How the position and behavior of a video game’s health meter affect the player’s behavior and his/her understanding of the game?

Details

Supervisors

Kieffer, Suzanne

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en communication (Mons)

Abstract

A health meter is a common element in a video game. It is a feedback system to let the player knows how he/she is performing in the game and is therefore one of the most important elements in the user interface. In this paper, we analyze how development studios design health meter in terms of position and behavior and how those design choices affect the behavior of the player and his/her understanding of the game. We did an exploratory research to have an overview of possible health meter design patterns and an experimental research using an eye-tracking device to record player’s behavior when playing. The findings suggest that, despite there seems to be no health meter design patterns in development studios, the health meter does affect the behavior of the player while playing when it reaches a critical state but also affect the understanding of the game as if it is poorly designed, players might consider the game frustrating or unfair. In addition to our conclusions, we proposed health meter design guidelines for the attention of the video game industry and the scientific world in the field of video games.