Guidelines .................................................................................................. 53 8.1 Iteration 1: Merging Caillois and Frame Theory.............................................. 53 8.2 Iteration 2: Six Factors of UI Immersion.......................................................... 58 9 Immersion in FPS Games ......................................................................................... 67 9.1 The Immersive Fallacy ..................................................................................... 67 9.2 An Alternative View on Immersion.................................................................. 67 9.3 Defining Immersion.......................................................................................... 69 10 UI Guidelines for FPS Games............................................................................... 72 10.1 Know Your Design Space (and How to Exploit It).......................................... 72 10.2 Know Your Game............................................................................................. 76 10.3 Establish Player Agency ................................................................................... 80 10.4 Strengthen the Player-Avatar Perceptual Link ................................................. 88 11 Discussion............................................................................................................. 93 11.1 Method .............................................................................................................. 93 11.2 Results..............................................................................................................