4.1. Study One – Perception

“It’s a video game, and we don’t have all day” – The Ludic Habitus Spectrum and DecisionMaking in Digital Games

(Appendix III; submitted for publication) Action

How do players decide on a course of action when playing digital games? Players make decisions based on contextual design information and prior experience; behave either proactively (favoring direct action) or reactively (favoring perception/interpretation)

Consider the Participants: Notes on Digital Game Prototype Development for Use in Player Studies

(Appendix IV; submitted for publication)

Relation between processes of study design and game design

How can designer/researchers relate and structure these two processes to better conduct research projects?

Designing prototypes for player studies involves designing for the implied participants – player constructs whose behavior is envisaged in light of the study’s goals. Implied participants can be defined to a lesser or greater extent, and either guide game design or research, depending on the project’s structure

Table 3. A broad overview of the four research papers and their findings.

The rest of the chapter is structured into four sections. The first three (4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) present results and findings from the three player studies – on game perception, game appreciation, and game action, respectively. The fourth section (4.4) summarizes findings pertaining to project methodology, based on study and design reflections from the first and second study, with the primary contribution being the concept of implied participants, meant to help designer/researchers relate and practically navigate the tandem processes of game and study design.

4.1.Study One – Perception

The first study was concerned with the role of ludic habitus in perceiving minute differences in game design between two similar platformer game prototypes. The study was conducted with eight participants: four students of game design – Mark, Wendy, Ernest, and Logan – and four infrequent players of digital games – Nick, Eve, Amy, and Julia. The game design students, in

general, stated familiarity with diverse game genres and titles; each of them listed more than ten genres, and gave examples of multiple games belonging to most of them. All four also mentioned platformer games among the game genres with which they were familiar. By contrast, platformer games as a genre were only mentioned once in the group of infrequent players (by Eve). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the game design students also reported playing more often, and on more diverse hardware platforms, than the infrequent players. In the latter group, one of the participants, Julia, stated that she did not consider herself a game player, having stopped playing digital games a few years prior to the study. Despite this, one of the few games that she mentioned having played in her childhood was precisely the inspiration for the two game prototypes – SMB.

When it came to the style of play in the two platformers developed for the purposes of the study, the participants differed both from one another and depending on which of the two prototypes they played. Generally speaking, the game designers – Mark and Ernest in particular – played faster and completed the control game more quickly than the infrequent players – Amy and Julia in particular – who tended to play more slowly. All participants were slower when playing the experimental game, in part due to the need to think about every enemy encounter as a puzzle, rather than relying on reflexes. Still, the game designers and Nick were generally faster in both reasoning and navigation in the experimental game than Eve, Amy, and Julia.

The differences in playstyle and completion times between the game design students and the infrequent players were also mirrored on a linguistic level, with the former group generally being more adept at talking about the two game prototypes and their design differences than the latter. As design students with greater familiarity with digital games, the first group of participants was able to use standard vernacular when comparing and contrasting the two games. On the other hand, the infrequent players struggled to describe the differences between the games, and generally compared the two on fewer points. They also attached a variety of nonstandard labels and terms to either of the two game prototypes.

Perhaps the most interesting point of difference between the two groups was their categorization of the two game prototypes.

• Design students perceived the differences between the two game prototypes as clear-cut and definitive: the control game was deemed a more appropriate, prototypical kind of platformer game, while the experimental game was different enough to warrant additional labels and hesitancy to classify it as a platformer proper. The point of divergence between the two versions, the jump mechanic,

was noted as a highly important marker of a platform game by all of the game designers. For this reason, all four design students expressed preference for the experimental game, which they saw as more interesting and (somewhat) innovative. • This was in contrast to the infrequent players, who, in their descriptions of the game prototypes, focused more on the similarities, rather than the differences.

They saw the two versions as essentially similar games, belonging to the same type or category of games, and did not hesitate to state so. The presence or absence of the jump mechanic, in other words, did not contribute to a notable degree of experiential difference for the infrequent players – at least not to the extent that they considered the game as different kinds or types of games. The outlier in this group was Julia, who, like the designers, strongly discriminated between the two games precisely on the basis of the differences in experience that they provided – with the control game reminding her of a certain game she played in her childhood. The infrequent players also expressed differing preferences for the two games; Nick and Eve preferred the control game, while

Amy and Julia preferred the experimental game.

In light of these results, the study’s findings regarding ludic habitus and its operation in digital gaming practice can be summarized as follows:

• Multiple points of difference between the study participants can usefully be framed and discussed using Bourdieusian practice theory and the concepts of ludic habitus and subfields of practice: o In practice-theoretical terms, the game design students can be described as having comprehensive ludic habitus: they shared a broad familiarity and experience with multiple types of digital games, were very knowledgeable of platformer games as a genre, displayed consistency and rigidity in discussing and labeling the two game versions, played the two games with a similar degree of prowess, and even displayed similar patterns of preference. The ludic habitus of these participants can thus be described as familiar with the platformer subfield and its design conventions and tropes. o Conversely, the infrequent players possessed rudimentary ludic habitus: they were familiar with fewer genres and game titles, expressed limited knowledge of the platformer genre, had difficulties in discerning, discussing, and labeling the differences between the two game prototypes, and differed in preferences towards the two games. The ludic habitus of these participants can therefore be described as unfamiliar with the platformer subfield and its design conventions and tropes. • Greater experience with a subfield of games – or, as Julia’s example shows, notable experience with prototypical examples of the subfield – seems to translate into greater degree of discrimination of differences between similar game designs that belong to that subfield.