I had an accepted full paper as first author titled “The Role of Uncertainty in Moment-to-Moment Player Motivation: A Grounded Theory”.

At CHI Play 2019, I presented a taxonomy of uncertainty in games created using grounded theory methodology. It is developed by analysing interviews of players reporting their experience of playing casual games – tracing links between uncertainty experiences, specific game features, and player motives. I presented seven types of engaging game-play uncertainty emerging from three sources – game, player, and outcome – and links to likely underlying motives, chief among them curiosity and competence.

CHI Play being the biggest and most relevant conference for Games HCI, presenting at which gave me a unique opportunity to showcase my work, get feedback and network for future work. It has proven to be a crucial step for my 4th year plan in finding ways to invoke engaging uncertainty in games. I believe getting input on that from expert researchers working in the field helped me a great deal.