Usability Heuristics for Networked Multiplayer Games David Pinelle 1 , Nelson Wong 2 , Tadeusz Stach 3 , Carl Gutwin 2 1 National Research Council 46 Dineen Drive Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 9W4 2 University of Saskatchewan 110 Science Place Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 5C9 3 Queen’s University 25 Union Street, Goodwin Hall Kingston, ON, Canada K7L 3N6 david.pinelle@nrc.gc.ca, nelson.wong@usask.ca, tstach@cs.queensu.ca, gutwin@cs.usask.ca ABSTRACT Networked multiplayer games must support a much wider variety of interactions than single-player games because networked games involve communication and coordination between players. This means that designers must consider additional usability issues that relate to group play – but there are currently no usability engineering methods that are specifically oriented towards the needs of multiplayer games. To address this problem, we developed a new set of usability heuristics, called Networked Game Heuristics (NGH), which can be used in the design and evaluation of networked multiplayer games. The new heuristics were identified by analyzing problem reports from 382 reviews of networked PC games, covering six main genres. We aggregated problem reports into ten problem categories (covering issues from session management to cheating to training for novice players) and developed heuristics that describe how these usability problems can be avoided. We tested the new heuristics by having evaluators use them and an existing set to assess the usability of two networked games. Evaluators found more usability problems with NGH, and stated that the new heuristics were better for evaluating multiplayer game usability. Our research is the first to present networked game heuristics that are derived from real problem reports, and the first to evaluate the heuristics’ effectiveness in a realistic usability test. Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation/methodology General Terms Design, Human Factors. Keywords Usability, networked games, multiplayer games, game usability, heuristic evaluation, Networked Game Heuristics, NGH. 1. INTRODUCTION Most of the commercial video games that have been released in recent years support networked play, in which groups of people can play together from different locations. Current networked games are extremely varied and cover several genres including first-person shooters, strategy games, sports simulations, and role- playing games. Many of the games support several different styles of cooperative and competitive play over the network, including free-for-alls where players compete against each other, and team- based play where people work together toward a common goal (e.g., capture the flag). Networked games involve interactions between players as well as interaction with the game environment itself, which means that these systems must provide support for communication, coordination, awareness, and social interactions between people. As a result, there is a much wider variety of usability concerns that must be addressed for these systems than in single-player games. These additional usability issues that affect group gaming can collectively be called multiplayer game usability, which we define as the degree to which a player is able to successfully interact with other players and understand their actions. Multiplayer usability is not the only important issue in a networked game – but it is distinct from other aspects of game design that have been studied previously. First, a game’s entertainment value is a well-known but separate concern, and involves issues such as engagement, challenge, fun, and storyline. Second, multiplayer usability is different from single-user usability issues that are important for all games, such as input mappings, control sensitivity, visual representations, and training support [35]. Evaluating multiplayer usability is an important issue, since poor usability can greatly detract from the overall play experience, even if other aspects of the game are well designed. However, there are currently very few methods for evaluating multiplayer usability. Playtesting is one of the most common ways to uncover design problems [12], but this method needs playable prototypes that usually only exist in the later stages of the development process. Few methods exist to allow designers to carry out less expensive usability inspections of games, and to also evaluate early, non-functional prototypes. Recent usability inspection techniques look at single-user usability issues in games [35,11,7], but there are currently no established methods for evaluating multiplayer usability issues in networked games. In this paper, we address this problem by presenting a new set of heuristics for evaluating multiplayer game usability. The heuristics, called Networked Game Heuristics (NGH), can be used during heuristic evaluations, where evaluators explore an interface while looking for usability problems [31,32]. The heuristic approach has been successfully used in previous game evaluations because it does not make assumptions about task structure, and it is flexible enough to be adapted to specialized domains [32,10]. We developed our heuristics using a Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. GROUP’09, May 10–13, 2009, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA. Copyright 2009 ACM 978-1-60558-500-0/09/05...$5.00. 169