Väntetid som designstrategi i mobilspel : En studie av spelarupplevelsen i Hay Day

Sammanfattning

Mobile gaming and Free-to-Play games have risen in popularity during the last few years and together with the Free-to-Play business model comes some deceptive design patterns. These design methods include strategies such as Wait-to-Play or Pay-to-Skip. Wait times is a design method that is integrated in gameplay to monetize the players' impatience. This study is meant to answer the questions “How does wait times affect the player’s gaming routines?” and “How does the player perceive the wait times as part of the experience?”. Mobile games are too broad of a subject in itself, so this study is going to focus on the mobile game Hay Day to limit the study and to get a higher quality of data. By conducting a survey that utilize questionnaries and interviews, this study is going to explore the opinions and experiences of the playerbase by analyzing it and evaluating the contrast with other similar HCI and UX research. Conclusions could be drawn from the results that short and long wait times are experienced differently, and these experiences shape how the game is played and perceived by the player. The player will develop strategies and routines to combat the wait times that appear in the game.