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.

Contributors

Matthew Bond

Russell Beale

Conference

Publication date: September 2009

Publication date (Print): September 2009

Pages: 418-422

Affiliations

Advanced Interaction Group

School of Computer Science

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston

Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

[phone]

DOI: 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