A Game that Makes You Question...” Exploring the Role of Reflection for the Player Experience

Elisa Mekler; Ioanna Iacovides; Julia Bopp

doi:10.1145/3242671.3242691

A Game that Makes You Question...” Exploring the Role of Reflection for the Player Experience

Elisa Mekler, Ioanna Iacovides, Julia Bopp

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Reflection is a core design outcome for HCI, and recent work has suggested that games are well suited for prompting and supporting reflection on a variety of matters. However, research about what sorts of reflection, if any, players experience, or what benefits they might derive from it, is scarce. We report
on an interview study that explored when instances of reflection occurred, at what level players reflected on their gaming experience, as well as their reactions. Our findings revealed that many players considered reflection to be a worthwhile activity in itself, highlighting its significance for the player experience beyond moment-to-moment gameplay. However, while players engaged in reflective description and dialogic reflection, we observed little to no instances of higher-level transformative and critical reflection. We conclude with a discussion of the value and challenges inherent to evaluating reflection on games.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the annual ACM Conference CHI Play 2018
Publisher	ACM
ISBN (Print)	9781450356244
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3242671.3242691
Publication status	Published - Oct 2018

Bibliographical note

©2018 Association for Computing Machinery. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

Access to Document

10.1145/3242671.3242691

Reflection & games (accepted)
©2018 Association for Computing Machinery. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details
Accepted author manuscript, 169 KB

Cite this

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title = "A Game that Makes You Question...” Exploring the Role of Reflection for the Player Experience",

abstract = "Reflection is a core design outcome for HCI, and recent work has suggested that games are well suited for prompting and supporting reflection on a variety of matters. However, research about what sorts of reflection, if any, players experience, or what benefits they might derive from it, is scarce. We reporton an interview study that explored when instances of reflection occurred, at what level players reflected on their gaming experience, as well as their reactions. Our findings revealed that many players considered reflection to be a worthwhile activity in itself, highlighting its significance for the player experience beyond moment-to-moment gameplay. However, while players engaged in reflective description and dialogic reflection, we observed little to no instances of higher-level transformative and critical reflection. We conclude with a discussion of the value and challenges inherent to evaluating reflection on games.",

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