Analysis of design strategies and user tactics
Based on the multimodal analysis and the ethnographic user research, we can now turn to RQ3, to specify how user tactics are related to specific design strategies. Our study shows that the characteristics and affordances in the game shape the game play in important ways: the affordances indicate how players can or should interpret and play the game. The analysis presented in Section 6.1 showed how the game guides its players, and how it expects its players to behave. When comparing this analysis of the game to the user tactics emerging from the user study, it becomes clear that the various user tactics are more diverse than the design strategies suggest. In other words, the players’ individual
interest and engagement lead to tactics and appropriations that go beyond the model user implied by the game. We distinguish between two general types of user tactics.