Usability heuristics for networked multiplayer games

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 ev...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: GROUP
• Authors: David Pinelle, Nelson Wong, Tadeusz Stach, Carl Gutwin
• Keywords: Applied Computing, GROUP 2009, Heuristic, Multiplayer Games, Networked Game