Systematic analysis of playability in game development process

Abstract

Playability is an important quality for a video game. Evaluating it systematically during the development process is essential for its contribution to the correspondence between the expected and the actual player experience. This article presents how the theoretical and practical analysis can be articulated to evaluate the gaming experience. The Hierarchical and Extensible Videogame Conceptual Model with the Gaming Experience Questionnaire and a new metric to measure playability from design aspects called Playability by Design, constitutes the proposed solution for a systematic analysis of playability. The evaluation of the correspondence between the expected and the real experience during the development process, made it possible to corroborate the relevance of the previous components from the evaluation of six games of different genres.