Mobile Game Usability and Heuristics

Abstract

A new area of research is the playing of games on mobile devices in a mobile context. It is necessary to create a new set of heuristics specifically targeted to increase the usability of mobile game designs. Several researchers have developed playability heuristics to cover the mobile context aspects, which are normally used along with an evaluation method specifically designed to identify the probable playability difficulties in the user interface. However, this has to be done early on in the game design process. Korhonen and Koivisto (2006) created a few heuristics that cover general mobility, game play and usability issues of the game. Their method aimed primarily at pre-production and production phases of a game project, however with development of the heuristics they could also be applied in post-production phase. This thesis is an attempt to understand the game engines and platforms and the usability of game especially Unity 2d and 3d engines and platforms and the principles of game design currently being used to create high quality games. Thesis includes a usability case study on playing games developed on Unity engine on different mobile platforms; Android OS, Apple IOS and Google chrome browser for smartphones. The results analyzes how different users play mobile games, develop habits and how less instruction each individual users needed in playing mobile games.