Methodological review of playability heuristics

This study reviews published scientific literature on the use of heuristics for evaluating player experience to (a) identify the potential contribution of the application of heuristics for assessing player experience, (b) present the status of playability heuristics evaluation procedures for evaluating player experience, and (c) define future research perspectives. By searching online bibliographic databases, 44 relevant articles were selected and included in the study. The aim, methodology, proposed heuristics and conclusions were studied separately for each article. The study indicated that a large variety of approaches on evaluating the experience of video games using heuristics were presented. Because of this, it is not possible to identify a generally accepted approach while studying evaluation of video games. This study intends to present and clarify a much-needed holistic point of view in terms of using heuristics for evaluating player experience because of the current dispersed state of the literature and interlaced heuristic evaluation approaches. The review study indicated that most of the articles presented new heuristics, either by iteratively improving the existing approaches or forming new ones. It is usually suggested that the presented sets of heuristics have been viable in general for assessing some aspects regarding the gaming experience. However, the heuristic approaches have neither proven to be including the experience in its entirety nor empirically tested adequately for validation to provide a possible de facto basis for further research. The implications of the articles were also studied for providing a common ground for future research in the field of heuristics evaluation of video games.