research-article

Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elements on Player Experience

Authors:

Alena Denisova,

Eliott CookAuthors Info & Claims

CHI PLAY '19: Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

Pages 161 - 168

https://doi.org/10.1145/3311350.3347173

Published: 17 October 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Power-ups are a type of game reward that allow the player to customise their experience by altering gameplay for a short period of time. Despite the wide use of power-ups in video games, little is known about their effect on gaming experiences. To explore this, we conducted an experimental study that compares the experiences of players depending on their exposure to power-ups in a recreational video game. The results show that players who collected power-ups felt significantly more immersed in the game, experienced more autonomy, but did not feel more competent or challenged than those who played the game without these collectables. Interestingly, a similar effect was observed for those players who picked up 'placebo' power-ups, despite the items having no effect on the gameplay. We provide a discussion of these results and their implications both for games user researchers and game designers.

Supplementary Material

MP4 File (p161-denisova.mp4)

Download
105.54 MB

References

[1]

Ernest Adams. 2014. Fundamentals of game design. Pearson Education.

[2]

Max Birk and Regan L Mandryk. 2013. Control your game-self: effects of controller type on enjoyment, motivation, and personality in game. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 685--694.

Digital Library

[3]

Barbaros Bostan and Sertaç Ö güt. 2009. Game challenges and difficulty levels: lessons learned from RPGs. In International simulation and gaming association conference.

[4]

Emily Brown and Paul Cairns. 2004. A grounded investigation of game immersion. In CHI'04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 1297--1300.

Digital Library

[5]

Ben Cowley, Darryl Charles, Michaela Black, and Ray Hickey. 2008. Toward an Understanding of Flow in Video Games. Entertainment Computing 6, 2, Article 20 (July 2008), 27 pages.

Digital Library

[6]

Edward L Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard M Ryan. 1999. A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological bulletin 125, 6 (1999), 627.

[7]

Edward L Deci and Richard M Ryan. 1985. The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality. Journal of research in personality 19, 2 (1985), 109--134.

[8]

Alena Denisova and Paul Cairns. 2015a. First person vs. third person perspective in digital games: do player preferences affect immersion?. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 145--148.

Digital Library

[9]

Alena Denisova and Paul Cairns. 2015b. The placebo effect in digital games: Phantom perception of adaptive artificial intelligence. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 23--33.

Digital Library

[10]

Alena Denisova and Paul Cairns. 2019. Player experience and deceptive expectations of difficulty adaptation in digital games. Entertainment Computing 29 (2019), 56--68.

[11]

Alena Denisova, Paul Cairns, Christian Guckelsberger, and David Zendle. 2019. Measuring Perceived Challenge in Digital Games: Development and Validation of the Challenge Originating from Recent Gameplay Interaction Scale (CORGIS). To appear in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (2019).

[12]

Alena Denisova, A Imran Nordin, and Paul Cairns. 2016. The convergence of player experience questionnaires. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 33--37.

Digital Library

[13]

Luís Duarte and Luís Carriço. 2012. Power me Up!: an interactive and physiological perspective on videogames' temporary bonus rewards. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Fun and Games. ACM, 55--63.

Digital Library

[14]

Luís Duarte and Luis Carriço. 2013. The cake can be a lie: placebos as persuasive videogame elements. In CHI'13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 1113--1118.

Digital Library

[15]

Catherine O Fritz, Peter E Morris, and Jennifer J Richler. 2012. Effect size estimates: current use, calculations, and interpretation. Journal of experimental psychology: General 141, 1 (2012), 2.

[16]

Tracy Fullerton. 2014. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. AK Peters/CRC Press.

[17]

Ben Goldacre. 2010. Bad science: Quacks, hacks, and big pharma flacks. McClelland & Stewart.

[18]

Kieran Hicks, Kathrin Gerling, Graham Richardson, Tom Pike, Oliver Burman, and Patrick Dickinson. 2019. Understanding the Effects of Gamification and Juiciness on Players. IEEE (2019).

Digital Library

[19]

Ioanna Iacovides, Anna Cox, Richard Kennedy, Paul Cairns, and Charlene Jennett. 2015. Removing the HUD: the impact of non-diegetic game elements and expertise on player involvement. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 13--22.

Digital Library

[20]

Charlene Jennett, Anna L Cox, Paul Cairns, Samira Dhoparee, Andrew Epps, Tim Tijs, and Alison Walton. 2008. Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International journal of human-computer studies 66, 9 (2008), 641--661.

Digital Library

[21]

Daniel Johnson, Madison Klarkowski, Kellie Vella, Cody Phillips, Mitchell McEwan, and Christopher N Watling. 2018. Greater rewards in videogames lead to more presence, enjoyment and effort. Computers in Human Behavior 87 (2018), 66--74.

Digital Library

[22]

Jesper Juul. 2010. A casual revolution: Reinventing video games and their players. MIT press.

Digital Library

[23]

Mallory Ketcheson, Zi Ye, and TC Graham. 2015. Designing for exertion: how heart-rate power-ups increase physical activity in exergames. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 79--89.

Digital Library

[24]

Filip Lange-Nielsen. 2011. The Power-up Experience: A study of Power-ups in Games and their Effect on Player Experience. In DiGRA Conference.

[25]

Alison McMahan. 2013. Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video games. In The video game theory reader. Routledge, 89--108.

[26]

Cody Phillips, Daniel Johnson, Peta Wyeth, Leanne Hides, and Madison Klarkowski. 2015. Redefining videogame reward types. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction. ACM, 83--91.

Digital Library

[27]

Richard M Ryan and Edward L Deci. 2000. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology 25, 1 (2000), 54--67.

[28]

Richard M Ryan, C Scott Rigby, and Andrew Przybylski. 2006. The motivational pull of video games: A self-determination theory approach. Motivation and emotion 30, 4 (2006), 344--360.

[29]

Jesse Schell. 2014. One Kind of Experience is the Story. In The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. AK Peters/CRC Press.

[30]

Carmen R Wilson VanVoorhis and Betsy L Morgan. 2007. Understanding power and rules of thumb for determining sample sizes. Tutorials in quantitative methods for psychology 3, 2 (2007), 43--50.

Cited By

Denisova ABromley SMirza-Babaei PMekler E(2024)Towards Democratisation of Games User Research: Exploring Playtesting Challenges of Indie Video Game DevelopersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36771088:CHI PLAY(1-25)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677108
Hougaard BKnoche H(2024)Aiming, Pointing, Steering: A Core Task Analysis Framework for GameplayProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770578:CHI PLAY(1-48)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677057
Tyack AMekler E(2024)Self-Determination Theory and HCI Games Research: Unfulfilled Promises and Unquestioned ParadigmsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367323031:3(1-74)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673230
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elements on Player Experience
1. Applied computing
  1. Computers in other domains
    1. Personal computers and PC applications
      1. Computer games
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

Recommendations

First Person vs. Third Person Perspective in Digital Games: Do Player Preferences Affect Immersion?
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Contemporary digital game developers offer a variety of games for the diverse tastes of their customers. Although the gaming experience often depends on one's preferences, the same may not apply to the level of their immersion. It has been argued ...
The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games

A 2í 2 study on immersion and appeal of video games is presented.Immersion and appeal are found to be highly related.Immersion is found to be unaffected by playing experience.Appeal is found to be affected both by game played and playing experience. ...
Relevance and Immersion in Digital Games: Content and Personal Factors
CHIuXiD '17: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction and User Experience in Indonesia

Previous studies have investigated the effects of diverse game design features on player immersion. The current study investigated the relationship between game content and immersion. When players are immersed in a game, they perceive that they are "...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI PLAY '19: Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

October 2019

680 pages

ISBN:9781450366885

DOI:10.1145/3311350

General Chairs:
Joan Arnedo
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
,
Lennart E. Nacke
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Vero Vanden Abeele
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
,
Phoebe O. Toups Dugas
New Mexico State University, New Mexico, USA

Copyright © 2019 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 the author(s) 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].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 October 2019

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI PLAY '19

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI PLAY '19: The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

October 22 - 25, 2019

Barcelona, Spain

Acceptance Rates

CHI PLAY '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 51 of 181 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 421 of 1,386 submissions, 30%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

29
Total Citations
View Citations
705
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)98
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6

Reflects downloads up to 15 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Denisova ABromley SMirza-Babaei PMekler E(2024)Towards Democratisation of Games User Research: Exploring Playtesting Challenges of Indie Video Game DevelopersProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36771088:CHI PLAY(1-25)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677108
Hougaard BKnoche H(2024)Aiming, Pointing, Steering: A Core Task Analysis Framework for GameplayProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770578:CHI PLAY(1-48)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677057
Tyack AMekler E(2024)Self-Determination Theory and HCI Games Research: Unfulfilled Promises and Unquestioned ParadigmsACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/367323031:3(1-74)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673230
Acevedo PChoi MLiu HKao DMousas C(2024)Game Level Design to Evoke Spatial Exploration: The Influence of a Secondary TaskCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678811(4-10)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678811
Mella JIacovides ICox A(2024)“Jumping Out from the Pressure of Work and into the Game”: Curating Immersive Digital Game Experiences for Post-Work RecoveryGames: Research and Practice10.1145/36594652:3(1-20)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3659465
Bosch EWelsch RAyach TKatins CKosch T(2024)The Illusion of Performance: The Effect of Phantom Display Refresh Rates on User Expectations and Reaction TimesExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650875(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650875
Villa SWelsch RDenisova AKosch T(2024)Evaluating Interactive AI: Understanding and Controlling Placebo Effects in Human-AI InteractionExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3636304(1-4)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3636304
Kloft AWelsch RKosch TVilla S(2024)"AI enhances our performance, I have no doubt this one will do the same": The Placebo effect is robust to negative descriptions of AIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642633(1-24)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642633
Reddy BSingh DAgarwal CMithil EUtukuru SReddy C(2024)Python based Advanced Multiplayer Gaming Environment2024 8th International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)10.1109/I-SMAC61858.2024.10714784(1189-1195)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/I-SMAC61858.2024.10714784
Aliady WPoesio M(2024)Master the Linguistic Landscape: Puzzle Integration in a 3D NLP Game2024 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG60054.2024.10645588(1-8)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG60054.2024.10645588
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents