Abstract

As a preliminary study for the development of a framework of evaluating video games for children, games were classified and rated by expert players of different age groups according to 10 dimensions(violence, educational value, visual interest, auditory interest, sexual explicitness, realness, user friendliness, feeling of achievement, creativity/novelty & difficulty). When 1199 games were classified into 9 types (shooting, simulation, puzzle, sports, arcade, action, adventure, role playing & border games), arcade games were the most frequent(22.1 % ) and border games were the least frequent(1.33%). In dimensional ratings, action games were the highest in violence and the lowest in educational value, whereas puzzle games revealed the opposite trend. Sports games were rated as the highest in the level of realness. Border games was the highest in sexual explicitness, even though there were only a few semi-pornographic games in this type. Creativity was the highest in puzzle games and the level of difficulty was the highest in role-playing games. Analyses of interrelations among evaluative dimensions revealed that the level of violence was positively related with visual interests, auditory interests, sexual explicitness, feeling of achievement, creativity/novelty and difficulty. It was negatively correlated with educational value and user friendliness. Most importantly compared to the older experts, young children were less sensitive in distinguishing games along these dimensions: Primary school children only distinguished games along the violence dimension, whereas older experts rated all games differently for each dimension. Therefore, an evaluative framework will be especially useful for games targeting children for whom violence is the only, salient dimension.