Affective Ludology
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Digital Game Development at the Game Systems and Interaction Research Laboratory, School of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Student member of the IGDA (especially QA SIG and Game Education SIG) and the ACM SIGCHI, the IEEE Task Force on Player Satisfaction Modeling, the IEEE Game Engineering Special Interest Group, and the Nordic Game Research Network. Since 2007 I am also a member of the academy for the German game developer awards (Deutscher Entwicklerpreis) and have a vote for the Game Developers Choice Awards. I am currently also in a few conference committees (e.g., Entertainment Interfaces, GameDays 2010), and review for some game and HCI journals.

The content of this blog expresses my personal opinion and not that of any organization that I may be associated with. All content is copyrighted, so please include attribution and link properly when citing.
    Research Interests

  • Player-Game Interaction: Scientific and empirical studies of game systems and player/user interaction (especially using psychophysiological methodology such as EEG, EMG, EDA or eye tracking) in order to develop systematic knowledge of the affective and cognitive needs of users of interactive entertainment systems.
  • Technology-driven innovation in interactive entertainment systems, supporting emerging technologies (for example player experience and game metrics), development processes and applications.
  • Scientific definition and study of game usability and playability concepts
  • Human-computer interaction techniques for games, such as physiological computing (for example Brain-Computer Interfaces, BCI)

Publications

Nacke, L., & Lindley, C. (2009). Affective Ludology, Flow and Immersion in a First- Person Shooter: Measurement of Player Experience. Loading… 3(5), journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/72 (PDF).

Nacke, Lennart E. (2009) Affective Ludology: Scientific Measurement of User Experience in Interactive Entertainment. Ph.D. Thesis. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden.

Nacke, L. E., Nacke, A., Lindley, C. A. (2009) Brain Training for Silver Gamers: Effects of Age and Game Form on Effectiveness, Efficiency, Self-Assessment, and Gameplay Experience. CyberPsychology & Behavior. October 2009, 12(5): 493-499. doi:10.1089/cpb.2009.0013.

Stellmach, S., Nacke, L., Dachselt, R., Lindley, C.A. (2009) Trends and Techniques in Visual Gaze Analysis. In The 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction – COGAIN 2009: Gaze Interaction For Those Who Want It Most (Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009). [PDF]

Nacke, L., Stellmach, S., Sasse, D. and Lindley, C. A. (2009) Gameplay Experience in a Gaze Interaction Game. In The 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction – COGAIN 2009: Gaze Interaction For Those Who Want It Most (Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009). [PDF]

Nacke, L. (2009) From Playability to a Hierarchical Game Usability Model. Conference on Future Play 2009 @ GDC Canada. Vancouver, BC, Canada. [PDF]

Lindley, C. A., Nacke, L. & Sennersten, C. C. (2008) Dissecting Play – Investigating the Cognitive and Emotional Motivations and Affects of Computer Gameplay. In Proceedings of CGAMES 08, Wolverhampton, UK, 3-5 November 2008. [PDF]

Nacke, L., Lindley, C. A. (2008) Flow and immersion in first-person shooters: measuring the player’s gameplay experience. In Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play: Research, Play, Share (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November 03 – 05, 2008). Future Play ‘08. ACM, New York, NY, 81-88, DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1496984.1496998. [PDF]

Grimshaw, M., Lindley, C. A., & Nacke, L. (2008). Sound and Immersion in the First-Person Shooter: Mixed Measurement of the Player’s Sonic Experience. Audio Mostly Conference 2008, Piteå, Sweden. [Paper, Proceedings (PDF)]

Nacke, L., Lindley, C., and Stellmach, S. (2008) Log Who’s Playing: Psychophysiological Game Analysis Made Easy through Event Logging. In Proceedings of the 2nd international Conference on Fun and Games (Eindhoven, The Netherlands, October 20 – 21, 2008). P. Markopoulos, B. Ruyter, W. Ijsselsteijn, and D. Rowland, Eds. Lecture Notes In Computer Science, vol. 5294. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 150-157. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88322-7_15 [ACM Entry, Paper]

Nacke, L., & Lindley, C. (2008). Boredom, Immersion, Flow – A pilot study investigating player experience. In Proceedings of IADIS International Conference Gaming 2008: Design for engaging experience and social interaction. IADIS Press. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. July 25-27, 2008. (103-107). ISBN: 978-972-8924-64-5 [link, PDF]

Lindley C. A., Nacke, L., and Sennersten C. (2007). What does it mean to understand gameplay? First Symposium on Ludic Engagement Designs for All. Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark. [link, PDF]

Nacke, L. (2007). The Fun of Gaming: Measuring the Human Experience of Media Enjoyment published in the Quo Vadis Entwicklerkonferenz 2007 Reader.

Yatim, M.; Nacke, L., Masuch, M. Improving Game Design by Understanding the Gender Differences: The Cognitive Approach. International Conference on Gender in Educational Games and Gender Sensitive Approaches to E-Learning 2006, Donau University Krems, Austria, 2006.

Nacke, L.. Facilitating the Education of Game Development. Department of Simulation and Graphics. Magdeburg, Otto-von-Guericke University. Diplom (Master’s Thesis): 153, 2005. [PDF]

Masuch, M.; Nacke, L. Power and peril of teaching game programming – Mehdi, Quasim (Ed.); Gough, Norman (Ed.: Computer games: artificial intelligence, design and education (5th Game-on international conference Reading, UK, 8-10 November 2004). CGAIDE. Wolverhampton: Univ., 2004, S. 347 – 351

McCallum, S.; Makie, J. and Nacke, L., 2004. Creating a Computer Game Design Course. In Proceedings of the New Zealand Game Developers Conference. NZGDC

Workshops and Panels

Girouard, A., Solovey, E.T., Mandryk, R., Tan, D., Nacke, L., Jacob, R.J.K. “Brain, Body and Bytes: Psychophysiological User Interaction.” In Proc. ACM CHI 2010 Extended Abstracts. (2010). [PDF]

Nacke, L., Drachen, A., Korhonen, H., Kuikkaniemi, K., Niesenhaus, J., van den Hoogen, W. Poels, K., IJsselsteijn, W., de Kort, Y. (2009) DiGRA Panel: Playability and Player Experience Research. September 1, 2009. DiGRA 2009: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory, Brunel University, West London, UK. [PDF, @Digiplay, @DiGRA DL]

Nacke, L., Ambinder, M., Canossa, A., Drachen, A., Mandryk, R., Pinelle, D., Stach, T. (2009). Future Play Panel: “Game Metrics and Biometrics: The Future of Player Experience Research”. May 13, 2009. Conference on Future Play 2009. [PDF]

Presentations, seminars, position papers and talks

“Affective Ludology: Reflecting on Fun, Measurement, and User Experience in Interactive Entertainment.” Invited presentation at University Duisburg-Essen (Interdisciplinary Games Research: DUE you play?), Germany. December 7, 2009. [link]

“Affective Ludology: Thoughts on Measuring User Experience in Interactive Entertainment.” Invited presentation at the Center for Computer Game Research of the IT University Copenhagen, Denmark. November 19, 2009. [link]

“Next Generation Testing: Biometric Analysis of Player Experience”, presentation at the GDC Canada 2009, Vancouver, CA, in the track “Finalling”. May 12, 2009. [link]


“Game Experience: Components and Methods of Measurement”, invited presentation at the second FUGA Mini Symposium at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland. April 3, 2009. [link [DOC]]

“Measuring players’ experience of games and real-time simulations”, invited presentation at the iTEC08, Darmstadt, Germany, in the session “Serious Games” on track “Hot Topic: Games”. November 6, 2008. [link]

“Future Game Design: Biofeedback and Player Experience”, refereed seminar presentation at Futureplay 2008, Toronto, Canada. November 3, 2008.

“How eye tracking and psychophysiological data logging improves game design” (new scientific metrics for game design) Invited presentation at Fraunhofer IGD. Darmstadt, Germany. July 15, 2008. [link]

Experimental game studies – What are those and why would you want to do them? Invited lecture as part of the course “Forschungsgegenstand Computerspiele” at the Institut für Publizistik, Mainz University. Mainz, Germany. July 9, 2008. [link]

So, why would you want to be a game researcher? Invited presentation at game developer Reakktor Media GmbH. Hannover, Germany. July 7, 2008. [link]

Game Experience Research – How to gather valuable information from players. Invited talk at the Institute for Media and Communication Research, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany. July 2, 2008.

Evaluating Game Usability – How game research will change the face of software applications. Invited talk at the user interface colloquium. Computational visualistics/Software engineering group, University of Magdeburg. Magdeburg, Germany. June 30, 2008. [slides]

Nacke, L. (2008). A Methodology for Psychophysiological Player Logging. Position paper presented at the Nordic Game Research Network PhD Seminar: Game Research Methods, Aalborg, Denmark. June 18, 2008. [link]

Full day invited game research seminar: “Game Experience Logging – Tools and Techniques” in the course Game Design II 07 at the Games Academy GmbH. Berlin, Germany. June 12, 2008. [link]

Focus on your players – Psychophysiological player experience logging as a powerful tool for gameplay analysis. Presentation at the Quo Vadis German Game Developer Conference. Berlin, Germany. May 7, 2008. [slides]

Game Design and Player Emotions. Invited talk at FUGA mini-symposium at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT). Helsinki (Espoo), Finland. April 24, 2008. [link]

Focus on your players – An approach to Game Design and Development – Invited talk at the School of Future Entertainment. Karlshamn, Sweden. March 3, 2008. [link]

“The Fun of Gaming: Measuring the Human Experience of Media Enjoyment”. Presentation at Quo Vadis Entwicklerkonferenz. Berlin, Germany. 2007.

Principles of iterative development within games. Lecture within the course Advanced Game Design. Högskolan på Gotland. Visby, Sweden. 2007.

Lean, effective and scientific presentations. Lecture within the course Advanced Game Design. Högskolan på Gotland. Visby, Sweden. 2007.

Student Supervision

  • A lightweight programming framework for psychophysiological data analysis of game play behavior and player profiling (D. Sasse). Master’s Thesis Supervisor. (BTH)
  • Developing a psychophysiological logging system for use in a digital game modification (S. Stellmach). Internship Advisor. (BTH)
  • Development of a scalable network architecture for a distributed system of virtual agents (J. Fietz). Master’s Thesis Advisor. (Uni Magdeburg)
  • Project planning in game development using Phenomics “Spellforce II” as an example (N. Koch). Master’s Thesis Advisor. (Uni Magdeburg)
  • Evaluation of game engines for HBR scenarios (D. Gottschlag). Internship Advisor. (Uni Magdeburg)
  • Design and Development of Learning Games as part of a Collaboration Project with the FGG Elbe (M. Freisleben). Internship Advisor. (Uni Magdeburg)
  • Founded the Acagamics, an IGDA student club at Magdeburg University

Teaching