Vertical Slice’s director of games research, Gareth R. White, gave a presentation at the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2009 conference “Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory“, held at Brunel University in London.

DiGRA is the top games research conference in the humanities and attracts world leading researchers with keynotes from industry and academic luminaries such as Media Molecule (Little Big Planet), Richard Bartle (MUD, precursor to modern MMOs like World of Warcraft) and Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games).

Gareth’s presentation was called “Wii Gaming for Older Players: From Motivation to Appropriation, and Usability to User Experience.”

Topics covered include,

• Self-efficacy amongst people with little experience of digital games and technologies.
• Introductory training and mentorship during early stage adoption and late stage appropriation.
• Comparative usability analysis between Wii Sports: Bowling (Power Throws) and Wii Fit: Ski Jump.
• Differences between embodied and symbolic interaction modes.
• Transition from early usability to later user experience (UX.)

Many thanks to the audience who provided lots of great discussion during the Q&A session.