IGM Feature 2022
I was interviewed for German gaming print magazine IGM. What can games user research do? Read the full article in German here.
GRUX Online 2021
A second edition of GRUX Online, a collaboration between Emma Varjo and I. This time with refreshed branding, new website and higher-quality production values. Here’s the YouTube playlist.
Develop:Star Nomination
The Develop:Star Awards recognises the very best games and talent within the industry:
These awards are all about the game dev community celebrating the creative excellence of the game makers behind the best games of the previous 12 months.
Since the Develop:Star Awards reshuffled their award categories, bundling Player Research in with enormous Localisation and Quality Assurance companies literally hundreds-of-times our headcount, it’s now all-the-more rewarding to be nominated.
Since 2012 Player Research has been nominated for the Develop Awards many times, and each never means any less than the first: peer recognition of our achievements, on the global stage.
GamesUR Salary Survey
For five years Jonathan Dankoff and I have been polling the gamesUR community for their anonymous salary data. The recent addition of data whizz Andrew Menger-Ogle added a salary calculator and deeper-data-dives.
This initiative has been powerful for guiding entry-level researcher salaries, and avoiding exploitation of gamesUR staff through hidden knowledge.
Here’s the latest data:
How Do We Teach Them To Play?
In my second tutorial talk on gamesUR foundations, I’ve covered the topic of learnability. How do players learn to play? What strategies can game design teams use to teach?
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Game UX Podcast
A podcast about the people behind interface design and development in video games – now including yours truly.
Ahmed Salama and I discussed the successes (and failures) of my wibblywobbly journey into games user research – along with discussion of the ‘flavours’ of user testing, where UXD and UXR intersect, and ‘what is a playtest anyway?’.
Listen online here, or search ‘game UX’ wherever you get your podcasts.
Getting More From Usability Testing
Another post for Player Research, this time covering some tips and tricks for usability testing your game effectively.
Foreword in ‘How To Be A Games User Researcher’
Friend and colleague Steve Bromley has penned a superb book on the foundations of games user research.
I’m honoured to have contributed the foreword and to the editing of the book. I even managed to grab an hour of Steve’s time to discuss his perspective on games user research. Listen to the interview below.