Games for non-gamers: Approaching video games from a non-gamer perspective

• Autor(a) principal: José Pedro Pinto Garcia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10216/135685
• topic: Outras ciências da engenharia e tecnologias; Other engineering and technologies

The video game industry has grown exponentially in recent years. Games are now more diverse than ever before. Among the plethora of genres available are critical games, known for their simple game mechanics and ability to critique both the medium and societal conundrums. Because gamers are already accustomed to how games work, understanding how to play a critical game, although challenging in its own right, makes it a more attainable task . But despite gamers having fewer difficulties approaching them, some players may not have such an easy time undertaking these games, especially those not familiarised with the medium: non-gamers. This study aims to identify how digital games, and more specifically critical games, can be adapted in a fashion that allows them to be critiquing tools for non-gamers. Critical games are a specific type of digital game that can be used to apply critical commentary on social and cultural issues. To do so, they oftentimes subvert that which is found in more conventional game models. This research resorted to several methods to explore each research question. As such, we resorted to literature reviews, comparative analyses, questionnaires, followed by thematic analyses, and lastly co-design workshops which underwent a qualitative content analysis. Results showed that adapting critical games as tools of sociocultural critique for non-gamers can be a very nuanced problem. While non-gamers generally dislike frustrative, repetitive, and stressful behaviour in games, they usually enjoy freedom in the gameplay loop, moderately challenging yet fun game designs, and thematic similarities to real world issues. However, we concluded that adapting games to non-gamers is highly dependent on their personal motives and preferences, as happens with the gamer demographic.