Paper Reading #3: Not Doing but Thinking: The Role of Challenge in the Gaming Experience

      University College London and University of York joined forces in writing the research paper, “Not Doing But Thinking: The Role of Challenge in the Gaming Experience” (http://delivery.acm.org.lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/10.1145/2210000/2207689/p79-cox.pdf?ip=165.91.74.118&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=109397913&CFTOKEN=54345517&__acm__=1346550058_d4aea3a86561b67ca47f2d864a5bd038). Anna Cox (senior lecturer in CHI and associate chair for CHI 2013 and 2012) and Pari Shah are from University College London whereas Paul Cairns (Senior Lecturer in CHI) and Michael Carroll (project student) are from University of York.

      They ran three studies to see if they could influence participants’ immersion into a video game through changing the difficulty of the game. Through these studies, the physical and cognitive difficulty varied and they also looked if time pressure increased their experience. They defined immersion as “the sense of being absorbed in a game to the exclusion of all else outside of the game” (2). This can be measured from the range of engagement to engrossment and up to total immersion. Total immersion means that the gamer is in “flow”. Immersion is directly linked to the challenge the game poses which can be presented either physically, cognitively, or both. So, they researched which impacts the level of immersion most.

 The first experiment focused on changing the physical challenge whiles the second and third tried to manipulate the cognitive challenge. Physical challenge increased by adding more movements for the same results, and cognitive challenge increased by adding a time limit. Immersion was measured through the Immersive Experience Questionnaire. The first test used a tower defense game and varied how much money was supplied. This either pushed people to place many towers for each level or only a few; thus controlling the number of actions in the game. The results demonstrated that “the increase in the level of physical effort required does not impact performance” or the level of immersion. This is shown by the data they collected in the following tables.

           The second experiment was done through the game bejeweled and was played in either “simple” or “timed” mode. As shown in the table, the time pressure condition has a much higher immersion and challenge score. It’s important to note that the scores were the same in both cases so the level of immersion was not affected by one group performing better. The third experiment specifically looked at the participants’ expertise versus their emersion in the game Tetris. The researches produced low challenge by having the participants play levels 1 and 2 repeatedly for 6 minutes whereas the high challenge was created through started at level 6 and playing till the game ended for the same 6 minutes. As their hypothesis suggested, high level experts were more immersed in the higher challenge were as the novices were more immersed in the lower challenge. If expertise was not factored in, there would be no difference in immersion for the high or low challenge.

      Throughout their paper, they appropriately talked about their related work. Looking through various papers, I saw that many papers agree that challenge leads to positive gaming experience, but they don’t qualify what type of challenges these are or how it intertwines with gaming expertise. So, in these two conditions, this paper is exploring a novel idea even if the broader area is well researched. The papers that I found are as followed:

• Quantifying the engagement experience 
•  The development of the Game Engagement Questionnaire: A measure of engagement in video game-playing 
• Components that lead to engagement 
• Assessing the core elements of the gaming experience   
• Without a worthy challenge, a game isn’t enjoyed as much 
• Fear of failing? The many meanings of difficulty in video games 
• Challenge leads to immersion 
• Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games 
• How to make the game challenging 
• Fear of failing? The many meanings of difficulty in video games 
•  Exploring design features for enhancing players challenge in strategy games 
• The roles of task difficulty and prior videogame experience on performance and motivation in instructional videogames 
• Stages of immersion 
• A grounded investigation of game immersion   
• Different components for various experiences 
• Mapping the road to fun: Natural video game controllers, presence, and game enjoyment
• Flow 
• Flow in games (and everything else) 
• Toward an understanding of flow in video games 
• GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games

Sadly, they did not describe the layout of their questionnaire. So, I don’t know if they used numerical scales or free response. Whichever the case, they qualified this data into numbers for the charts and graphs. In addition to this, we know that all of the data was collected based on each participant’s opinion leading to subjective measurements.  The methods were very appropriate in systematically dividing up each component into its own study. Specifically identifying immersion in how it correlates with challenges and expertise is what made this paper novel.

Since this was a novel idea, I’m sure researchers will use their conclusions in the future. It was wise for them to have an additional questionnaire beforehand, which measured the skill of the participants. I enjoyed reading this study and can relate how their conclusions correspond with my own experiences.