Category: Analysing Gaming Experience

Now that my essay is complete, I can think about presentation in full capacity. As I predicted, the practice presentation helped quite a lot, so I used a lot of material there. In order not to repeat myself, I’ll just highlight what I’ve changed

Nothing much changed here. I’ve added objectives sentence and updated the presentation plan.

This is a new important slide on methodology as readers/viewers must understand how I came to the conclusions and what support sources I used for analysis. The sources remained the same. They proved to be working well.

Definitions slide changed slightly. I decided to give a visual scheme of how Sweetser and Wyeth developed conditions theory, and also I’m referring to it in the written essay, when I discuss the presence of time mechanics in skills-challenge balance conditions. I believe that Sweetser and Wyeth just made a more detailed set of conditions, which overall can be included into Csikszentmihayi’s original condition.

This is a developd version of micro and macro flow slide. I’ve researched the topic and it fitted very well into my essay.

I also updated case studies slide as now I have decent analysis and several outcomes. Of course I will explain more when I add voice over.

This is another new slide based on discussion part of the essay, where I present evidence that time relates to at least one of the basic flow conditions: skills-challenge balance. I’m mostly elaborating on this aspect here and showing the scheme of these time influence in both games to compare. Other two conditions are worth mentioning, but since time is not as significant there, a brief not would be enough.

And, finally, updated outcomes, that I’ll elaborate on more verbally. They come directly form essay’s conclusion section.

So I’m happy with the presentation and think that it reflects well on written essay. I guess, I’ve simplified it enough to make it as clear and coherent as possible. Presentation video you can find in a separate post.

As the research progresses I’ve compiled the practice presentation. Thus, I must say that this comes a little too early as I’m currently working more on experimental development submission, and my research didn’t proceed too far since the last time. All I have is case study part with collected data, and I’m not even sure about structure. But I’ll try to make some structure blueprint with this presentation.

As I was advised before I’ve rewritten the research question to make it look more solid and professional. I believe it looks better now as I used approach from BA thesis sessions, where I was adviced to be as specific as possible.

Also this is how my approximate structure looks, where I tried to include the basic minimum of what I need to cover. And just to give viewers some understanding of case study games, I included their brief description.

Of course I’m starting with definitions of flow: from most basic definition by Csikzentmihayi (his definition is the one that is used and modified by the majority of other researchers) to a more specific for videogames by Sweetser and Wyeth, who also happen to be one of the methodology support sources. I’m also including conditions of flow as it’s important to show their development as well, and they are the main criteria of evaluation time mechanics impact on flow.

Next stop is part about time, since it’s the second main topic I’m researching. I’m not very sure about the Gimbel source, if I need that or not here as I’m just stating the type of time in video games, but not sure I’ll use it later.

Igarzabal’s work is one of my major sources on time and anxiety/boredom discussion point, so I definitely need to highlight that in presentation.

This is a very new aspect I’ve recently discovered that will help me to present more firm evidence. I’ve only read it briefly for now, and it’s the point of further research.

Here I just compiled all the information I previously showed on case studies. As I said above, I just have a big amount of data on time frames and their relation to flow conditions. Not much analysis now, still working on it.

And the outcomes. Of course since I don’t have even approximate analysis now, I’m just presenting the very basic now that can be made without much effort.

But overall, at least with the help of this exercise, I have some understanding of future final presentation. I just hope that I won’t need to redo everything from scratch, but it depends on the actual research and analysis I’m have yet to do. To finish, I’m also presenting the video of this presentation:

This is the summary slide for everything I’ve done so far. I’m not working much on essay right now as I want to focus on experimental development unit due to a closer deadline. But in general to sum up I’ve highlighted 3 basic parts of the current research work.

First is, obviously, research question. First part is more ‘official’, but I don’t think it’s the final wording here. Second part is more for inner use just for me not to forget, what question I need to find the answer for.

Second is the sources. For now I have 5 academic and 3 supportive ones. I’m quite satisfied with them, especially the ones that will definitely form the basis of my research and methodology: Csikzentmihayi, Igarzabal and Sweetser&Wyieth. But since I haven’t started analysis yet, there might be more.

Third is case studies, which hasn’t changed, and I’m finishing their analysis in terms of collecting data. I have more than 2000 words for it so far where I define time frames and check on game meeting flow conditions from thime perspective. And here I’m also giving overview of time mechanichs. Not sure if that will end up in the final essay version, but let it be for now.

I’m currently in the middle of case study analysis. My case study games were defined long ago, so I’m making analysis of time in them.

First, I’ve made two schemes that represent what functions time has in game or which gameplay elements it has relation to. It turned out that in Pathologic time controls most game aspects. In the Void player’s actions trigger time, which has influence on resources.

Then I defined and analysed time frames according to Zagal&Mateas’s approach. It showed that mostly temporality of these games is present in game world time frame. But in general most of the time frames are featured in games.

Finally, I tried to analyse which time frame has relation to which flow condition. Again game world time frame has most relation to flow conditions.

The amount of case studies text already exeeds 2000 words, and I’m not sure how to crop it further. For now I’ll leave it as it is. Maybe most of it will go to appendix in case reader would like to see the analysis in details.

I can say that I struggled with finding sources at the beginning as I couldn’t find decent sources on flow for video games area. And even thought about changing the topic. But from second attempt I managed to find some relevant academic sources, most of which, I believe, would be useful in the long run. At least I have found major source on flow and two methodologies that will help me to build methodology.

As for research question, it hasn’t changed greatly and still conscerns flow in Pathologic 2 and the Void. I took it specific enough to additionally narrow it down. And since I have some sources now, I’m not going to change it.

I couldn’t decide for a long time what topic to choose for the essay, untill I accasionally ran into an article about temporality. I got interested and a thought came to my mind why not to analyse how temporality relates to pacing or flow. Since I was working with Pathologic for BA thesis, I was interested to analyse it from this perspective as it had issues similar to the issues of flow. But one would be irrelevant to analyse, so to make comparative analysis I chose the second game of the same studio, because time turned out to be one of the key features for all of their games. So the Void was my second option, which would be interesting because Pathologic is reported to be rushed, while the Void is often referred to as boring. I wonder if it has to do something with time mechanics.

Here I’m presenting some basic overview of the games I’ve chosen and potential areas of research.