Category: Milestones

I was interviewed for German gaming print magazine IGM. What can games user research do? Read the full article in German here.

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.

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.

Player Research’s 2019 rebrand, in partnership with UnitedUs, took home a Highly Commended award from Transform.

“The Transform Awards recognise best practice in corporate, product and global brand development work, with categories that focus on strategy, execution, content and evaluation.”

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:

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.

I worked behind the scenes to ensure the GRUX Online conference went swimmingly. All the videos are on YouTube.

Following the publication of my primer on games user experience, consultancy firm KPMG featured me in their “Insights” magazine.

Recognizing these challenges, most major video game publishers and developers have invested in UX in the past five years. Typically, Long notes, they use player psychology to support game design, test games with real players, use data science to analyze player behavior and have a leader whose job it is to represent the player on the project and within the company. Yet UX is too crucial to be entrusted to any particular group, no matter how able, in video gaming, it is everybody’s responsibility.

KPMG Currents Magazine, issue 25

Brighton is a great place to make games. Development magazine MCV published a regional spotlight, highlighting Player Research among the city’s gamedev success stories.

Wireframe Magazine published a 6-page feature on games user research, including Player Reasearch’s facilities, staff and contributions to the domain.