With the expan­sion of the video game medium’s uses and audi­ence, new design chal­lenges come to light. I devel­oped a vibro­tac­tile wrist dis­play for novice play­ers designed to pro­vide vibro­tac­tile cues dur­ing nav­i­ga­tion tasks in a fast-paced, visual– and audio-intensive video game. I asked: Is hap­ti­cally aug­mented feed­for­ward an effec­tive style of guid­ance for novice play­ers learn­ing how to nav­i­gate a fast-paced, mul­ti­modal game environment?

As video games con­tinue to gain prece­dence out­side of the realm of enter­tain­ment, the poten­tial of the medium for new uses, con­texts and audi­ences expands. This raises the issue of how to design video games for an increas­ingly diverse set of play­ers. In par­tic­u­lar, novice play­ers face a num­ber of chal­lenges in mod­ern video game envi­ron­ments. Suc­cess­ful nav­i­ga­tion and game­play engage­ment are threat­ened by the learn­ing curves asso­ci­ated with the medi­umʼs increas­ing sophistication.

In this the­sis, I designed a vibro­tac­tile wrist-worn dis­play that pro­vides feed­for­ward guid­ance for nav­i­gat­ing fast-paced, mul­ti­modal game envi­ron­ments. I con­ducted an exploratory exper­i­ment to eval­u­ate the effec­tive­ness of the pro­to­type in reduc­ing the learn­ing curve by improv­ing early per­for­mance and user expe­ri­ence of novice play­ers. The exper­i­men­tal find­ings show that feed­for­ward guid­ance rises ten­ta­tively to the fore; how­ever, the hap­tic con­di­tion was not as effec­tive as the visual con­di­tion. Latent fac­tors com­bined with dis­cor­dant per­for­mance scores, self-reports and qual­i­ta­tive feed­back sug­gest that more research needs to be con­ducted in order to con­clu­sively elu­ci­date the effec­tive­ness of hap­tic feed­for­ward guidance.

The vari­abil­ity of results paints a com­plex pic­ture of the over­all effec­tive­ness of feed­for­ward guid­ance. The mul­ti­fac­eted nature of the inde­pen­dent vari­able made it dif­fi­cult to tease out how dif­fer­ent con­di­tions affected the expe­ri­ence of novice play­ers engaged in the process of learn­ing how to nav­i­gate a fast-paced, mul­ti­modal game envi­ron­ment while con­tend­ing with game­play tasks. While novice play­ers pre­ferred feed­for­ward guid­ance, its effect on per­for­mance and user expe­ri­ence is less clear. Hap­ti­cally aug­mented feed­for­ward guid­ance was not found to be sig­nif­i­cantly effec­tive for per­for­mance; visu­ally aug­mented feed­for­ward guid­ance was found to be sig­nif­i­cantly effec­tive for per­for­mance via the mea­sure plac­ing, although this effect was lost when other fac­tors were considered.

Even though par­tic­i­pants pre­ferred both forms of guid­ance, they desired to replay the game with­out guid­ance. These com­plex results offer an ini­tial under­stand­ing of the effec­tive­ness of feed­for­ward guid­ance, as well as an emerg­ing set of guide­lines for design­ers. These find­ings pave the way for a kalei­do­scope of future research.