Satisfactory Disengagement: Ending Game Sessions With Closure and Autonomy

Topic Description

Today, gaming is a popular entertainment activity and an acknowledged part of contemporary pop culture. With this, a game user research has a comprehensive understanding of how and why players engage with games. On the contrary, how to design endings of game sessions that leave the players with a positive feeling received less attention in the literature. However, to provide long-term, high-quality experiences, game design should account for the players’ context and and fit into their daily lives [3]. Also, related work shows that the most intensive and the last moments of play substantially contribute to the overall player experience [2]. Furthermore, recent findings from surveys with players indicate that positive endings are associated with the players sense of autonomy and closure [1]. However, an empirical evaluation is missing. This is the point where this thesis comes in. The goal of this thesis is to explore the effects of autonomy and closure on the experience of ending game sessions. The main research question here is how game design can support positive gaming experiences while allow players to end the sessions voluntary. The main task of the thesis is to design a game that allows for different exit experiences (with and without closure, or autonomy) and to conduct a user study that examines the effects of the different endings on player experience. In case of a bachelor thesis, this user study will be small-scale and exploratory, whereas a master’s student would be expected to conduct a full quantitative evaluation.

Task Summary

1. Review of Related Literature Acquire a basic understanding of disengagement experiences in games.
2. Design a Playable Prototype Develop a game prototype that allows for several minutes of meaningful player experiences and implements different types of game endings.
3. Conduct a User Study Conduct a user study with players to collect empirical data of their gaming and exit experiences.
4. Process the Collected Data Analyze the data using quantitative and qualitative methods.
5. Draw Conclusions from the Analyzed Data Interpret the data and reflect on the findings with regard to the overarching research question.

Skills

Required:

• Game Design and Programming
• Data Analysis

Beneficial:

• Experimental research
• Unity

Contact

Dmitry Alexandrovsky

dmitry.alexandrovsky∂kit.edu

References

[1] Dmitry Alexandrovsky, Kathrin Gerling, Merlin Steven Opp, Christopher Benjamin Hahn, Max V Birk, and Meshaiel Alsheail. Disengagement from games: Characterizing the experience and process of exiting play sessions. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, CHI PLAY ’24, Tampere, Finnland, October 2024. Association for Computing Machinery.
[2] Carl Gutwin, Christianne Rooke, Andy Cockburn, Regan L. Mandryk, and Benjamin Lafreniere. Peak-end effects on player experience in casual games. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 5608–5619, San Jose California USA, May 2016. ACM.
[3] Heather L. O’Brien, Ido Roll, Andrea Kampen, and Nilou Davoudi. Rethinking (dis)engagement in human-computer interaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 128:11, March 2022.