Games User Research

Following recent discussions, I’ve been thinking about how UX can often be misunderstood by developers. I’ve previously blogged about the misconception that usability and user experience testing is Conclusion So, want to help your game be more like these top titles? They all have user testing in common, and have explored them in very different…

Regina Bernhaupt presents an academic guide to the application of user experience principles to games, as part of a series by Springer Books on HCI, and claims to represent the ‘coming of age’ of video games as a medium. The book is essentially a collection of academic papers, largely from recent conferences, and draws upon…

I write this blog out of personal interest. It never really seems like work, and so I’d be unlikely to blog more often if I received points for doing so (although I do like free things!). However this isn’t always the case – sometimes there are jobs you just have to do, regardless of how…

I recently watched Sebastian Deterding’s presentation Deterding does provide some critical analysis of this model – what happens on day 2, for example? Is it still fun to recycle? I also question the justification provided by Volkswagen that the bottle bank performed better than a standard one. Although it did in the example, when the…

The common job title for the role of understanding, and optimising how people feel when playing games or using software is ‘User Experience Designer’. Although factually accurate, I believe that this term is neither appropriate, nor flattering for designing experiences, particularly for games.  Instead, I prefer the term ‘player experience’. Read on to discover why!…