Early analysis of the second user test

In this test, the “feeling of being damaged” part of the player-avatar sensory link was tested, by letting the test participants experience the way FPS games communicate damage to the players. The participants once again experienced four gameplay sessions, but this time four different games; Battlefield: Bad Company, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Halo 3, and Killzone 2. After each session, questions were asked regarding how well the game communicates the feeling of being damaged, and how this affected the game experience. For the games containing an overlay health bar or digits indicating level of health (Halo 3, Battlefield: Bad Company) the test participants were asked about how the diegesis of the UI element affected the attitude to this information. As in the first test, the participants was asked to rank the four games solutions according to 1) how well the game communicates the feeling of being damaged, and 2) to what extent this strengthened the game experience.

The results from this test is slightly more scattered than from the first one, but nevertheless a number of trends can be identified here as well:

Communicating the feeling of being damaged in an accurate way enhances the game experience.
The test participants were asked to rank the games included in the test according to 1) how well the game communicates the feeling of being damaged, and 2) to what extent this strengthened the game experience. While players ranked the games quite differently (more on this below), they ranked the games in the same order for both question 1 and 2. This indicates that communicating the feeling of being damaged in a accurate way strengthens the game experience.

The player attitude towards different strategies for communicating the feeling of being damaged is affected by the player's earlier experience with games.
Some of the test participants opinions seemed to be heavily influenced by the games they have played before. Two out of the five test participants had played earlier games in the Halo series extensively, but were not very familiar with the other games tested. Both ranked Halo 3's way of communicating the feeling of being damaged high, while other test participants placed Halo 3 in the last place when asked to rank the games.

Non-diegetic and meta-perceptual UI elements (image filtering and full-screen image overlay) does not break immersion/engrossment, despite being outside the diegetic part of the UI design space.
As in the first test, no participant questioned about the non-diegetic nature of the health digits in Bad Company or the health bar in Halo 3 (which could be argued to be diegetic if one is familiar with the Halo fiction) mentioned this as a immersion/engrossment breaker. No participants was taken out of the game experience because of the overlay nature of perceptual emulation either. Once again, genre conventions was mentioned as a reason for accepting this kind of information. Instead, players mentioned loss of control or unclear communication of the higher end of the health spectrum to be breaking the game experience.

Meta-perception can strengthen the feeling of being damaged, hence enhancing the game experience.
A majority of the test participants (the three persons that didn't favor Halo 3's way of communicating the feeling of being damaged) seemed to think that meta-perception (image filtering and full-screen image overlay) affected their game experience in a positive way. Some however had issues with meta-perception that was used to the extent that it causes a loss of control over the situation (for example image blur), while others seemed to find it irritating that it only made them notice the low end of the health range (critical health level) and that it was hard to notice it when it was used to indicate being hit by fire. Generally, the participants seemed to think that the Killzone 2 approach was a good way to go, with the overlay blood stains symbolizing both being hit by fire and eventually critical health level when the perifery of the screen is covered with blood, without causing loss of control with blur or fading out the screen.