Video game engagement testing with prototypes: comparing video game prototypes in different development stages by testing these on six to eleven years old kids
Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy
Abstract
The goal of this thesis is to research how fun and engaging the game is during different
development and prototyping stages. Need for this research comes from real life. Game
developers usually make several prototypes or proof of concepts of a game to find out if the core
mechanics are fun. This thesis helps to find out how comprehensive these prototypes have to be
to test the engagement of the game so in the future game developers can maybe spend far less
time developing the prototypes. This is important because from the authors’ experience every
next logical step in the prototype design increases the scope of the development multiple times.
For example creating a paper prototype may take only several hours to make but developing a
working playable game prototype may take several days up to several weeks. There is very little
academic research done in the field of game development and game design as the field itself is
still quite young — only about 30 years. There is very little academic work regarding playtesting
especially with children. Testing object of this research is an educational kids’ iPad game that
authors have been developing with a small team themselves. This game is also going to be
released in 2015 to the public. So the research focuses on playtesting with kids who are 6 to 11
years old. Testing was conducted mostly at the public school with the help of teachers who
already use video games in their curriculum. Playtesting has been divided into three parts as
there were three game prototypes to represent the different stages of game prototyping: paper
prototype, low fidelity prototype and high fidelity prototype. Pretest and posttest surveys were
created based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow and psychology of optimal
experience but during the tests authors also used the observation of kids and how they played the
game. Authors consider the low fidelity prototype to be optimal in the context of game testing
and measuring the flow with elementary school kids.
Description
Keywords
magistritööd, videomängud, näidised, testimine, lapsed