Best practice for Games Design: Guidelines for ensuring quality

Abstract

The gaming industry is getting bigger for each year and new games hit the market almost every week. But what makes a game a success or a flop? In the end it is the users, gamers, that have decide if they think a game is good or not. But what do a gamer want form a game?This thesis looks mainly into what the game players like when it comes to communication in multiplayer games. It also looks at players? preferences for using the graphic settings to control the flow in the game (the frames per second), and preferences when it comes to music and sound in the game.A questionnaire was used to collect the quantitative data, while user testing was used to get qualitative data on the effect of using voice over IP (VoIP) when playing a multiplayer game. The game used for testing is Age of Conan from Funcom.The data collected are analyzed to get results. These results are used to make guidelines that can be used by game producers and developers when making new games. These guidelines are what are deemed best practices based on the data collected.The research concludes that VoIP has an important role in multiplayer games and that game producers should be conscious on the use of VoIP when making multiplayer games. For the use of graphic settings to control the flow the conclusion is that this is common to do and important for the game experience. Lastly it concludes that music is very important for the mood of the game.