Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Overall User Experience of Video Games and Advanced Interaction Games

This chapter describes an approach to evaluating user experience in video games and advanced interaction games (tabletop games) by using heuristics. We provide a short overview of computer games with a focus on advanced interaction games and explain the concept of user-centred design for games. Furthermore, we describe the history of heuristics for video games and the role of user experience of games in general. We propose a framework consisting of three sets of heuristics (game play/game story, virtual interface and tabletop specific) to detect the most critical issues in video games as well as advanced interaction games. To assess its applicability, we compare the results of expert evaluations of five current games with the user experience-based ratings of various game review sites. In the conclusion, we provide an outlook on possible extensions of our approach.