Cross Platform Gaming: More Than the Sum of Its Parts?

Gaming is today an increasingly cross-platform affair — a novel interaction paradigm inspired in large part by burgeoning economic incentives. And yet, we know little about game players’ experiences of cross-platform games, the factors which mark engagement, nor the barriers to cross-play implementation and decision-making processes of game industry professionals. We adopt a mixed-methods approach to understanding the current status and future of the cross-platform implementation of games, employing a survey (n=87) of active players of Genshin Impact and interviews (n=3) of expert game industry professionals. This study contributes new insights into the nature of cross-play, as has increasingly become the norm in practice, while remaining a persistently challenging yet inextricable component of game-design, by permitting an increasingly active and cooperative game experience. We conclude this article with initial guidelines for HCI researchers and game industry professionals.