The Effect of Colour and Shape on Engagement in Cosy Games.
As the main topic of my MA dissertation, I surveyed players of Cosy Games to test the overall engagement of players and how it changed depending on the prototypes played.
The two prototypes were created with different art assets, which were informed by psychology journals and art theory.
Post Office
2022
Dissertation - MA
In my MA. dissertation, I researched the effect colour and shape had on player engagement, within specifically the genre of cosy games.
This was done by creating two prototypes which were the same in gameplay, yet different in art assets. From there a survey was conducted to test player engagement.
Game Design
Post Office is a simple simulation game, where you play as someone who works in a post office. You interact with the villagers and carry out tasks for them.
The prototypes run on a click-and-drag mechanism which allows you to grab and sort parcels and collect objects. The mechanics do not change between the two prototypes so as to not affect the result of the engagement survey.
Art Process
Since my goal was to measure player engagement based on colour and shape, each prototype had their own version of the assets I would create. One prototype contained warm-toned colours and round shapes whilst the other was more cool-toned and pointed in shape. Since the assets were the only things that would change in each version of the prototype, the changes had to be quite obvious and extreme. I found in my research that warm tones are more likely to make people feel comfortable whilst cool tones often make people feel uncomfortable. The same is true with shape where rounded shapes feel cute and friendly whilst sharper points come across as more aggresive and often allude to danger.
Theory
For the dissertation, we were tasked with creating a prototype that would be informed by a framework of theory, using both scholars and our own insights. I wanted to test the engagement of players and how that is altered by the colour and shapes present in the asset design. Therefore I created two prototypes with different artistic properties in order to test this. The process of this led me to the User Engagement Scale created by H.L. O'Brien and E.G.Toms which I used to see if there was any change in engagement depending on the specific prototype. The research I had collected that was focused on engagement and media, showed that the majority of work was done through the lens of marketing, which was not in line with the goal of my study. Therefore I spend a lot of time looking at other disciplines to ensure the survey was relevant to video games and players. I discovered Flow Theory to be a key component of my theoretical framework and subsequently used it in my prototype experiment.
Survey
As the experiment involved two prototypes to test engagement, a survey was used to analyse the changes in engagement. The scale used was originally designed by H.L. O'Brien and E.G.Toms to track engagement in general but it was tlater altered to also work with media such as Video Games and Film. The survey consisted of using a Likert scale to show how much the players agreed or disagreed with the statement. The participants would play a prototype and then answer questions about their experiences, before playing the next prototype and answering questions about the other prototype. The results were then calculated as per instructions with the scale and then compared to see if the engagement had changed. The participants had no instruction on which one to play first, both had the same name 'Post Office'. The only difference between the files was one had a warm-toned thumbnail and the other had a cool-toned thumbnail. So when looking into the data, I also looked at which prototype was played first and if there was a pattern.
Conclusion
When looking at the results, it was clear that the warm tones and the curved, more rounded art style had a higher engagement level. This, combined with the fact that most of the participants selected the warm-toned one to play first, shows that within the genre of cosy games, warm-toned and rounded shapes help with holding the player's engagement more than cooler and pointed assets. Further work could be done to specifically see if the effect changes depending on the genre or if the tone and brightness of the same colours have an effect. Moreover, work could be done with the scale itself to create an engagement scale and questions that specifically targets Video Games or even adapt the User Engagement Scales (H.L. O'Brien and E.G.Toms) to be more focused on video games and the idea of reengagement.