User Experience in Digital Games

In the near future, the field of UX research will become one of the core fields of the psychological science. This will happen when the field adopts systematic and methodologically solid approaches. At the moment, the drivers for the interest in, e.g., game research are both technological and business related. The aim of this chapter is to introduce, how to approach UX in a psychologically founded way. We have presented general mental components that can be used to assess and evaluate any kinds of human experiences. Then we have formed an experiential cycle including higher level constructs of need & motivation, adaptation and appraisal to show how psychology can be used to evaluate UX in cellular phone and in digital games. Emphasis is on the understanding of what is measured and how. Experiential attributes are presented that can be regarded as measurement goals. More specific way to analyze gaming experience is then presented in