Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games

Thomas Bryant tb762@york.ac.uk

Abstract

Thomas Cheyney tc772@york.ac.uk

Paul Gibson Marianne Giles pag509@york.ac.uk mg786@york.ac.uk

immersive state, this paper will look at the effect screen size has on immersion whilst playing a puzzle-based video game.

This paper intends to further the study of what influences immersion by looking at whether the size of a screen affects the immersive state felt when playing a puzzle game. From collecting and analysing the results gathered from an Immersive Experience Questionnaire completed by participants subjected to either a 500x500px or 1000x1000px game window size, it is concluded that the hypothesis that larger screen sizes lead to greater immersion remains unsupported.

1.2 Immersion

1.1 Introduction

Immersion is considered to be an important part of the game playing experience. Games that are more enjoyed by the player often create a greater sense of immersion, indeed the word immersion is often used to describe the degree of involvement with a game. [5] It is also described to mean becoming physically or virtually a part of the experience itself. [6] Multiple conditions affect the state of immersion, with research showing that sound [7], lighting [5] and screen size [8] all contribute to the level of immersion a game player experiences. The level of immersion experienced is also linked to the amount of attention a player invests into a game [5]. Different research has looked at different ways of measuring immersion, including looking at external measures such as Galvanic skin response [9] and selfassessing questionnaires [10, 11]. The Immersive Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) as defined by Cox and Cairns [10] has been shown to be a valid measure of immersion.

Video gaming is now a large and important industry. In the UK, its revenue has surpassed that of other digital mediums like video and music [1]. The shift from other media towards gaming means that the gaming industry is under increased pressure to provide more stimulating user experiences. There are lots of things that the industry has to consider when designing and creating games, and a lot of research has gone into investigating user experiences when playing games [2], analysing the core elements of the gaming experience [3] and discussing how the state of Flow, or an optimised gaming experience, relies on optimal conditions [4]. An interesting area of research is into the condition of Immersion. To further the research into conditions that affect the 1

Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games Bryant Cheyney Gibson Giles 1.3 Screen Size immersion level with a larger screen due to how the larger screen makes the player less aware of the outside world, thus lowering the engagement barrier to immersion and causing the player to become more immersed during their short playing time. It was believed that this would be the case as the puzzle nature of the game already requires a large amount of concentration. 16 participants were enlisted, all undergraduates from The University of York, UK. Of the participants, 5 were female and 11 were male. The ages of the participants ranged from 17 to 21 years of age, with a mean age of 18.44 and a standard deviation of 0.96. Participants were chosen at random from those available to perform the experiment. The experiment had a between participants design; the participants were randomly allocated one of the two conditions and the total results were compared. The independent variable was the size the game appeared on the screen. The first condition was 1000 by 1000 pixels while the second was 500 by 500 pixels. The dependent variable was the level of immersion the participants experienced, as measured by their immersion score drawn from the IEQ. The IEQ consisted of 31 questions, all on a likert scale from 1 to 5, with questions 6, 8, 9, 10, 18 and 20 marked negatively. The lowest possible score is 31 and the highest 155, relating to the participants game experience and giving an overall immersiveness score. This is a subjective measure of immersion due to the fact participants may have different views of what immersion feels like, however due to the large amount of research that has already been implemented using this questionnaire and that measuring immersion does not yet have a proven truly objective method, it is a suitable and validated method for measuring immersion. [10]. 2

Screen sizes are getting both larger and smaller as technology advances. This clearly has an effect on the way users interact with the underlying technology and displayed media. As well as being shown to affect immersion within gaming situations [8], the size of a screen displaying digital media also has effects on the level of attention viewers pay to messages [12]. There is research that shows that smaller screens provide a more immersive experience, but due to more evidence showing the opposite, this has been put down to the novelty value of what was then new technology rather than the screen size itself [13]. A study into the learning experience of participants using different sized computer monitors showed that the learning times needed by those with the larger screens were significantly lower than those with the smaller screens [14]. With learning having been shown to be linked to the puzzle style of games [15], this paper investigates whether a larger screen size increases a players immersion when playing a puzzle-style game. 2.1 Experimental Method

The hypothesis the experiment was designed to test was that a larger screen size would lead to an increased feeling of immersion when playing a puzzle game on a PC. A larger screen covers a larger portion of eyesight, potentially making the player less aware of the outside world, although there is the case that a smaller screen can cause the player to concentrate more on a specific area, hence immersing them into the game. According to Brown and Cairns [5] however, there should be an increase in

Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games Bryant Cheyney Gibson Giles 2.2 Materials 2.3 Procedure

The computer used was a Viglen Genie running Windows 7 64-bit on an Intel Core i5-650 with 4GB of RAM. The screen size of the display was 19 diagonally, with a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. The game was a flash game running from a website inside the same browser, Internet Explorer 9, in both conditions. The IEQ was printed on paper and given to each participant after they had played the game for five minutes, alongside a demographic questionnaire covering subjects such as age, sex and gaming experience, including how often and how much time they spend playing games per week. To measure the time allotted to play the game, the timer on a smartphone was used. The game chosen in this study was Shift by Armor Games [16]. In the game the player controls a man, attempting to reach a door somewhere in the level by interacting with black or white platforms. To do this the player is required to solve puzzles by collecting keys and performing Shifts, whereby the colour platforms that can be used are changed. The game was chosen because the gameplay is simple enough that new players could quickly grasp the aims and controls, but with increasing puzzle elements that caused the player to have to think. It also had a small storyline that the user could become immersed into. This game also allowed its dimensions to be changed easily without affecting quality or controls. Care was taken when deciding upon an appropriate environment and ensuring it was ubiquitous for all participants. All participants played the game in the same room, with the same lighting and sound conditions. The experiment was carried out at similar times of day.

The experiment was carried out in a medium-sized computer room, which was partially occupied by some other students working quietly. The blinds were closed to prevent outside distractions. The actions of the other students working in the room could not be controlled, although the level of possible distraction and noise remained consistent throughout the different participants tests. Participants were tested in groups of three, each assigned to an experimenter but sat at a computer in separate areas of the room. They were given an informed consent form to read and sign, then the opportunity to ask any questions, though they werent told the condition that was being tested or what the opposing condition was. The game was then loaded up on the screen and, after running through the basic controls, the participants played four tutorial levels under the watch of their assigned experimenter. The game was played with no audio and the participants didnt wear headphones of any kind. They were then told to continue playing the game until they were stopped by the experimenter, and left alone to play the game. At this point the experimenter started their timer and waited in a different area of the room for the five minutes to elapse. Participants tested under the first condition played the game in near-full screen (1000 by 1000 pixels), with any areas of the screen that werent part of the game filled with black, while those examined under the second condition played the game in a smaller window (500 by 500 pixels), again with the rest of the screen displaying black. After 5 minutes the experimenter returned and asked the participants to fill in the IEQ and a short demographic questionnaire.

Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games Bryant Cheyney Gibson Giles 3 Results on immersion again, testing the Male and Female samples separately. A Mann-Whitney test on screen size and immersion in the male group gave (W=11.5, p=0.582) and in the female group gave (W=3, p=1). Neither produced statistical significance.

The statistical analysis for this experiment was carried out using R version 2.14.1, in RStudio. From the IEQ, we summed total immersion scores, scoring questions 6, 8, 9, 10, 18, 20 negatively as the questions were worded in such a way that a low score meant high immersion. The mean(SD) immersion score for the larger window was 97.25(16.74) and for the smaller window 103.75(12.56). The range, interquartile range and median can be seen in the box plot shown in figure 1.

4.1 Discussion & Conclusions

figure 1

The results gave no reason for the null hypothesis to be rejected. None of the three comparisons between screen size and immersion score produced statistical significance. Looking at the data in figure 1, it appears as though the data opposes the proposed hypothesis, with the smaller screen size increasing immersion. This isnt supported by statistical significance however. The results therefore gave no evidence that screen size affects immersion when playing a puzzle-style video game. As shown, the previous experience of the players did not influence levels of immersion either. The fact the results tend to show (though without significance) that smaller screen size increases immersion supports the results found in a relevant previous experiment [13], but not the findings of the similar experiment by Thompson, Nordin and Cairns [8]. There is a possibility that the results could have been affected by the confounds inherent to the design of the experiment. Increased immersion has been linked to sound [7] for example. In the experiment, there were other people making a low level of noise in the room and the sound of the game was muted. The posture the players had during gameplay was not monitored or controlled, so it may have been that those with the smaller screen size were leaning in more to simulate having a larger display. 4

Although the data produced by the IEQ should be parametric, due to the high number of questions and participants coming from a normal population, the small sample size was not greatly affected by the use of a non-parametric test. Since the experiment was measuring between participants across two conditions, a Mann-Whitney test was carried out. This did not produce statistical significance (W=23.5, p=0.4). To check for other contributory factors, we carried out a Mann-Whitney test comparing Sex and Total Immersion (W=49, p=0.017) and whether the game had been played before and Total Immersion (W=23, p=0.952). As the comparison between Sex and Immersion gave a statistically significant result, we tested the effects of screen size

Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games Bryant Cheyney Gibson Giles Players in the experiment were only allowed to play the game for five minutes. Had a longer period of time been used, it is possible that the effects screen size had would have become more noticeable, although the player could suffer from fatigue or become frustrated. When analysing the results, a link between sex and immersion was discovered. While not affecting the primary hypothesis of this paper, the link was statistically significant, with females being significantly more immersed than males. There was one outlier in the female data but even with this discounted, the link was still significant. As it was a very small sample, we performed the test including the outlier. As shown by the grouped-by-sex comparisons between screen size and immersion, this confound had no effect on the main hypothesis. It cannot be concluded from these results that females do become more immersed, as this was not the original hypothesis and therefore the experiment was not designed to support it. noticed by those tested under the larger condition. It would also be interesting to explore the effects of screen-size on immersion using different devices, for example different sized televisions connected to a games console. It would also be good to investigate other factors that affect immersion, such as the presence of others in a room while playing and the methods of interaction, for example using a touchscreen compared to using a computer keyboard. It would also be interesting to see how the size of a display affects other tasks, such as productivity while working or attention spans.

5 References

[1] BBC. Game sales surpassed video in UK, says report, bbc.co.uk. [Online]. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology17458205 [Accessed: Nov. 7, 2012]. [2] J. Komulainen, J. Takatalo, M. Lehtonen and G. Nyman, Psychologically structured approach to user experience in games, in Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: building bridges, NordiCHI 08, Lund, Sweden, October 18-22 2008. pp. 487-90. [3] E. H. Calvillo-Gamez, P. Cairns, and A. L. Cox, Assessing the core elements of the gaming experience, in Evaluating User Experience in Games (2010), Springer, London, UK. pp. 47-71. [4] J. Chen, Flow in games (and everything else), in Communications of the ACM 50.4 (2007). pp. 31-34. [5] E. Brown and P. Cairns, A grounded investigation of game immersion, in CHI04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM 2004, 5

4.2 Future work

Due to the significant link found between sex and immersion, future research should explore this link. There were only five females in this experiment compared to eleven males, so future research should look into the effect sex has on immersion using a larger and more equal sample size. In future experiments relating to screen size, it would be an idea to control posture, or at least account for it, due to the effect of leaning in discussed. It is also possible that the fact the smaller condition had the game in the middle of the screen meant distractions just above the computer monitor were more easily

Maybe Size Doesnt Matter: An experiment into how screen size affects immersion in puzzle games Bryant Cheyney Gibson Giles New York, NY, USA, April 24-29, 2004, E. Dykstra-Erickson and M. Tscheligi, Eds. pp. 1297-1300. [6] L. Ermi and F. Myr, Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion, in Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Games Research, S. De Castell, J. Jenson, Eds. Peter Lang Publishing Inc, 2007, p. 40. [7] M. Grimshaw, C. A. Lindley and L. Nacke, Sound and immersion in the firstperson shooter: mixed measurement of the players sonic experience, in Proceedings of Audio Mostly Conference, 2008, Pite, Sweden, October 22-23, 2008, pp. 9-15. [8] M. Thompson, A. I. Nordin, P. Cairns, Effect of Touch-Screen Size on Game Immersion, in BCS-HCI 12 Proceedings of the 26th Annual BCS Interaction Specialist Group Conference on People and Computers, Birmingham, UK, September 12-14, 2012, pp. 280-285. [9] L. Nacke and C. A. Lindley, Flow and immersion in first-person shooters: measuring the players gameplay experience, in Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share, ACM 2008, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November 03-05, pp. 81-88. [10] C. Jennett et al, Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games, in International journal of humancomputer studies, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 641661, 2008. [11] H. Qin, P. L. P. Rau and G. Salvendy, Measuring player immersion in the computer game narrative, in Intl. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 107-133, Feb 2009. [12] B. Reeves, A. Lang, E. Y. Kim and D. Tatar, The effects of screen size and message content on attention and arousal, in Media Psychology, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 49-67, 1999. 6 [13] C. C. Bracken and G. Pettey, It is REALLY a smaller (and smaller) world: presence and small Screens, in Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Presence, Barcelona, Spain, October 25-27, pp. 283-290. [14] D. De Bruijn, S. De Mul and H. Van Oostendorp, The influence of screen size and text layout on the study of text, in Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 71-78, 1992. [15] M. Prensky, Computer games and learning: digital game-based learning, in Handbook of computer game studies, pp. 97-122, 2005. [16] Armor Games. Shift, armorgames.com. [Online]. Available: armorgames.com/play/751/shift [Accessed: Nov. 7, 2012].