What makes a good game? Using reviews to inform design

Abstract

The characteristics that identify a good game are hard to define and reproduce, as demonstrated by the catalogues of both successes and failures from most games companies. We have started to address this by undertaking a grounded theoretical analysis of reviews garnered from games, both good and bad, to distil from these common features that characterize good and bad games. We have identified that a good game is cohesive, varied, has good user interaction and offers some form of social interaction. The most important factor to avoid is a bad pricing. Successfully achieving some of these good factors will also outweigh problems in other areas.

Affiliations

Advanced Interaction Group

School of Computer Science

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston

Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

[phone]

Contributors

Matthew Bond

Russell Beale

Conference

Publication date: September 2009

Publication date (Print): September 2009

Pages: 418-422

ID: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2009.52

Copyright statement: © Matthew Bond et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. People and Computers XXIII Celebrating People and Technology, Churchill College Cambridge, UK

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: People and Computers XXIII Celebrating People and Technology

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number:

Conference location: Churchill College Cambridge, UK

Conference date: 1 - 5 September 2009

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Computers XXIII Celebrating People and Technology

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2009.52

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing