Feb
6
Games User Research on Edge!
This month’s Edge magazine, features an article on games user research. The authors note that while “usability may be gaining respectability… it’s still one of the least understood aspects of design.” Accordingly, they set out to answer a couple of fundamental questions:
How does the industry approach user research today, and why has something so fundamental waited so long to be taken seriously?
The article then explores usability by exploring both user testing (whether people can understand how to play a game properly), and playtesting ( whether they’re actually enjoying themselves). Essentially these are the behavioral versus attitudinal aspects of gameplay respectively. There are some fantastic anecdotes from game industry professionals about adopting these approaches, and its definitely worth reading what they have to say.
The article includes some industry comments on participant recruitment are explored. On a personal level, my experience has been that often, clients tend to underestimate the time and effort required to recruit suitable participants for user testing. Dr Graham McAllister (Vertical Slice) reiterates this very point in the Edge article.
“Getting the right audience is very important,” agrees McAllister. “We have profiles on everyone we use for testing in our database. We know who’s hardcore and who isn’t, which games they’ve played, how many hours per week they play. We’d like to go further. We’re thinking of psychometric testing to learn about their game styles. It’s so clients can come to us and we can give them the right audience for their tests.“
Getting the right audience to test your games is important.
There’s some discussion on biometrics as another tool user researchers can access from their usability toolkit… and how much value it provides… as well as the “garbage in, garbage out” effect of not asking the right questions, and setting the right the right tasks of your users/players… even if your participant recruitment is spot on!
John Hopson (Bungie) explains it this way:
“You need to focus the tests, and focus them on the things the designers are worried about… The places where they’d taken a risk and they don’t know how it’s going to play out.”
Then, of course, there’s the issue of interpreting the test results and coming up with a solution that can be handed over to the designers to implement.
Overall, the article presents a balanced view of usability and its increasing importance in game development. The videogame industry has come a long way from the days of designing games just for themselves. Studios are now critically aware of their audience… especially now that bad news travels at light speed along social social networks. And slowly but surely, user research is becoming more integral to the entire process of making a game. I think I’ll let Dr Graham McAllister have the final word on games user research…
Some people think we’re QA, some people think we’re market research, and we’re not: we’re there to present the player’s perspective before your game is on the shelf.
Source: http://bit.ly/eL5lqR
