Making the Game Wiki Obsolete Improving Approachability in Grand Strategy Games Timmy Eklund Department of Applied Physics and Electronics January 2020 Umeå University, Sweden
[email protected] 2 Timmy Eklund Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore and investigate the possibility of improve- ments in approachability and player retention, in Grand Strategy games. This is important for game developers to be able to develop games more suited to a wider audience. This study will investigate whether these improvements can be made by giving players access to information, traditionally found on game wikis, inside the game in a non-intrusive manner. This was investigated through a pre-study of current trends in gamers usage of information resources outside the games themselves. It was determined that wikis are the most common resource, and that they are most commonly used in the middle of play. Because of this, three mock-ups of user interfaces, which could supply such information to the player in the midst of playing, were designed. They were then evaluated by a panel of experts, consisting of game developers and experienced Grand Strategy players. The mock-up deemed by the experts to have the best potential, a windowed in-game encyclopedia, was implemented as a prototype in a small game. This game was developed to emulate the gameplay, and positive and negative aspects of Grand Strategy games. This prototype was then tested using A/B-testing. Despite a low number of participants, the results showed that access to informa- tion found on wikis in the game does lead to better approachability.