1. Johannes Sebastian Breuer
2. Donald Brinkman
3. Paolo Burelli
4. Alessandro Canossa
5. Seth Cooper
6. Ed Donahue
7. Anders Drachen
8. Allan Fowler
9. Stefan Göbel
10. Katherine Isbister
11. Dirk P Janssen
12. Theodore Lim
13. Lindsay Lindstrom
14. Fabien Lotte
15. Andrew P Macvean
16. Paul Martin
17. Tim Rance
18. David L. Roberts
19. Magy Seif El-Nasr
20. Iris Soute
21. Ben Weber
22. Robert Winckler
23. R. Michael Young
24. Jichen Zhu

09.45-10.00 Making sense of Player Experience – Introducing a Player Experience framework (Lennart Nacke and Anders Drachen)

10.00-10.15 Paper presentation: Towards a Setup for Longitudinal Evaluation of Player Experience with Children (Iris Soute and Janienke Sturm)

10.15-10.30 Morning/coffee break

10.30-10.45 Paper presentation: Using Data Mining to Model Player Experience (Ben Weber, Arnav Jhala and Michael Mateas)

10.45-11.00 Paper presentation: Introducing Archetypal Analysis for Player Classification in Games (Christian Thurau and Anders Drachen)

11.00-11.15 Paper presentation: Using a Declarative Representation of Actions in Game Environments to Model and Guide Player Experience (Jim Thomas and R. Michael Young)

11.15-11.45 Identifying key concepts of Player Experience (brainstorming) + forming break-out groups

11.45-12.30 Break-out groups working on PX components.

12.30-14.00 Lunch break – list of restaurants will be provided with the delegate materials

14.00-15.00 Break-out groups present results + discussion: Connecting the dots – how do we merge PX concepts and components in coherent frameworks?

15.00-15.30 Measuring PX – shared brainstorming and idea generation session

15.30-15.45 Rounding up – advancing the state-of-the-art, EPEX 11 website updates and journal special issue plans (Licia Calvi and Anders Drachen)

Evening Informal EPEX 11 Dinner (restaurant and time to be announced at the workshop).

Research and industry show a rapidly growing interest in evaluating player experience in games and interactive entertainment systems, for example through analysis of physiological signals and game metrics data (such as telemetry); approaches that obtain data relevant for player experience and the interaction between player and game. Developing new and describing current methods for evaluating player experience in games is paramount for the successful design of gaming interfaces.

The EPEX 2011 workshop aims at presenting and discussing quantitative and qualitative methods for evaluating player experience in games. The workshop has a broad focus and is open to novel ideas and new inspirations, as well as established approaches, such as psychophysiological measures and behavioral game metrics, user experience evaluation methods and others. Additional issues covered by EPEX include the specific nature and industrial value of evaluation techniques that can be used during the game development process and provide actionable results, the player experience associated with it and its implications for gaming interfaces and game design, visualization and reporting of player experience data, dissemination to company stakeholders, management of player experience processes, novel approaches for player experience testing, theory and innovation in the field.

EPEX 2011 is the second workshop in the series, and will be followed up with a third workshop in 2012.

Of the 14 total submissions, 5 were accepted as full papers (6 pages), giving an acceptance rate of 36%. Each paper received at least two reviews by members of the program committee. All accepted papers are included in the proceedings of the Foundations for Digital Games 2011 proceedings and will be presented at the workshop.

We would like to thank the program committee for their diligence in reviewing and discussing the submissions.

We look forward to engaging discussions at EPEX 2011! Please enjoy this workshop!

Organization

Chairs
Licia Calvi, NHTV Breda University of Applied Science
Lennart Nacke, University of Saskatchewan
Anders Drachen, Copenhagen Business School

Programme Committee
Regina Bernhaupt, University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse III, France
Alessandro Canossa, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Sebastian Deterding, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Germany
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Kiel Gilleade, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Stefan Goebel, TU Darmstadt, Germany
T.C. Nicholas Graham, Queens University, Canada
Michael Hitchens, Macquarie University, Australia
Wijnand IJsselsteijn, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Hannu Korhonen, Nokia Research Center, Finland
Kai Kuikkaniemi, Aalto University, Finland
Ian Livingston, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Sandy Louchart, Heriot-Watt University, UK
Joerg Niesenhaus, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari, Gotland University College, Sweden
Jukka-Pekka Laulajainen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Tad Stach, Queens University, Canada

Accepted Papers

1. Towards a Framework of Player Experience Research
   Lennart Nacke and Anders Drachen
2. Towards a Setup for Longitudinal Evaluation of Player Experience with Children
   Iris Soute and Janienke Sturm
3. Using Data Mining to Model Player Experience
   Ben Weber, Arnav Jhala and Michael Mateas
4. Introducing Archetypal Analysis for Player Classification in Games
   Christian Thurau and Anders Drachen
5. Using a Declarative Representation of Actions in Game Environments to Model and Guide Player Experience
   Jim Thomas and R. Michael Young

Bordeaux, 28 June 2011

DEADLINE EXTENDED! April 8th

Workshop in conjunction with the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) Conference 2011

There is a rapidly growing interest in evaluating player experience in games context, as well as other forms of digital interactive entertainment, for example via applying psychophysiological signals and user telemetry to obtain data on the user experience and the interaction between user and game, Developing useful methods for evaluating player experience in games is paramount for the design of interfaces that can better account for the user experience while interacting with different media (i.e., games, social media, pervasive marketing).

This workshop aims at presenting and discussing quantitative and qualitative methods for evaluating player experience in games. The workshop focuses especially on novel evaluation techniques such as psychophysiological measures and behavioral game metrics that supplement user experience evaluation methods, which can be used to e.g. evaluate and validate game designs, mechanics, and balancing.

Additional issues include the specific nature and industrial value of evaluation techniques that can be used during the game development process and provide actionable results, the player experience associated with it and its implications for interface and game design, visualization and reporting of user experience data, dissemination to company stakeholders, management of user experience processes, novel approaches for player experience testing, theory and innovation in the field.

Call for papers

Submissions are invited on the use of different evaluation methods for digital games, especially case studies, work in progress reports, vision papers, and full research studies, as well as topics that connect the topic of evaluation of player experience in games.

The main goals of the workshop and the expected outcomes are:

1. To create synergies between game design issues and player experience measures.
2. To identify better and more usable ways to measure the player experience in different interactive entertainment contexts, across academia and industry.
3. To enhance the evaluation methodologies typical of games-oriented HCI, for example by including an accessible use of psychophysiological and behavioral measurements.
4. To identify challenges in using psychophysiological and behavioral measurement in in-situ evaluations and ex-situ evaluations.
5. To explore the synergy between psychophysiological methods, user telemetry and metrics, and other game-user research evaluation approaches.

The workshop will include thematically organized formal presentations, followed by group discussions in combination with more creative approaches towards working with the topics of the workshop.

Submissions are invited on the following topics (but are certainly not limited to):

• Ways of measuring player experience
• Methodologies for measuring the player’s behavior, cognitive states, and emotions
• The correlation between psychophysiological measures and other measures of player experience
• The conversion of psychophysiological measures to actionable results in a game design or evaluation context
• The combination of user telemetry with psychophysiological measures and with other game user research methodologies
• The possibility of deploying psychophysiological measures in the practical context of industrial game development
• The data analysis techniques that are best suited to process psychophysiological data.

Additional issues include the specific nature and value of evaluation techniques that can be used during the game development process, the player experience associated with it and its implications for interface design. Attention is also given to quantitative metrics, especially when applied to casual games.

This workshop is intended for researchers interested in game evaluation, player experience, game user research and psychophysiological measurements, as well as professionals interested in obtaining knowledge about the newest research in the area of user experience evaluation in games.

Submissions are expected in the form of six-page position papers, describing the area of research, specific work (position papers, empirical or theoretical papers) on the workshop topic and the innovative character of the research at hand.

All submissions should be formatted according to the official ACM SIGCHI proceedings template or use this template.

Submission

Papers must be submitted via the EasyChair submission system and anonymized. We will run a double-blind peer review process for each paper with our international programme committee.

The workshop organizers will consider, after the workshop, the publication of a revised version of the papers presented as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal such as Game Studies, Entertainment Computing or Computers in Entertainment. In order to be considered for publication in this special issue, papers will have to be resubmitted and undergo another peer reviewing process with external reviews (still to be defined).

Inclusion of workshop papers in the ACM digital library is currently under discussion.

Deadlines

• March 28 April 8, 2011: Workshop submission deadline.
• 15 May 2011: Workshop acceptance/rejection deadline.
• 28 June 2011: Workshop at FDG 2011.

Organizing Commitee

Licia Calvi, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands)
Lennart Nacke, University of Saskatchewan (Canada)
Anders Drachen, User Data Analyst, AGORA Informatics (Denmark)

Programme Committee

Regina Bernhaupt, University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse III, France
Wijnand IJsselsteijn, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Hannu Korhonen, Nokia Research Center, Finland
Sebastian Deterding, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Germany
Kiel Gilleade, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Kai Kuikkaniemi, Aalto University, Finland
Stefan Goebel, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Michael Hitchens, Macquarie University, Australia
Tad Stach, Queens University, Canada
Joerg Niesenhaus, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Ian Livingston, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Sandy Louchart, Heriot-Watt University, UK
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari, Gotland University College, Sweden
Jukka-Pekka Laulajainen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Alessandro Canossa, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

The workshop proceedings are available in the NHTV Expertise Series 10. Please consider ordering the publication in print here. You can either download the PDFs of the complete proceedings or the individual papers below.

Playability and player experience – Proceedings of the Fun and Games 2010 Workshop

Editors: Licia Calvi, Koos C.M. Nuijten & Hans Bouwknegt

Abstract:
The development of systems for establishing playability and player experience, as well as implementing such measures earlier in the game design cycle can be expected to optimize the game development process as well as the final game design.

This book contains the 7 papers that were selected for the Playability and Player Experience workshop that was held in conjunction with the Fun and Games Conference 2010, hosted by the Centre for User Experience Research of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. All these papers were positively refereed by an International Programme Committee consisting of 12 qualified experts with a wide variety of backgrounds and expertise domains.

The focus of the Playability and Player Experience workshop was on the development and use of all kinds of playability and player experience measures (like quantitative metrics and data harvesting) to evaluate digital games. Because playtesting metrics are standard practice in larger game development studios, we decided to predominantly focus the workshop on casual games playability measures: playtesting metrics are very much in demand yet not often available within the casual gaming industry.

Table of Contents

1. Subliminal Advertising in Shooter Games: Recognition Effects of Textual and Pictorial Brand Logo (Koos C.M. Nuijten, Anouk de Regt, Licia Calvi)
2. “Let’s sweep some Mines together”: Social Interaction & Competition in Casual Games (Brian J. Gajadhar, Henk H. Nap, Yvonne A.W. de Kort & Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn)
3. Gameplay experience testing with playability and usability surveys – An experimental pilot study (Lennart Nacke, Jonas Schild, Joerg Niesenhaus)
4. Towards a Serious Game Experience Model: Validation, Extension and Adaptation of the GEQ for Use in an Educational Context (Frederik De Grove, Jan Van Looy, Cédric Courtois)
5. Evaluating Educational Game Experiences in a Classroom Context – Implications for Qualitative Research (Steven Malliet, Niels Quinten, Veerle Van der Sluys)
6. Critic-Proofing: Robust Validation Through Data-Mining (Ian J. Livingston, Lennart E. Nacke, Regan L. Mandryk)
7. Let’s Start Playing Games! How games can be less about complying and
   more about playing (Menno Deen, Ben A.M. Schouten)

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO: 24 May 2010

This workshop focuses on the development and use of all kinds of playability and player experience measures, like quantitative metrics and data harvesting, to evaluate digital games. Playtesting metrics are very much in demand and yet not much often used within the casual gaming industry, although already standard practice in the larger game development studios. Therefore all game genres are addressed, but casual games are considered the preferred focus. Introducing a system for player experience evaluation earlier in the game design cycle will influence the final design as well while still under development.

The focus of this workshop consist therefore in defining which methods are best to apply in the casual game domain, and in analyzing their efficacy and applicability.

Call for papers

Position papers are invited on the use of different evaluation methods for digital games. Special attention is given to quantitative metrics, especially when applied to casual games. Additional issues include the specific nature and value of evaluation techniques/methodologies that can be used during the game development process, the player experience associated with it and its implications for interface design. The workshop will include thematically organized formal presentations, followed by group discussions.

Submissions are invited on the following topics (though not restricted to these topics):

• Biometric measures as playtest metrics
• Game design methods, principles and processes in relation to quantitative metrics useful in the prototyping phase
• The added value of physiological measures for casual games
• The use of playability heuristics in casual games design
• Subjective (qualitative and quantitative) and objective evaluation methods of digital games (with a focus on their applicability for casual games)
• Guidelines linking physiological responses to player evaluation of games
• Integration of game industry demands into a coherent player-centered evaluation methodology.

The workshop is intended for game developers and designers; human factors practitioners; interface evaluators and testers; academics, researchers and students with interests in game evaluation and in psychophysiological evaluation in particular.

Submissions are expected in the form of four-page position papers, describing the area of research, specific work (empirical or theoretical) on the workshop topic and the innovative character of the research at hand.

Papers should be formatted according to the ACM guidelines.

Position papers should be sent to calvi.l@nhtv.nl.

Participants will be selected on the basis of the relevance of their work and their interests and familiarity with the topic.

Accepted papers will be published by the University Press of the NHTV University of Breda.

The workshop organizers will consider, after the workshop, the publication of a revised version of the papers presented as a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. In order to be considered for publication in this special issue, papers will have to be resubmitted and undergo a reviewing process with external reviews (still to be defined).

Deadlines

• 24 May 2010 7 May 2010: Workshop submission deadline.
• 7 June 2010: Workshop acceptance/rejection deadline.
• 10 July 2010: Authors submit to organizers camera-ready versions of papers.
• 15 September 2010: Workshop at Fun and Games 2010.

Organizing Commitee

Licia Calvi, NHTV University of Breda (The Netherlands)

Stefano Gualeni, NHTV University of Breda (The Netherlands)

Koos Nuijten, NHTV University of Breda (The Netherlands)

Lennart Nacke, University of Saskatchewan (Canada)

Karolien Poels, University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Programme Commitee

Hans Bouwknegt, NHTV University of Breda (The Netherlands)

Yvonne de Kort, Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands)

Robbie Grigg, University of Portsmouth (UK)

Wijnand IJsselsteijn, Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands)

Steven Malliet, University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Christof van Nimwegen, K.U.Leuven (Belgium)

Marianna Obrist, University of Salzburg (Austria)