Archive for the ‘Game Usability’ Category
by Steve
My research, in collaboration with Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Graham Mcallister & Jon Napier of Relentless Software has now been featured on Gamasutra.
The article is a summary of our work on defining how people interact when playing games, how we’ve measured this, and what we found when we applied this method to the quiz game Buzz!
There’s been some interesting points raised in the comments, well worth the read, if I do say so myself!
Read the full article here.
by Steve
2011 was a great year for games user research, not only for the industry as a whole and for me personally, having completed my Masters and moved on to a full time GUR job.
At the start of 2011, I made some predictions on what would be big in games user research over last year. 12 months on, I’d like to review these predictions, and review how games user research has changed.
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by Steve
A short update today (still have no
Internet after moving house) – Our ‘Measuring Social Interaction’ research (a collaboration with Vertical Slice and Relentless) was recently featured at Develop Liverpool, and has received some great feedback. the synopsis of the talk can be found here.
Also Graham McAllister’s EDGE column this week discusses some of the potential applications of this research. Read the column in full here.
A full write up of this research will be on Gamasutra soon, so keep checking back for more!
by Steve
I’ve recently been enjoying Alan Wake, the story-driven survival horror game. However it does suffer from an overabundance of collectable items and tasks, which are used to earn achievement points. This has a significant effect on the player experience, and unfortunately often not for the reason intended. Today, I’ll consider why collectables are used in games, the problems inherent with their use, and potential ways to fix them!
Finally, the fun of stamp collecting on your console!
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by Steve
Following up from my recent review of the top positive user experience elements in Driver: San Francisco, this week I’ll be looking at the top 5 usability and user experience issues that cause a negative player experience.
For each issue, I’ll also discuss potential fixes that could be implemented in order to create a more positive game playing experience.
Image by wiiloveit (Flickr)
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