gamesuserresearch.com Define your players "Who are my players" is a valuable question for any game developer to ask. Vague (or non-existent) definitions of your players will make it harder to make good design decisions, harder to target players with marketing, and will lead to inaccurate playtest conclusions. But many player definitions are vague, or unhelpful. In this article, I've explored why it's valuable to define your players - shared what a bad definition looks like, and the steps...
about 3 years ago • 1 min read
gamesuserresearch.com Do you know enough about games to work in the industry? If you want to work in games user research, you need to: Be confident running user research studies Understand enough about game development to work out where you can help. Many people coming from other industries, or academia, have a lot of experience running user research. But they often struggle with the latter - showing they know enough about game development to convince hiring managers. An introduction to game...
over 3 years ago • 1 min read
gamesuserresearch.com Run better internal playtests Many studios spend a few hours each Friday playing their own game. This 'dogfooding' is hugely important for understanding the current state of the build, get a feel for the game, and getting some rough feedback on current design decisions. But I also hear complaints. Teams tell me that: They are receiving too much feedback and don't know how to handle it The feedback they get is vague or unspecific, and often defaults to just spotting bugs...
over 3 years ago • 1 min read
