Visual distractors can measure game attentionSupervisors: Paul Cairns and Gustav Kuhn

Joe CuttingIGGI PhD student, University of York

The games industry is an uncertain business

Angry Birds was the 51st game made by Rovio

King has made over 200 games but only one Candy Crush Saga

“You haven’t reallyexperienced the games industry until you’ve been laid off”Lizi Atwood, Furious Bee

Predicting how much people will like a game could reduce the uncertainty

We can use questionnaires

People liePeople liePeople don’t always tell you their complete mental state

Alien Isolation wins Bafta

“The teenage playtesterstold us they weren’t scared – even though they were”Gary Napper,

Chief Designer Alien Isolation

We used skin conductance measures to tune the AI director in Left 4 Dead 2Mike Ambinder,

Psychologist ValveAmbinder, 2011

Two dots

Good games keep your attention and stop you being distracted

Played 10 audio clips while people were playing games.

Charlene Jennett, UCL

More immersed in the game the fewer clips they remembered hearing.

Jennett 2010

But what if the audio plays during the best bit of the game?

Lets use visual distractors instead

Asked people to look at 1,000 pictures

Lionel Standing,Bishops University, Canada

5 seconds / picture. Remembered 95% of vivid picturesRemembered 91% of pictures

Standing 1973

“a dog holding a pipe in its mouth”

Good game: Clone of Two dots

Experiment design10 people played this game

Greg Costikyan, Game Designer

Uncertainty is the key to why games are appealing

Costikyan 2013

Bad game: Two dots without uncertainty

10 other people played this game

Two dots gameDistractors from Webdings font, change every 5 seconds

Two dots gameGame surrounded by distractors

Two dots gameTested on distractors afterwards

Results of Symbol Test30 questions. Expected value 15

Good=13.0, Bad=19.4Means

Significancep<0.001

Effect sizeCohen’s d =-1.8

30

20

10

Good Bad

Sym

bols

rem

embe

red

0

Results of Immersion Questionnaire

Good=110.2, Bad = 84.6Means

Significancep<0.001

Effect sizeCohen’s d =2.0

0

40

80

120

Imm

ersio

n sco

re

Good Bad

Conclusions

Participants were more immersed in the game that held their attention the best.

Symbols recalled is related to how well game holds your attention.

Visual distractors may be an effective way ofmeasuring attention and engagement in digital games.

What’s next?

Two dots gameTry with two games more similar

Uncertainty but no challenge Challenge but no uncertainty

Two dots gameMake the distractors more distracting

Two dots gameUse eyetracking to see where people actually look

Thank youjoe@joecutting.com