The Role of UX in Mobile Game Business Strategy

The video game industry is a Goliath in today’s market. In 2017, the video game industry raked in a staggering $108 billion, over 13 times more than it made in 2000. In recent years, the rise of the smartphone has led to a drastic increase in the number of games that are available to gamers. Of the $108 billion spent on video games in 2017, $40 billion came from mobile games. It is estimated that there are a combined 800,000 mobile games on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, compared to a combined total of 17,000 games for all other gaming consoles combined. Interestingly enough, many developers of mobile games have strayed from the business model of console gaming. Rather than paying a flat fee to gain unlimited ownership of a game, mobile game developers often make their games free to download, instead using micro-transactions as a source of revenue. This business strategy requires developers to entice their users in two ways. First, the incentives free mobile games offer to users must be sufficient for gamers to justify spending money on micro-transactions. Secondly, and this applies to both free and paid games, mobile games must be enjoyable enough to get high ratings on their respective app stores. In both of these regards, I strongly advocate employing UX methodologies during the development life cycle and post-release of mobile games to increase revenue. One of the primary goals of UX is to make products more desirable, which can in turn entice users to spend more time playing games, give games high ratings, and spend money on games. There has been a variety of research done to test the effectiveness of different UX methodologies and their ability to improve games. Virtually all of this research has, in fact, demonstrated UX to be a very valuable asset to making games more enjoyable. There is a stronger link between UX and business strategy than one might assume, and making games enjoyable is the heart of that link.

The Relationship Between Player Enjoyment and In-Game Purchases

Common sense dictates that if a gamer does not enjoy playing a game, they will not be interested in spending money on that game. Thus, making games enjoyable is essential to maximizing in game purchases, and increasing exposure to advertisements that generate revenue. As for games that make you pay up front, gamers do not have the luxury of judging a game before spending money on it. However, thanks to the reviews section of app stores, even paid games with slick advertising campaigns need to produce the same level of enjoyment as their free-to-play counterparts. At this point, you may be asking yourself, “How is enjoyment being defined in this context?” Although enjoyment is a construct that can be fairly difficult to pinpoint, I believe that enjoyment consists of two things: the presence of interest and/or fun, and lack of frustration. For example, a game can be extremely fun, but if it is riddled with bugs that make the game next to impossible to play, gamers probably won’t enjoy it. Fortunately, making things “enjoyable” is the strong suit of UX. As I discuss in the next two sections, certain UX methodologies may be better suited than others to address each of the two aspects of enjoyment that I identified above.

Using UX to Identify Pain Points and Reduce In-Game Frustration

If a video game frustrates its user, it is defeating the very purpose of its existence — to be enjoyed. The same can not be said about other types of software applications. Unlike video games, the function of most software applications are relevant to some outside task [1], so frustrating the user would be problematic, but would not defeat the purpose of the software. In the case of video games, it is extremely important to identify and resolve aspects of a game that are frustrating users, or gamers will have no reason to play (or spend money on) the game. The current literature highlights heuristic evaluations more than other methods as an effective means for identifying in-game issues. For the uninitiated, a heuristic evaluation is a methodology that involves trained experts evaluating a software or interface based on whether or not they adhere to a particular set of guidelines. If some aspect of a game is frustrating a user more than it should, there is a good chance that it is in violation of a heuristic guideline. These guidelines can range from being very wide in the diversity of software they are able to evaluate, to being tailored for very specific pieces of software or interfaces. As a matter of fact, there are multiple sets of heuristic guidelines that have been created specifically to evaluate video games. Among the first of these guidelines were the “Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable Interfaces”, which were published in 1982 [2]. In 2004, the “Heuristic Evaluation for Playability” (HEP) guidelines were created [3], followed by the “PLAY” heuristics in 2007 [4], and the Networked Games Heuristics (NGH) in 2008, which were created specifically to evaluate online games [5].

There have, in fact, been heuristic guidelines developed specifically to evaluate mobile games. Some of these guidelines include but are not limited to: “Don’t encourage repetitive and boring tasks”, “Support a wide range of players and playing styles”, and “The player should have clear goals” [6]. Although they were created a year before the release of the iPhone, the heuristics were used in a 2010 study to successfully identify usability problems in mobile racing games of varying app store ratings [7]. The mobile gaming industry has changed quite a bit since 2010, but the sentiment remains the same — having experts evaluate a game based on a set of guidelines created specifically for that system is a great way to identify, and eventually resolve, pain points.

Although heuristic evaluations are certainly not the only methodology in the UX family that could be used to identify pain-points in games (structured usability tests and contextual inquiries come to mind), more than any other UX methodology, heuristic evaluations have by far the most research to back up any claims of effectiveness in identifying in-game problems. Not only that, but heuristic evaluations can be highly tailored to video games overall, and to specific types of video games. This stands in stark contrast with other UX methods that can be used to evaluate video games, who, in their practice, are generally consistent with the evaluation of traditional software, despite the wildly different goals that video games have compared to almost all other types of software applications. Need to evaluate a Real Time Strategy (RTS) or a First Person Shooter (FPS) game? There’s a set of heuristic guidelines just for that [3]! Need to evaluate a mobile multi-player game? There’s a set of heuristic aguidelines just for that [8]! I think you get my point.

Using UX to Identify Fun and Maximize Micro-transactions (And Flat Purchases)

When it comes to making a game enjoyable, identifying pain points is only half the battle. In overly-simplistic terms, heuristic evaluations are good for discovering what a game is doing wrong. However, it is not particularly effective at discovering what a game is doing right, and this is because heuristic evaluations do not provide feedback from the demographic the game was actually meant for. Despite research showing its success in identifying player frustrations, heuristic evaluations have one major shortcoming — they don’t involve actual users. A trained expert may be sufficient for identifying usability problems, but will they share the same opinions as actual users? Probably not. After all, the user’s opinion is what matters most in the end. That being said, if game developers want their user base to spend money on their games, they need to discover what users enjoy about their game, and capitalize on that.

Luckily, there are a variety of UX methodologies that are particularly effective at gathering this type of information, namely, attitudinal data. This data is mostly qualitative in nature, and tends to answer the “why” questions that quantitative measurements have no way to accurately gauge. These qualitative measures usually involve open ended questions, and are derived from methodologies such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups. Unsurprisingly, these methods are rarely performed in isolation — in order for a user to provide insight on a game through a survey, interview, or focus group, they first have to play it and develop an opinion. In the gaming industry, qualitative measures like the ones described above are combined with actual game testing more often than not. Microsoft Game Studios, for instance, incorporates qualitative UX methodologies into regular playtesting by introducing highly structured attitudinal surveys at the end of playtests [9]. Indeed, games user research has shown that performing interviews in conjunction with the usability testing of a game can provide detailed and actionable recommendations for game improvements [10].

Playtesting a game allows the user to develop opinions rich with data that is extremely valuable to the game researcher. To use a cheesy metaphor: if the attitudinal data in the users head is gold locked in a treasure chest, then following up with methodologies that excel at capturing attitudinal data is the key that can unlock that treasure chest. Being able to access this valuable information has three major implications for the financial success of a game:

1. As I discussed previously, if people do not enjoy playing a game, they will not play it. If you can use qualitative research to discover what your game is doing right, and make sure that those aspects of the game are receiving enough attention, users will be drawn back to the game. This is a particularly huge win for free games that make money entirely through ad revenue. Without enticing users to make purchases, simply making your game enjoyable enough for users to want to come back translates to immediate financial gains. Does the research reveal that most users enjoy one aspect of your game more than the others? Perhaps emphasizing that aspect of the game in future updates will cause users to enjoy your game more, and subsequently spend more time on it.
2. Finding out what makes your game enjoyable will do wonders for any advertising that is done to entice potential users to play your game. This is something that is particularly advantageous for games that require a one-time payment to play, as users will not be able to test out a games features before deciding whether or not to spend money on it.
3. Finally, and this is an implication that is particularly concerned with games that rely on micro-transactions to stay afloat- qualitative UX research can help game developers understand what users will be willing to spend money on. Simply put, if you can find out what users enjoy about your game, you can monetize those features with micro-transactions.

If there is one takeaway message that I aim to express with this blog post, it is that in the mobile game industry, UX and business strategy are two sides of the same coin. Incorporating UX practices during both the development of and post-release of a mobile game, or any type of game for that matter, will translate to quantifiable improvements in both game quality and financial success. The former has been demonstrated through games user research, and the latter has been demonstrated through the business practices of virtually every major gaming corporation.

References:

1. Randy J. Pagulayan, Kevin Keeker, Dennis Wixon, Ramon L. Romero, Thomas Fuller. 2003. User-centered design in games. In: Jacko, J.A., Sears, A. (Eds.), The Human–Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 884–906.
2. Thomas Malone. 1982. Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games. In John C. Thomas and M. L. Schneider (editors), Human Factors in Computing Systems, Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1982.
3. Heather Desurvire, Martin Caplan, and Jozsef A. Toth. 2004. Using heuristics to evaluate the playability of games. In CHI ’04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1509–1512. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/10.1145/985921.986102
4. Heather Desurvire and Charlotte Wiberg. 2009. Game Usability Heuristics (PLAY) for Evaluating and Designing Better Games: The Next Iteration. In Proceedings of the 3d International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing: Held as Part of HCI International 2009 (OCSC ‘09), A. Ant Ozok and Panayiotis Zaphiris (Eds.). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 557–566. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02774-1_60
5. David Pinelle, Nelson Wong, Tadeusz Stach, and Carl Gutwin. 2009. Usability heuristics for networked multiplayer games. In Proceedings of the ACM 2009 international conference on Supporting group work (GROUP ‘09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 169–178. DOI=http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/10.1145/1531674.1531700
6. Hannu Korhonen and Elina M. I. Koivisto. 2006. Playability heuristics for mobile games. In Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (MobileHCI ‘06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9–16.
7. Aditya Ponnada and Ajaykumar Kannan. 2012. Evaluation of mobile games using playability heuristics. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI ‘12), Sabu M. Thampi, El-Sayed El-Afry, and Javier Aguiar (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 244–247. DOI: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/10.1145/2345396.2345437
8. Hannu Korhonen and Elina M. I. Koivisto. 2007. Playability heuristics for mobile multi-player games. In Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Digital interactive media in entertainment and arts (DIMEA ‘07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 28–35. DOI=http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.depaul.edu/10.1145/1306813.1306828
9. Randy J. Pagulayan, Kevin Keeker, Dennis Wixon, Ramon L. Romero, Thomas Fuller. 2003. User-centered design in games. In: Jacko, J.A., Sears, A. (Eds.), The Human–Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, pp. 884–906.
10. Pippin Barr, James Noble, Robert Biddle. 2006. Video game values: Human–computer interaction and games. Interacting with Computers 19, 2: 180–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2006.08.008