Continuous measurement of digital game experiences

In recent years, the game industry has developed a wide array of games and gaming devices, targeted to different age and gender groups and to gamers with various play styles. As such, playing digital games has become a highly popular leisure activity. Over recent years, academic research on digital gaming has been growing in interest. Part of research is focused on how to measure what people feel and experience when they engage in playing digital games. Being able to validly and reliably measure these experiences is a prerequisite for sound research and theory building in this domain. In this panel, we focus on the evaluation of game experiences, and in particular on those approaches that allow for a continuous or time-variant measurement of the digital game experience. Most of the empirical research on game experience to date has employed retrospective self-report measures, either qualitative (i.e., in-depth interviews, focus groups) or quantitative (i.e., questionnaires) in character. This panel takes a different perspective by focusing on measuring game experiences continuously during game play. We present four papers that advance the state-of-the-art in continuous measurement of digital game experiences, including real-time behavior tracking, observational coding, and psychophysiological approaches. The papers will address a number of questions regarding continuous measures, such as: what indicators of players' experience can be recorded during game play; how are they related to (components of) game experience; what methods can be employed to analyze game experience per se, and in relation to specific game events or episodes