Citation

Ng, YiingY’ng (2023) Affective user-centered design to enhance player engagement for local indie games. PhD thesis, Multimedia University.

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Abstract

In recent years, the game industry has grown rapidly as well as the importance of studying emotion in video games, particularly in the independent (indie) game sector. Although game studies have been slow to address this shifting entity, there has been a surge of academic interest recently on indie game. Due to the ambiguity of indie game studies, many areas have yet to be discovered. One of the areas that have yet to be explored is the design aspects of indie game that affects player engagement. When players are immersed in a game, their emotions are directly affected by the game design which determines the player experience. In a way, games that are tailored to the needs of players and focus more affective-based interaction can enhance player engagement. Henceforth affective user-centered design (AUCD) comes into play as it emphases on improving player experience by addressing the human needs which helps increase genuine and real value to the users. The SouthEast Asia's (SEA) gaming industry has risen significantly over the last decade, and Malaysia's games industry is progressively becoming the SEA gaming hub. To place Malaysia on the map in the game industry world, several Malaysian game developers emphasized the need of local game developers to focus on creating good games to help drive the growth of the local industry level. Thus this research serves to aid local game developers in creating better quality games that can compete on a global scale. For that reason, studying and understanding AUCD becomes crucial as it can aid to design better games by improving the interaction between the player and the game. This research is conducted in an exploratory sequential mixed method research. AUCD evaluation instruments is also be employed to obtain precise data of the user's emotional state. The qualitative data is collected via an observation study on Malaysian indie games in the first phase, with the analysed results leading to the design of a survey for the quantitative phase. Following that, the quantitative data are collected and analysed statistically to evaluate the significance and generalizability. In the final phase, a proposed conceptual framework is constructed that highlights the AUCD game components that enhance player engagement via ranking for local indie games based on the evidence from this research.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	Call No.: GV1201.37 .N49 2023
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Games—Design
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure (General) > GV1-1860 Recreation. Leisure > GV1199-1570 Games and amusements
Divisions:	Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM)
Depositing User:	Ms Nurul Iqtiani Ahmad
Date Deposited:	01 Oct 2025 03:23
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2025 03:23
URII:	http://shdl.mmu.edu.my/id/eprint/14645

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