Genres as a tool for understanding and analyzing user experience in games

ABSTRACT

HCI has profoundly changed the way people work with computers, it also has the potential to help shape the way people entertain in the digital age. As a popular entertainment form, games are poised to become the next frontier for HCI research. However, the broader HCI community only has limited knowledge of games. The intent of this demo is to paint a broad picture of today's games. We employ genre theory, which has been widely used in film study, as a framework to introduce a variety of games, analyze different interface metaphors and user experiences of games, and present innovative interaction techniques and devices used in games.

REFERENCES

• 1: Daniel C., An Introduction to Genre Theory, <http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/publish.html>
• 2: Stefan H., Mattias A., and Fredrik A., Genres and Design Considerations of iTV Cases, Proc. of NordiCHI 2000.
• 3: Thomas S., Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System, McGraw Hill, 1981.
• 4: Michael Shepherd , Carolyn Watters, The Functionality Attribute of Cybergenres, Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 2, p.2007, January 05-08, 1999
• 5: Mark J.P. Wolf , Ralph H. Baer, The Medium of the Video Game, University of Texas Press, 2002
• 6: D. Grant Campbell, Genre as Interface Metaphor: Exploiting Form and Function in Digital Environments, Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 2, p.2008, January 05-08, 1999
• 7: Tollmar Konrad , David Demirdjian , Trevor Darrell, Gesture + play: full-body interaction for virtual environments, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.765894]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
game, genre, genre conventions, interface metaphor, user experience, user interface