Among the many discussions and studies related to video games, one of themost recurrent, widely debated and important relates to the experience ofplaying video games. The gameplay experience – as appropriated in this study– is the result of the interplay between two essential elements: a video gameand a player. Existing studies have explored the resulting experience of videogame playing from the perspective of the video game or the player, but noneappear to equally balance both of these elements.The study presented here contributes to the ongoing debate with a gameplayexperience model. The proposed model, which looks to equally balance thevideo game and the player elements, considers the gameplay experience to beboth an interactive experience (related to the process of playing the videogame) and an emotional experience (related to the outcome of playing thevideo game). The mutual influence of these two experiences during video gameplay ultimately defines the gameplay experience. To this gameplay experiencecontributes several dimensions, related to both the video game and player: thevideo game includes a mechanics, interface and narrative dimension; theplayer includes a motivations, expectations and background dimension. Also,the gameplay experience is initially defined by a gameplay situation,conditioned by an ambient in which gameplay takes place and a platform onwhich the video game is played.In order to initially validate the proposed model and attempt to show arelationship among the multiple model dimensions, a multi-case study wascarried out using two different video games and player samples. In one study,results show significant correlations between multiple model dimensions, andevidence that video game related changes influence player motivations as wellas player visual behavior. In specific player related analysis, results show thatwhile players may be different in terms of background and expectationsregarding the game, their motivation to play are not necessarily different, evenif their performance in the game is weak.While further validation is necessary, this model not only contributes to thegameplay experience debate, but also demonstrates in a given context howplayer and video game dimensions evolve during video game play.
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