Developing Methods for Evaluation of Virtual Worlds & Understanding User Experiences
| Project Leader | Project Co-leader |
| Magy Seif El-Nasr Simon Fraser University |
Regan Mandryk University of Saskatchewan |
Virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games continue to exist after the user logs off. Game instrumentation that augments observations, surveys and logs creates automatic statistical metrics of user behaviour in a virtual world that will provide novel evaluation methods for measuring these persistent interactive experiences.
Understanding and modeling users’ activities, motivation, attentional patterns, perceptions, and attitudes with a visualization system helps virtual world designers make critical and fast analyses and decisions. The role of in-world social interactions and social networks in keeping users engaged will also be studied. A prototype visualization system for Toki World, by partner Bardel Entertainment, is being implemented for the research.
EOVW will use Toki World to test telemetry of user behaviour and data mining techniques for understanding user play styles and learning methods.