One of five sessions I hosted at GDC.
Ubisoft Director of Insights for North America Lanie Dixon joined me to talk about difficult games: what it means to get a game that’s designed to be difficult into the hands of players.
The answer is simple, if not easy: an agreed picture of the game’s ‘facets of difficulty’, supported by deliberate data-gathering that spans internal and external feedback.
One of five sessions I hosted at GDC 2024, two of which are on the Vault.
With co-host Emma Varjo I discussed the impact of Deceptive Design — aka Dark Patterns — in gamedev. Much has been said about the application of deceptive design to games, and much of it easily dismissed as short-sighted or misguided. Here’s our attempt to rationally approach the topic, without the scaremongering.
Our collaborations with award-winning branding gurus UnitedUs continue, delivering this campaign of stunning faux-retro game covers to advertise our playtesting to the public.
Brand and design magazine The Brand Identity covered the campaign with a front-page feature.
There are two commonly-used phrases relating to the broadening of a game’s future audience: ‘accessible’ and ‘approachable’.
Although these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are radical and important differences between them…
Learn more from my Player Research article.
Industry heavyweights Metaplay interviewed me for their gamedev insights blog. In a wide-ranging discussion we covered research, player-centricity, accessibility, and finding the balance between high-tech and low-tech solutions to getting feedback into your game.
Read the full article on Metaplay’s blog.
In partnership with Player Research’s Games Accessibility Lead Améliane F. Chiasson, I launched ‘Advancing Accessibility’: the most comprehensive suite of gamedev-specific accessibility services available. Working with several Keywords studios — TrailerFarm, SPOV, Climax, Descriptive Video Works, Keywords Globalise, and Keywords Labs — we designed and launched a range of capabilities to support the development of games that deliberately include their disabled players.
The launch was featured in GameDeveloper.com, MCV, and other key games industry news platforms.
You can read more about the services on the Advancing Accessibility website.
Seven years after delivering a talk on the design of playtest labs, I returned to the gamesUR stage to deliver an update. Two further labs and a console genertion on, what have I learned about the science of playtest lab layout? And, maybe more importantly, what advice did I give last time that turned out to be wrong?
Player Research has been nominated for a Develop Star Award once again. This peer-nominated and peer-judged award continues to be one of the highest-value accolades in game development, and we never take our continued nominations for granted.
Thanks to Unity for their invitation to speak at Unite 2022, discussing the importance of understanding players.
Ubisoft Director of Insights Lanie Dixon and I talk about user research methods:
At what point does proficiency in methods stop making you a better researcher?
Methods are the basis of our work as researchers – but ‘knowing your methods’ won’t win you credibility. Methods are not often universal among the stakeholders and partners we are working with and aren’t always the best tool to instigate change.
When should we make this shift of focus from being predominantly about the methods and move towards assessing risks and impact the research can have on the decisions that need to be made?
Watch the episode on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
