Science can now tell you whether or not a game is any good

By Duncan Geere

I bet you love some terrible games. I do. Just Cause 2’s plot-by-numbers and awful voice acting, for example, couldn’t put me off it’s intoxicating blend of grappling-hook action and big explosions. Dwarf Fortress looks like a spreadsheet circa 1987 and is about as comprehensible, but I can’t help but get swept up in the lives of my little miners.

That’s why I’m a little sceptical of the announcement by a team of psychologists that they’ve come up with an objective measure of whether or not a game is any good. Or, to be more accurate, the amount of “satisfaction” it’ll bring players.

Nine Factor Authentication

It doesn’t help that the scoring system is called “GUESS” (which stands for “Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale”). It considers nine different factors that, the researchers say, “provide a complete picture of how satisfying a game is”. Those factors are: usability/playability, narratives, play engrossment, enjoyment, creative freedom, audio aesthetics, personal gratification, social connectivity, and visual aesthetics.

The researchers tuned their system by getting 1,300 people to rate 450 different games, from World of Warcraft to Candy Crush Saga. A score is awarded in each category from one to seven, which is then averaged out across the …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming