Category: Milestones

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.

Develop’s 30 Under 30 highlights up-and-coming development talent from across with world. I was included in 2013, in the sixth edition of the awards, nearly two years after the foundation of Player Research.

Approaching his two-year anniversary as a user researcher at Player Research, Sebastian Long, 27, has positively impacted more than 50 titles across all platforms. And his peers say he is a talented and professional researcher. Long evaluates behaviour and emotion via playtesting, user research and player interviews.

Develop 30 Under 30

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts support the professionals working within the film, games and television industries. I’ve been a BAFTA member since 2017.

Our curated academy of members sits at the heart of everything we do, from supporting our charitable aims, acting as mentors to emerging young talent, lending their knowledge and experience to our BAFTA Guru programmes, to forming our board and committees, and participating in voting for our Awards

BAFTA

I chaired the fourth gamesUR conference, hosting talks from researchers and data analysts from across Europe.

In 2017 I project managed the establishment of Player Research’s second branch. Montreal is host to hundreds of game development studios, and a community of talented games user researchers.

Sporting a new venue and new visual identity, I chaired the gamesUR conference again in 2017. The Cavendish Conference Centre provided exceptional hospitality for a series of wonderful talks.

My talk on designing a playtest lab had a certain Jakob Nielsen in the audience. It was subsequently featured in the NNGroup article explaining the myriad differences between mainstream user research and games user research.

Sebastian Long from Player Research in the UK described his company’s playtesting lab: The observation room included a big projection display with reduced versions of 12 users’ screens, as well as a pushbutton switch for observers to select one of the 12 screens to be magnified. […] This need to alternate between surveying many peoples’ broad behavior and detailed attention to a single person’s specific interactions is rare outside games research.

Jakob Nielsen, NNGroup