Level Up: Supporting In-Game Skill Development
| dc.contributor.advisor | Mandryk, Regan | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Gutwin, Carl | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | McQuillan, Ian | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Oates, Alison | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Klarkowski, Madison | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Vassileva, Julita | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Bunt, Andrea | |
| dc.creator | Johanson, Colby G | |
| dc.creator.orcid | 0000-0003-0333-5933 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-08-04T17:18:51Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-08-04T17:18:51Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2023 | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-05 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-08-04 | |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-08-04T17:18:52Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Video games are challenging and complex. They require players to master a diverse set of skills to succeed. Through play, players acquire and eventually master these skills, transitioning from novice to expert through skill development. Making progress and performing well in a game is directly tied to a player's ability to master in-game skills, so players are strongly motivated to get better at the games they play. Games can do a good job of supporting a new player's learning, but too often they leave a player to work out for themselves how to improve and get better at the game. The problem is that game designers do not always know how to support skill development in their games. To solve this problem, we need to better understand how skill learning occurs in games, as well as explore specific new approaches for supporting skill learning in games. Games are not the only context in which skill development and high performance is important --- the field of human performance already explores this in detail and provides many theories to apply to this new domain. Inspired by these theories I explore different ways of supporting players’ learning at two different stages of skill development. First, I explore how early learning can be supported through the use of guidance and explore how later learning can be supported by modifying practice. Testing out the effects of guidance by providing new players with different levels of navigation guidance and evaluating how well they were able to learn the environment, I found that guidance improved a player's immediate performance and allowed them to complete tasks within the game more effectively. I evaluated the idea of modifying practice by applying spaced practice (having players take breaks when playing) in two different games, as well as by adding checkpoints to a side-scrolling platform game. I found that having players take breaks improved players' immediate performance and allowed them to make more progress within the game and that a variety of break lengths were effective. I found that checkpoints allowed players to make progress in the game and learn the game just as effectively as when checkpoints were not present. Overall, this research adds to our understanding of how skill development occurs in games and provides some concrete examples of how support methods used in other contexts (such as in sports) can be applied to digital gaming. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10388/14859 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | skill development | |
| dc.subject | digital games | |
| dc.subject | human-computer interaction | |
| dc.title | Level Up: Supporting In-Game Skill Development | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| thesis.degree.department | Computer Science | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Computer Science | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Saskatchewan | |
| thesis.degree.level | Doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) |