A case study for enhancing mobile games’ immersion in terms of user interface design

Abstract

The mobile games have a huge potential market and the total revenue is predicted to increase at more than 10% per year through 2020. Therefore, it will make mobile games as the largest segment of the global video games industry by a wide margin at that time. In addition, it is widely accepted by gamers, developers, and game researchers that immersion is one of the most important parts of game play experience. This paper will report a case study about researching how to enhance mobile gamer’s immersion in terms of a third person shooter games’ user interface design. We begin by reviewing existing notions of engagement and immersion in gaming experience, and then survey related practical and theoretical work about methods increasing gamers’ immersion, in the context of user interface design. Then, we proposed four key methods, which can enhance the games’ immersion in terms of user interface design. By using these methods, designer can design the game UIs efficiently, no matter design new UIs or iterate old UI versions.