Game User Research: First Person In-Game User Experience, Includes Eye Tracking.

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The first-person gaming experience has continued to test our cognitive abilities with better animation, graphics, and speed.

 

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Game User Research Challenge

Wolfenstein 3D and GoldenEye were easily replaced by Halo and Call of Duty, making the stimulus and realism of the experience more demanding on player perception and cognition. While games may be more complex today, they all share a similar goal of developing our recognition of specific signals and patterns through training.

The growth of Virtual Reality (VR) and Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter games (MMOFPS) motivated developers to build Modified UIs (MODs) to optimize the Heads Up Display (HUD) and minimize gameplay issues that are directly related to the player’s ability to notice and understand in-game cues and objects. These interfaces send numerous complex signals capable of triangulating an enemy’s position and distance, peak into your gun to see how many bullets are left, and how many more shots you can take before your armor is gone. Typical usability techniques do not always provide adequate information regarding player awareness and understanding of these elements.

To truly measure the salience of certain signals, Key Lime Interactive (KLI) placed eye-tracking goggles on gamers to determine gaze patterns and signal recognition. The objective of the study was to understand when and why some users struggled, and what, if anything, can improve the players' perception, cognition, and task success.

 
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Our Solution

Big data is a huge theme today, but there isn’t enough focus on analyzing and interpreting all of this data.

KLI’s engineers drool over projects like this. With the minds of electrical, computer, and industrial engineers working on this project, KLI sought to establish all AOIs (areas of interest) within the gaming environment to observe gaze patterns and dwell time on each of these AOIs. This highly technical task was employed as follows: 

  • Quantitative: Unmoderated Survey 

  • Qualitative: In-Depth Interview

Key Findings & Recommendations 

By using a hybrid approach combining in-lab IDIs with eye-tracking, we were able to develop a holistic strategy to improve the gaming experience and make much more actionable recommendations. For example: 

  1. Key player types were established that described each type’s player practices and preferred rewards.

  2. The visual design of the HUD needed a new skin.

  3. Task Analysis determined the most difficult in-game task and HUD-based task.

  4. The accessibility of certain instructions could be improved. 

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Making improvements to a game’s accessibility and cognition improves the experience for all gamers. It allows more gamers to connect, play, and collaborate towards mutual goals and rewards. The eye-tracking data helped quantify player perception of game components, such as heads-up display elements and specific objects within the 3D world. Running the study with eye tracking provided additional insights into players‘ gaze and awareness. This enabled game designers to assess the effectiveness of key elements in the 3D world and to optimize the placement and visibility of in-game cues and objects.