Mobile input devices for gaming experience

There have been escalating research interests of gaming on mobile phones in recent years. However, little works have been done on testing and evaluating player experience in relation to mobile input devices. In mobile gaming context, input devices operate as an interface connector to enable players to interact with a game, which might affect player experience. In this study, we conducted an experiment to study the effect of player experience on two commonly used mobile input devices, which are soft keypad and hard keypad. The results showed that input devices do affect player gaming experience on different levels. It is noticeable that players prefer playing with hard keypad than soft keypad on selected game genres. We recommend a list of optimal mobile input and factors that inhibit player experience.