A framework for analyzing playability requirements based on game reviews

Requirements Engineering is an important phase in software development. Game development also requires Requirement Engineering, due to the frequently changes of requirements during the process of the game development [Kasurinen et al., 2014]. However, only a few studies have linked the game development and Requirements Engineering together. Research in related fields is inadequate and needs to be studied in depth Playability is a crucial concept for the game study. For a player, playability is highly related to the player experience, especially the experience of enjoyment. For a video game, the quality of game components affects the degree of playability. Playability is often used for evaluating the video game, but studies focus on playability are insufficient [Korhonen, 2016, p21]. Moreover, few researchers study playability from the perspective of Requirement Engineering. This thesis supposes playability as a kind of non-functional requirements that is important for the game development. The aim of the thesis is to help game designers or testers understand and analyse playability requirements systematically. The thesis work includes two parts, literature review and data analysis. Literature referred to playability, game components and game enjoyment was mainly studied. Based on the literature review, 41 game reviews from GameSpot were collected and analysed by grounded theory. As a result, Playability Framework was developed for understanding and analyzing playability requirements. There are three categories of playability, including Gameplay, Representation and Story. This thesis focuses on Gameplay, since most of data belongs to Gameplay. Furthermore, four elements of Gameplay were concluded, including Goals, Gameworld, Avatar and Player. Through analysing the relationships between the four elements, Gameplay are categorized into three groups, Achievements of goals, Game interaction and Game control. In addition, five attributes that highly affect the quality of gameplay were found during the data analysis, they are Variety, Meaningfulness, Fairness, Pace and Intuitiveness. Based on the framework, the steps of analysing player requirements and the form of playability requirements were also proposed. The result of the thesis can help game designers and testers transfer playability issues into playability requirements, so that the issues can be analyzed and tracked systematically