Waiting to Play - Measuring Game Load Times and their Effects on
Player Quality of Experience
![[Game Load]](./icon.png)
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Waiting to Play - Measuring Game Load Times and their Effects on
Player Quality of Experience
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Shengmei Liu, Eren Eroglu, Miles Gregg, Federico
Galbiati, Atsuo Kuwahara, James Scovell,
and Mark
Claypool
In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the
Foundations of Digital Games (FDG)
Worcester, MA, USA
May 2024
Before playing, gamers must wait for the game to load. While the
effects of waiting on user quality of experience is well-studied for
some domains, the effects of wait times on game players is not known,
nor is the impact of computer system components, such as the processor
or graphics card, on game loading times. We present results from a
user study that evaluates the impact of game loading time on quality
of experience using a custom tool that simulates game loading and
collects player ratings. Analysis of the results shows game loading
time has a pronounced effect on player quality of experience, but
differs based on the individual game time and game load
content. Results from our subsequent measurement experiment show the
potential to reduce game load times through hardware upgrades - type
of processor and graphics card have significant effects on game load
times, but type of storage device less so.
Materials: