Deceptive Game Design?: Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

Leonie Kallabis; Timo Bertram; Florian Rupp

doi:10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299

Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

Leonie Kallabis^*
, Timo Bertram^*
, Florian Rupp^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Institute for Machine Learning

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceedings › peer-review

Abstract

The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)
Publisher	IEEE Xplore
Number of pages	8
ISBN (Electronic)	979-8-3315-8904-2
ISBN (Print)	979-8-3315-8905-9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299
Publication status	Published - 19 Aug 2025

Publication series

Name	IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games
ISSN (Print)	2325-4270
ISSN (Electronic)	2325-4289

Fields of science

101019 Stochastics
102003 Image processing
103029 Statistical physics
101018 Statistics
101017 Game theory
102001 Artificial intelligence
202017 Embedded systems
101016 Optimisation
101015 Operations research
101014 Numerical mathematics
101029 Mathematical statistics
101028 Mathematical modelling
101026 Time series analysis
101024 Probability theory
102032 Computational intelligence
102004 Bioinformatics
102013 Human-computer interaction
101027 Dynamical systems
305907 Medical statistics
101004 Biomathematics
305905 Medical informatics
101031 Approximation theory
102033 Data mining
102 Computer Sciences
305901 Computer-aided diagnosis and therapy
102019 Machine learning
106007 Biostatistics
102018 Artificial neural networks
106005 Bioinformatics
202037 Signal processing
202036 Sensor systems
202035 Robotics

JKU Focus areas

Digital Transformation

Access to Document

10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299

Cite this

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title = "Deceptive Game Design?: Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception",

abstract = " The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better. ",

author = "Leonie Kallabis and Timo Bertram and Florian Rupp",

note = "8 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted at the 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (IEEE CoG)",

year = "2025",

month = aug,

day = "19",

doi = "10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299",

language = "English",

isbn = "979-8-3315-8905-9",

series = "IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games",

publisher = "IEEE Xplore",

booktitle = "Proceedings 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)",

}

Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception. / Kallabis, Leonie; Bertram, Timo; Rupp, Florian.
Proceedings 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG). IEEE Xplore, 2025. (IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceedings › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - Deceptive Game Design?

T2 - Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

AU - Kallabis, Leonie

AU - Bertram, Timo

AU - Rupp, Florian

N1 - 8 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted at the 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (IEEE CoG)

PY - 2025/8/19

Y1 - 2025/8/19

N2 - The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better.

AB - The visual style of game elements considerably contributes to the overall experience. Aesthetics influence player appeal, while the abilities of game pieces define their in-game functionality. In this paper, we investigate how the visual style of collectible cards influences the players' perception of the card's actual strength in the game. Using the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering, we conduct a single-blind survey study that examines how players perceive the strength of AI-generated cards that are shown in two contrasting visual styles: cute and harmless, or heroic and mighty. Our analysis reveals that some participants are influenced by a card's visual appearance when judging its in-game strength. Overall, differences in style perception are normally distributed around a neutral center, but individual participants vary in both directions: some generally perceive the cute style to be stronger, whereas others believe that the heroic style is better.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105015579014

U2 - 10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299

DO - 10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114299

M3 - Conference proceedings

SN - 979-8-3315-8905-9

T3 - IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games

BT - Proceedings 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)

PB - IEEE Xplore

ER -

Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

Abstract

Publication series

Fields of science

JKU Focus areas

Access to Document

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Research output

Deceptive Game Design? Investigating the Impact of Visual Card Style on Player Perception

Cite this