Full paper · 2019

Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elements on Player Experience

Denisova, A., & Cook, E.

ConferenceProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY'19), 2019

Teaser figure: Power-ups in digital games. Screenshots of five power-ups: laser cannon, double gun, laser gun, health and life. With 36 players, both real and placebo power-ups (which looked the same but did nothing) gave higher immersion and autonomy than no power-ups, with no difference in competence or challenge. — Open full-size image

In short

Power-ups are everywhere in games, but their effect on player experience is poorly understood. We compared playing with power-ups, without them, and with 'placebo' power-ups that did nothing at all.

How the study worked

Game: A modified version of the survival shooter Nightmares
Players: 36 (12 in each condition)
Conditions: The base game without power-ups; the game with power-ups; the base game with placebo power-ups
Power-ups: Green: a continuous, more powerful laser. Blue: double bullets dealing double damage. Red: a shotgun-style laser with a slower rate of fire that causes more damage. Each lasted 10 seconds.
Placebo power-ups: Had no effect on the game state
Play time: One 10-minute session
Measures: IEQ, PENS and in-game score

Key findings

Players who collected power-ups reported more immersion and autonomy, but not more competence or challenge.
Placebo power-ups had a similar effect, suggesting the reward comes from collecting them rather than from what they do.
We discuss what this means for games user researchers and designers.

What this means

We propose that further work is needed to evaluate to what extent it is acceptable to use placebo rewards, if at all.
Discussion

Read and cite

PDF (accepted version) Publisher's version (DOI)

APA citation

Denisova, A., & Cook, E. (2019). Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elements on Player Experience. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY'19) (pp. 161-168).

Line of work

Builds on · 2015The Placebo Effect in Digital Games: Phantom Perception of Adaptive Artificial Intelligence
This paper · 2019Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elements on Player Experience