Mobile Game Usability Practices in Arab Game Companies

Abstract

The mobile game industry is expanding rapidly in the Arab world. More companies are entering the market to develop mobile games for Arabic users. As the competition is increasing among these companies, a need to develop usable Arabic mobile games has raised as well. This paper investigates the mobile game usability practices in Arab game companies. In particular, it aims at studying the perception of mobile game usability to Arab game companies along its importance and utilized methods with a focus on heuristic evaluation. The investigation is based on surveying game companies in six Arab countries. Results have shown that the majority of surveyed companies conduct usability practices at different levels of engagement. Some companies use multiple methods of usability testing in multiple stages of the lifecycle, whereas others use less method and in late stages. Moreover, it has been found that the size of the company as well as the organization (in-house or outsourced) who conducts usability testing have an impact on the perception of game usability, its importance, and the selection of methods and tools used to conduct the testing. In addition, results have shown that heuristic evaluation is not a common practice among Arab game companies.