Barriers to Entry: Designing Player Access in Video Games

Video games can be sources of pleasure and frustration. For many potential players, frustration is more common than pleasure. These players struggle with the tremendous complexity that exists in modern 3D video games. This paper presents the concept of breakdown [8] as a technique for analyzing this problem that many people have with accessing video games. Breakdown is the moment of failure that a player experiences when struggling with a game. When this happens, players can reflect on this failure to learn how they can get beyond it. This paper, which is based on a study that focused on this problem, shows how designers can use breakdown to empathize with these players and to improve the designs of games for them. Author