Exploring severity of gameplay issues from players' perspective

Understanding how different players experience gameplay is of vital importance in game development to ensure that the games are enjoyable and rewarding for a diverse audience. Since each user research method has its own strengths and weaknesses, one of the key questions for user researchers is to determine which methods to use in their study design. In this paper we studied the severity of first-person shooter game issues identified using Electrodermal activity based biometrics in comparison to observation and in relation to the type of issues. Our results provide an understanding and a supporting argument about the importance of severity from a player's perspective. This incremental work provides an important contribution to the Games User Research field by aiding data-driven decision making during the game evaluation process.