research-article

The aesthetics of gameplay: a lexical approach

Authors:

Noriko TomuroAuthors Info & Claims

MindTrek '10: Proceedings of the 14th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments

Pages 9 - 16

https://doi.org/10.1145/1930488.1930492

Published: 06 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

What does it mean to appreciate gameplay? When we judge a game's gameplay, what are the elements or characteristics of gameplay that we should focus our attention on? We report on a study that analyzed the use of the term gameplay in hundreds of thousands of user-submitted game reviews on a popular online website. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques we identified and extracted the adjectives that modified "gameplay", and then clustered those adjectives based on the words (nouns, verbs and adjectives) which appeared in the surrounding contexts. Our analysis of the resulting clusters shows a surprising richness in the variety of words used to describe gameplay, but more importantly we identify a popular aesthetic of gameplay. The primary elements of gameplay aesthetics are pacing, complexity, cognitive accessibility, scope, demand, and impact. This aesthetic provides two things: empirical support for the importance and centrality of the concepts we've outlined towards understanding gameplay, and evidence of the differences in language for describing gameplay between players and designers/scholars.

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Cited By

Alma Çallı BEdiz Ç(2023)Top concerns of user experiences in Metaverse games: A text-mining based approachEntertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2023.10057646(100576)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2023.100576
Kim JWi JJang SKim Y(2020)Sequential Recommendations on Board-Game PlatformsSymmetry10.3390/sym1202021012:2(210)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12020210
(2017)CorrigendumSimulation and Gaming10.1177/104687811772585748:4(579-579)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/1046878117725857
Show More Cited By

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The aesthetics of gameplay: a lexical approach

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cover image ACM Other conferences

MindTrek '10: Proceedings of the 14th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments

October 2010

270 pages

ISBN:9781450300117

DOI:10.1145/1930488

Conference Chairs:
Artur Lugmayr
Tampere University of Technology, Finland
,
Heljä Franssila
University of Tampere, Finland
,
Olli Sotamaa
University of Tampere, Finland
,
Christian Safran
TU Graz, Austria
,
Timo Aaltonen
Tampere University of Technology, Finland

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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UTA: The University of Tampere
Tampere University of Applied Sciences

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 06 October 2010

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MindTrek '10

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MindTrek '10: Academic MindTrek 2010

October 6 - 8, 2010

Tampere, Finland

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Overall Acceptance Rate 110 of 207 submissions, 53%

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Cited By

Alma Çallı BEdiz Ç(2023)Top concerns of user experiences in Metaverse games: A text-mining based approachEntertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2023.10057646(100576)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2023.100576
Kim JWi JJang SKim Y(2020)Sequential Recommendations on Board-Game PlatformsSymmetry10.3390/sym1202021012:2(210)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12020210
(2017)CorrigendumSimulation and Gaming10.1177/104687811772585748:4(579-579)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/1046878117725857
Koehler MArnold BGreenhalgh SBoltz L(2017)A Taxonomy Approach to Studying How Gamers Review GamesSimulation & Gaming10.1177/104687811770368048:3(363-380)Online publication date: 17-Apr-2017
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878117703680
Raison KTomuro NLytinen SZagal J(2012)Extraction of User Opinions by Adjective-Context Co-clustering for Game Review TextsAdvances in Natural Language Processing10.1007/978-3-642-33983-7_29(289-299)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33983-7_29
Zagal JTomuro NShepitsen A(2011)Natural Language Processing in Game Studies ResearchSimulation & Gaming10.1177/104687811142256043:3(356-373)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2011
https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878111422560
Erkut CJylhä ALugmayr AFranssila HSafran CHammouda I(2011)Rhythmic blueprintsProceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments10.1145/2181037.2181038(3-4)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2181037.2181038

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