Archive for the ‘Game Usability’ Category
Ian Marsh, creator of Tiny Tower, on user research, play-testing and F2P
Tiny Tower is the hit iPhone game which allows players to build and manage a towerblock and its residents (or ‘bitizens’!). Despite being free, Tiny Tower is continually in the top-grossing apps list due to it’s effective use of free-to-play mechanics.
I spoke to Ian Marsh, one half of Nimblebit, who have had numerous iPhone hits beyond their success with Tiny Tower, including Scoops, Pocket Frogs, Textropolis and more. Ian shared his insight into how understanding player behaviour affects the development of a popular iOS game, and the idiosyncracies of testing with free-to-play mechanics.
A small tower
multi.player Conference Review – Social Interaction, Bartle and Orcs!
I’ve just got back from a few days in Hohenheim, at the multi.player conference, and wanted to share my experiences. The conference was on “The social aspects of digital gaming”, and was a fantastic chance to meet people working in a similar field to myself.
The talk Pejman and I gave, on measuring social interaction in collocated gaming sessions, seemed to be really well received, and has received some insightful comments. I was a bit worried before about presenting an application of the Bartle Test to the man himself, however he didn’t seem to complain (much…). The research gave a better insight into how different player types react in collocated sessions, and hence was distinct from the other presentations – we also had a strong link to industry!
“Playing to win?” @ multi.player conference
This Friday, Pejman Mirza-Babaei and myself will be presenting “Playing to Win? : The correlation between biometric responses and social interaction in co-located social gaming” at the multi.player conference at the university of Hohenheim.
This paper has been a collaboration between ourselves, Graham McAllister of Vertical Slice and Jonathan Napier of Relentless Software. It shares insights gained from our recent studies combing coding social interaction, biometric readings and self-assessment to understand how player’s react to different social and in-game situations.
We’ve found some really interesting results, implying that player behaviour is divided by their inherent motivations. For each player type, it is possible to measure and evaluate the specific forms of social interaction they display, and react to.
This research aims to be useful not only academically, but also of use to commercial games development, by allowing greater insight into targetting development to specific player types, or into maximising the interaction generated by a multiplayer game.
I hope to share the presentation, and the paper, afher the conference. However, if anyone has questions in the meantime, how about contacting me?
(what a link-heavy update!)
edit: A review of the conference can be found here
Full information on the research method and findings will be up on Gamasutra soon – stay tuned!
Usability Fail – Worms (and Worms 2)
I’ve recently been getting back into both Worms and Worms 2 on the iPhone, largely due to the Bluetooth enabled multiplayer mode. Worms, for those who don’t remember was a hugely popular turn-based shooter in the nineties, and the 1995 original was the first game I bought on the PC!
Classic Worms
However the iOS port has made a huge usability sin with its misuse of icons. Today I’ll look at what the problem is, and how it could be resolved.
Erik Rothoff Andersson (Kick Ass) on testing with users & why you shouldn’t listen to what users say!
Erik Andersson is the creator of Kick Ass, the new iPhone game based on his hit web-app. Kick-Ass is an adaption of asteroids that allows you to attack your favourite (or least favourite) websites, destroying them with a selection of ships, while earning achievements.
The iOS game can be downloaded here, and the original bookmark-let is available to play for free
Kick Ass in action...
Today Erik tells us about his experiences with finding testers, getting user feedback, and why you should look at what people do, and not what they say!
Click to continue…
