Beyond Entertainment: An Investigation of Externalization Design in Video Games

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorBecker, Franziskaen_US
dc.contributor.authorWarnking, Rene Pascalen_US
dc.contributor.authorBrückler, Hendriken_US
dc.contributor.authorBlascheck, Tanjaen_US
dc.contributor.editorAigner, Wolfgangen_US
dc.contributor.editorAndrienko, Nataliaen_US
dc.contributor.editorWang, Beien_US
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-26T06:37:50Z
dc.date.available2025-05-26T06:37:50Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractThis article investigates when and how video games enable players to create externalizations in a diverse sample of 388 video games. We follow a grounded-theory approach, extracting externalizations from video games to explore design ideas and relate them to practices in visualization. Video games often engage players in problem-solving activities, like solving a murder mystery or optimizing a strategy, requiring players to interpret heterogeneous data-much like tasks in the visualization domain. In many cases, externalizations can help reduce a user's mental load by making tangible what otherwise only lives in their head, acting as external storage or a visual playground. Over five coding phases, we created a hierarchy of 277 tags to describe the video games in our collection, from which we extracted 169 externalizations. We characterize these externalizations along nine dimensions like mental load, visual encodings, and motivations, resulting in 13 categories divided into four clusters: quick access, storage, sensemaking, and communication. We formulate considerations to guide future work, looking at tasks and challenges, naming potentials for inspiration, and discussing which topics could advance the state of externalization.en_US
dc.description.sectionheadersSports, Gaming, and Behavioral Patterns
dc.description.seriesinformationComputer Graphics Forum
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/cgf.70124
dc.identifier.issn1467-8659
dc.identifier.pages12 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.70124
dc.identifier.urihttps://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.1111/cgf70124
dc.publisherThe Eurographics Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.en_US
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International License
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectCCS Concepts: Human-centered computing → Visualization; Visualization theory, concepts and paradigms; Applied computing → Computer games
dc.subjectHuman centered computing → Visualization
dc.subjectVisualization theory
dc.subjectconcepts and paradigms
dc.subjectApplied computing → Computer games
dc.titleBeyond Entertainment: An Investigation of Externalization Design in Video Gamesen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
cgf70124.pdf
Size:
876.33 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
Collections
44-Issue 3