Högskolan i Skövde

Players often make repeated actions that do not help with the current game goal, such as jumping or rolling on an empty road. These inputs are normally treated as habit or noise. This thesis first explores why this kind of In-Game Fidgeting appears and how the start, stop, reduction or return of an action relates to local gameplay conditions, player-reported reasons and reported experience. It then examines whether repeated links between these behavioural changes, the players' explanations, experience ratings and nearby game events could make fidgeting a useful clue for developers when locating gameplay segments that may deserve closer review. Fourteen participants played the opening part of Neva for about 30 minutes. Their gameplay was observed across six target segments. All 14 participants rated Boredom, Attention, Perceived Control, Frustration and Threat/Anxiety for each segment, and 13 completed a follow-up interview about the marked actions. The analysis compared the behaviour record, the local game condition, the segment ratings and the players' explanations. Candidate fidgeting-like behaviour appeared in 42 of 84 participant-segment records. The clearest shared change happened in Segment 2. Six participants were already making repeated extra actions before a new scene appeared, and five of them stopped or reduced the actions at the scene change. Some started again later. Players associated the observed actions with low stimulation, keeping attention, control feedback, character visibility, possible threat, habit and feelings carried over from combat or failure. Similar actions therefore had different meanings, and no single reported reason or experience rating explained every case. That change is used here only as a cue for later review, not as a label for what the player felt.