Heuristics uncovered for Games User Researchers and game designers

Abstract

This paper presents a set of heuristics (PLAY and GAP) for game design and discusses the history of heuristics for games, describes the use of these heuristics, summarizes research demonstrating their effectiveness, and describes a hypothetical model that reviewers use when evaluating a game. The usage by designers and evaluators when reviewing two released games is also compared. Overall heuristics were found to be much more effective than informal reviews and their use led not only to problem identification, but to suggested fixes, possible enhancements, and effective aspects of the existing designs.