Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Kallabis, Leonie, Bertram, Timo, Rupp, Florian
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866909657374654464
author Kallabis, Leonie
Bertram, Timo
Rupp, Florian
author_facet Kallabis, Leonie
Bertram, Timo
Rupp, Florian
contents The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_18648
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception
Kallabis, Leonie
Bertram, Timo
Rupp, Florian
Human-Computer Interaction
The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better.
title Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18648