Abstract
Game reviews are used by game developers for making business decisions and measuring the success of a title, and have been shown to affect player perception of game quality. We conducted a study where players read positive or negative reviews of a game before playing, and show that the valence of review text affected game ratings and that these differences could not be explained by mediating changes in mood. Although we show predictable changes in player experience over the course of the study (measured objectively through physiological sensors), there were no objective differences in experience depending on review valence. Our results suggest that reading reviews does not directly affect play experience, but rather is a post-play cognitive rationalization of the experience with the content of the review. Our results are important for understanding player experience and to the game industry where reviews and user forums affect a game’s commercial success.
Chapter PDF
References
Baumeister, R.F., et al.: Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology 4, 323–370 (2001)
Chaiken, S., Eagly, A.H.: Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing within and. Unintended Thought 212 (1989)
Drachen, A., et al.: Correlation between heart rate, electrodermal activity and player experience in first-person shooter games. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games, pp. 49–54. ACM, New York (2010)
Fiske, S.T.: Attention and weight in person perception: The impact of negative and extreme behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38(6), 889–906 (1980)
Hazlett, R.L.: Measuring emotional valence during interactive experiences: boys at video game play. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1023–1026 (2006)
Hazlett, R.: Using Biometric Measurement to Help Develop Emotionally Compelling Games. In: Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience, pp. 187–205. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2008)
Huck, S.W., Cormier, W.H.: Reading statistics and research. HarperCollins, New York (1996)
Jenkins, R., et al.: The Influence of Professional Critic Reviews. EEDAR/SMU Behavioral Study. Southern Methodist University, Guildhall. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (2010)
Lang, P.: Behavioral treatment and bio-behavioral assessment: Computer applications. In: Technology in Mental Health Care Delivery Systems, pp. 119–137. Ablex Pub. Corp., Norwood (1980)
Livingston, I.J., et al.: The Impact of Negative Game Reviews and User Comments on Player Experience. Presented at the Sandbox 2011: The 6th ACM SIGGRAPH, Vancouver, Canada (2011)
Mandryk, R.L.: Physiological Measures for Game Evaluation. In: Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing the Player Experience, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (2008)
Mandryk, R.L., et al.: A continuous and objective evaluation of emotional experience with interactive play environments. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1027–1036. ACM, Montréal (2006)
Mandryk, R.L., et al.: Using psychophysiological techniques to measure user experience with entertainment technologies. Behaviour & Information Technology 25(2), 141 (2006)
Nacke, L.E., Lindley, C.A.: Affective Ludology, Flow and Immersion in a First-Person Shooter: Measurement of Player Experience (2010)
Pennebaker, J.W., et al.: LIWC, http://www.liwc.net/
Pratto, F., John, O.P.: Automatic Vigilance: The Aention-Grabbing Power of negative Social Information. Social Cognition: Key Readings 250 (2005)
Ravaja, N., et al.: Phasic emotional reactions to video game events: A psychophysiological investigation. Media Psychology 8(4), 343–367 (2006)
Reinstein, D.A., Snyder, C.M.: The Influence of Expert Reviews on Consumer Demand for Experience Goods: A Case Study of Movie Critics. The Journal of Industrial Economics 53(1), 27–51 (2005)
Sundar, S.S., et al.: News cues: Information scent and cognitive heuristics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58(3), 366–378 (2007)
Sundar, S.S., et al.: Authority vs. peer: how interface cues influence users. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 4231–4236 (2009)
Tassinary, L.G., Cacioppo, J.T.: The skeletomotor system: Surface electromyography. Handbook of Psychophysiology 2, 163–199 (2000)
Tversky, A.K., Kahneman, B.: Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science 185(4754), 1124–1131 (1974)
Yi, Y.: Cognitive and affective priming effects of the context for print advertisements. Journal of Advertising 19(2), 40–48 (1990)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Livingston, I.J., Nacke, L.E., Mandryk, R.L. (2011). Influencing Experience: The Effects of Reading Game Reviews on Player Experience. In: Anacleto, J.C., Fels, S., Graham, N., Kapralos, B., Saif El-Nasr, M., Stanley, K. (eds) Entertainment Computing – ICEC 2011. ICEC 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6972. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24500-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24500-8_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24499-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24500-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)