A design framework for awareness cues in distributed multiplayer games
Publication Type
Conference Proceeding Article
Publication Date
4-2018
Abstract
In the physical world, teammates develop situation awareness about each other's location, status, and actions through cues such as gaze direction and ambient noise. To support situation awareness, distributed multiplayer games provide awareness cues - information that games automatically make available to players to support cooperative gameplay. The design of awareness cues can be extremely complex, impacting how players experience games and work with teammates. Despite the importance of awareness cues, designers have little beyond experiential knowledge to guide their design. In this work, we describe a design framework for awareness cues, providing insight into what information they provide, how they communicate this information, and how design choices can impact play experience. Our research, based on a grounded theory analysis of current games, is the first to provide a characterization of awareness cues, providing a palette for game designers to improve design practice and a starting point for deeper research into collaborative play.
Keywords
Awareness cues, Distributed multiplayer games, Game design, Situation awareness, Workspace awareness
Discipline
Information Security
Research Areas
Information Systems and Management
Publication
Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada, 2018 April 21-26
First Page
1
Last Page
14
ISBN
9781450356213
Identifier
10.1145/3173574.3173817
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
City or Country
New York
Citation
WUERTZ, Jason; ALHARTHI, Sultan A.; HAMILTON, William A.; BATEMAN, Scott; TANG, Anthony; TANG, Anthony; and HAMMER, Jessica.
A design framework for awareness cues in distributed multiplayer games. (2018). Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada, 2018 April 21-26. 1-14.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7909
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173817