Game Usability Review — Major Gun 2

Major Gun 2 is a shooter-type mobile game.

This Usability Review was constructed under the supervision of Sebastian Long from Player Research in conjunction with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Neither I nor the supervisors are in any way affiliated with the Major Gun development company or any of its employees.

Study Design & Methods

• Usability review — an examination and judgement of the game regarding its issues, based on my own experience watching other users using similar games, and heuristics provided by the Nielsen Norman Group
• Game Heuristic Evaluation — an examination and judgement of the game’s compliance with recognized game usability principles, based on Game Usability Heuristics, Gameplay Heuristics and Mobility Heuristics provided by the Game User Research book (http://www.gurbook.com/)

Study Design & Methods — Aim

Objectives — Assess the usability of the first 30-to-45 minutes of play of the Major Gun game

1. The game has been reviewed to anticipate potential issues users may encounter
2. The review has been conducted using usability principles and best practices (heuristics)
3. The result is a list of usability and user satisfaction issues that real users may have with the app

Note: the aforementioned methods are not a replacement for a user test, and should be used in combination with other methods to provide a complete understanding of the user experience.

Severity Rating (SR)

Prioritization — issues have been prioritized based on the anticipated impact on the visitor’s experience, using the userfocus decision tree

• Urgent [SR 4]
• Important [SR 3]
• Minor [SR 2]
• Of Note [SR 1]
• Good [SR 0]

Analysis Summary

Short summary of the most urgent topics

Urgent [SR 4]

• The app crashes quite often, particularly when other apps are open in the background, which could mean the game absorbs too much of the game’s resources (battery included). Maybe this could be solved by having a minimalist approach and better screen real estate instead of a “heavy” and competitive UI. This situation can trigger the user to not use the app as often which is discouraging and can lead to uninstalling the game
• When the app crashes the users aren’t shown error messages or solutions to recover from the situation — the solution is to close the app and open it again. This can lead to a lot of frustration from the user’s part and poor reviews on the app store
• There is a strong monetization system implemented in the game that causes frustration and disengagement (dropout), and prevents the progress of the user

Important [SR 3]

• The game is quick but it is also repetitive and easy, inducing boredom and low levels of motivation to continue using the app
• The user doesn’t have much control over what he/she can do regarding gameplay and navigation, particularly regarding countdowns and daily prizes. The user can bypass this situation by investing real currency in the game, which is a huge problem with under-aged children using the game
• There isn’t help other than the tutorial to teach the user how to play and what all the items and menus are for, which could be solved by having the tutorial static in the menu as an action that the player can resume or restart, and also adding some written documentation to address some major doubts, such as what the player can do when all the countdowns are active
• There is a privacy issue regarding the attainment of the user’s location without previous consent on installation. There should be an explicit consent or no collection of data at all since that information isn’t even relevant throughout the game
• There aren’t settings to choose to have or not have push notifications, which are very frequent and triggers irritation and the desire to uninstall the game all together and leave a poor review

Usability Positives [SR 0]

1. Learnability — the player is given clear instructions about how to play the game in the tutorial, the visual cues are well established (for example, crosshairs becomes red when it is pointing at the enemy, otherwise it is white), and the feedback to the player is adequate
2. Physical interactions — the tap for firing and the drag for targeting are simple in-game options
3. Progression — there are well established goals for the player to achieve. After achieving goals the player is awarded with rewards: gold, silver and bronze medals; and eagles and coins (in-game currency)
4. Visibility of system status — the top menu shows updated information about aspects the player needs to know while playing, such as life bar or available coins
5. User control and freedom — there’s the option to leave, restart or resume the game, and some menus have a “back” option
6. Consistency and standards — the icons, overall information and game controls are conventional
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use — accelerators are present in the menu options

Usability Issues

1.Error prevention [SR 4] — there are no error messages anywhere — the app froze twice, which made me close it forcefully and then open it again (on the left). Also, if the player performs an action, such as spend Eagle currency to upgrade a weapon, there are no confirmation buttons if the player regrets it (on the right)

2. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors [SR 4] — there are no error messages or help in-app

3. Aggressive monetization [SR 4] — in-app purchases are encouraged and displayed too often. Ads for different games appear once the player opens the app showing a “close” option that doesn’t become available until after a few seconds. This is immediately followed by the “deal of the day” ad, which is also displayed in the top menu and other menus (images below). There are also bonus boxes that can be bought. The game seems to have a “pay-to-win” approach

4. User control and freedom [SR 3] — when the tutorial was over I couldn’t choose multiple different missions because they were locked with a countdown — the user is impeded from progressing until the countdown reaches zero for missions and bonus boxes

5. Help and documentation [SR 3] — the system seems to be usable without documentation. Nonetheless, the help and documentation are non-existent

6. Quick but repetitive and stagnant gameplay [SR 3] — all the levels are handled/played the exact same way and the gameplay is “forgiving” (very easy to play, almost not engaging)

7. Privacy [SR 3] — The game displays my location (Porto) on the homepage, which is odd since the app didn’t ask for my permission to track my GPS information on installation

8. Aggressive push notifications [SR 3] — the notifications appear when locked missions’ countdowns reach zero. There isn’t a deactivation option in the settings of the game, so I ended up disabling this in the Android itself

9. Match between system and the real world [SR 2] — although the language was appropriate, natural and logical, the game was installed in Portuguese but had both English and Portuguese mixed together (localization issues)

10. User control and freedom [SR 2] — some pages don’t have a “back” option, such as the bonus box — if the player doesn’t want to collect it, he/she can’t go back unless it s collected

11. Consistency and standards [SR 2] — there are two different icons for “store” and they both go to the exact same place

12. Currency [SR 2] — there are three different currencies: coins, eagles and real currency (Euros). It’s not intuitive what currency the player can use and when. To purchase an item the player needs to spend a single currency or a combination of the three (images below)

13. Aesthetic and minimalist design [SR 1] — a lot of the screen real estate is fighting for attention, some information is overlapped, so it should be reorganized and prioritized

Next Steps

Future tests should be made to assess the effectiveness of the changes/fixes made, such as re-evaluation of the tutorial with:

• Diary studies to understand technical in-game performance and life bar effects on gameplay and players’ volition levels
• Biometrics (eye tracking with heatmaps) to understand how to reorganize and minimize the menus, pages and homepage
• Interviews, biometrics (EEG, EMG) and A/B Testing to analyze reward system and to understand players’ motivations in non-paying vs paying gameplay environments
• RITE Test for assessment of prototypes’ fixes effectiveness
• All the tests should apply the think aloud protocol

Inclusion of new metrics:

• Dropout rate (close app) after mission becomes unavailable (in countdown mode)
• Number of players who use social media inside the game
• Frequency of deaths
• Deaths per zones per level
• Weapons bought vs upgraded
• Effectiveness of “deal of the day” advertising
• Currency preferences (most and least used)
• Frequency and context of app “crashes”

Thank you for reading!

Feel free to leave your feedback on the comments.