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Investigating On-Screen Gamepad Designs for Smartphone-Controlled Video Games

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Published:21 October 2015Publication History
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Abstract

On-screen gamepads are increasingly used as controllers for video games on distant screens, yet lack the typical tactile feedback known from hardware controllers. We conducted a comparative lab study to investigate four smartphone gamepads inspired by traditional game controllers and mobile game controls (directional buttons, directional pad, floating joystick, tilt control). The study consisted of both completing a formal control test as well as controlling two popular video games of different genres (Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros.). The results indicate that the directional buttons require the most attention of the user, however, work precisely for direction-restricted navigational tasks. Directional pad and joystick showed a similar performance, yet they encourage drifting and unintended operations when the user is focused on the remote screen. While currently unfamiliar to many users, the floating joystick can reduce the glances at the device. Tilt turned out to be not sufficiently precise and quick for the investigated tasks. The article concludes with derived design guidelines with easily realizable measures for typical contexts such as casual gaming at home or spontaneous gaming on public displays.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
      ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 12, Issue 1s
      Special Issue on Smartphone-Based Interactive Technologies, Systems, and Applications and Special Issue on Extended Best Papers from ACM Multimedia 2014
      October 2015
      317 pages
      ISSN:1551-6857
      EISSN:1551-6865
      DOI:10.1145/2837676
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2015 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 21 October 2015
      • Accepted: 1 July 2015
      • Revised: 1 April 2015
      • Received: 1 January 2015
      Published in tomm Volume 12, Issue 1s

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