The Usability of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games

Title: The Usability of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games: Designing for New Users
Author: Steve Cornett

1. Introduction
   
   1. background
      
   2. background of usability issues
      
   
   
2. Method
   
   1. background
      
   2. participants
      
   3. products studied
      
   4. tasks
      
   5. metrics
      
   
   
3. Results
   
   1. games chosen by participants
      
   2. user questionnaire results
      
   3. usability test results and analysis
      
   
   
4. Discussion
   

-Joe and Kendra

Social Side of Gaming: A Study of Interaction Patterns in a MMOG

The Social Side of Gaming: A study of Interaction Patterns in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game
-Nicolas Duncheneaut and Robert J. Moore

This article follows the traditional formatting of a research paper. The introduction tells the history of massively multiplayer games as well as exactly what they are. The second section is a review of literature. The lit however is not a book. It is a game (Star Wars Galaxies). It talks about the background of the game as well the purpose of creating the game. The third section, research methods, describes what they did to get the results they describe later. The fourth section, shows the results they got about the player interaction at two major places within the game. The fifth section continues the research by describing in depth social spaces, especially within the game. They also reiterate their findings from the research in the game and what could be done better in-game in terms of social interactions. The brief conclusion ties up the paper by talking about SWG some more and how its one of the first games to encourage social interactions. It also says the major finding of the research (the social interactions between players are usually short discussions, just enough for the player beginning the interaction to get what they want).

-Joe and Kendra

Portfolio Websites

1)
Megan's: I like that the links on the left and bottom have visual cues to let you know what page you're on.
Rob's: Text links with rollovers are a nice touch.
Shawn's: Use of "splash" image is nice and in my opinion the image is professional.

2)
I'd like to improve on the Flash intro. I need to figure out how to make the links come out at a more steady pace (if you watch closely, the last 3 don't appear to come out spaced correctly). Also, I would like to have my text links provide a visual cue on each page. That way the banner on top and text links on the bottom would both show what page the visitor is on.