Influence of primacy, recency and peak effects on the game experience questionnaire

Abstract

When a participant is asked to evaluate a stimulus, the judgment is based on the remembered experience, which might be different from the actual experience. This phenomenon happens according to the theory that some moments of an experience such as the beginning, peak and the end of the experience have more impact on the memory. These moments can be recalled with a higher probability than the other parts of the experience, and some minor bad moments of experience might be forgotten or forgiven due to the rest of the good experiences. This paper, using a subjective study and emulating an artificial delay on participants' gameplay investigates the influence of these serial-position effects on the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ). The result shows that GEQ does not suffer from either recency, primacy or peak effects. However, when users are asked about the controllability and responsiveness of the games, the recency effect exists. The paper also shows that GEQ has the forgiveness effect and participants forgive or may forget a bad experience if it coincides with a considerable duration of a good experience.