Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods - Lirmm

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120 G. McAllister and G.R. White 7.4.2.3 Game Complexity and Accessibility Note that in the games industry, the term “accessibility” usually does not refer to disability as is often the case in the HCI community, but rather any player’s initial contact with a game, and especially so for casual games (see also Desurvire and Wiberg 2008). Throughout our text here, we keep to this meaning. Newing is keen to point out that while games should be open to play without having to read through complex instructions or manuals, having a degree of hidden depth behind the scenes is still important for the longevity of the title. Chequer sums up the issues by stating that games should try to avoid any issues that would block the player from play and should also provide interesting secondary systems and mechanics for advanced players. Fitzhugh goes on to point out the success of games like Guitar Hero which offer notoriously challenging difficulty levels for the most experienced players, but which also appeal to beginners on easy levels. Chequer reflects that in retrospect some of the minigames in EyeToy Play 3 required too much learning through trial and error before players could really experience them. In contrast, EyeToy Play Sports, which featured 101 minigames, lacked some of the depth but perhaps was more accessible to beginners. Finding the middle ground is where the art of balancing comes in, and we would suggest that usability and user experience testing provides a number of approaches to facilitate this. Chequer points out that the most accessible games in the Wii are relatively instinctive and easy for beginners to play. This can be observed in Wii Sports where most of the games are based directly on real-life actions that non-gamers are familiar with, such as swinging your arm for tennis, and which serve to give the impression of a transparent interface. The boxing minigame, however, is significantly less accessible due to its more abstract input mechanism which responds less well to natural movements. Another example of accessibility is navigation flow through menus. Proficient gamers are used to a certain set of conventions for menu screens, such as where to find controller options, etc. but observing non-expert players can reveal that this is a learnt association that may be at odds with the assumptions novice players bring with them. 7.4.2.4 Usability Tests During 2005, Sony employed a usability company to run tests for EyeToy Play 3 with children and families, which were observed by Chequer and others from the team. The results of the sessions were encouraging for the team both as a morale boost to show real players having fun with their work and as a keen insight into some big design flaws they hadn’t considered before. Unfortunately, these sessions occurred late in development as the game approached Beta and so the team didn’t have sufficient time to address some of the more significant issues. Newing mentions that the quality of reports from these sessions was very high, providing recommendations for the team in a non-prescriptive way. For the focus group sessions, reports also provided background on individual participants and interpretations for events
7 Video Game Development and User Experience 121 during play as well as a description of the overall mood. Finally, the large amount of video data gathered was invaluable for demonstrating and resolving problems with the game. 7.4.2.5 Changing Demographic Chequer comments on the development of the industry as a whole and points out that in earlier times the market was predominantly made of a small core of people who were experienced players, of which the game developers themselves were part. In those times, it was relatively easy for developers to make games they liked and be more confident that they would appeal to the market, as the team represented that market (for more discussion of the background and effect of these “cultures of production”, see Dovey and Kennedy 2006). Now with a broader market and games that are particularly intended to be played by less experienced players, the distance between the developers and market means that fewer assumptions can be made and more attention has to be paid to testing. Chequer describes observing his own mother playing a game (see also the “mum-factor” in the Relentless casestudy), who wanted to stop playing but wasn’t familiar with the convention that the “Start” button not only starts games but also stops them. These kinds of conventions can clearly be confusing to the casual audience who may need additional assistance and explanation. 7.4.2.6 Studio-Wide Quality Review Currently, Zoë Mode do not have an official mandate to conduct usability studies, though a new initiative in the company does incorporate usability techniques as part of their new studio-wide quality review, which also includes focus group testing and their standard postmortem of the development process itself. This is a relatively new initiative which was begun only a year ago, and which itself is currently under review. Under this process, qualitative comments about the development process are collated and summarised, then anonymously reported back to the team. Previously, only senior management were involved in the process of deciding whether a game was of sufficient quality to ship, but a new model for this process additionally involves members of the team. These include senior staff such as the discipline leads, but some people from other teams in the company are also brought in for a fresh perspective. Newing points out that internal reviews can be problematic, whereas bringing in external reviewers helps to provide fresh, impartial and unbiased assessment. We would agree and further recommend considering feedback from players external to the game development industry. 7.4.2.7 Postmortem Games finished in the previous 2–3 years have run postmortems, but not in a standardised manner that would allow the team to quantify and compare their successes and failures with previous projects. The definition of a standardised postmortem
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Human-Computer Interaction Series E
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Regina Bernhaupt Editor Evaluating
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For Philippe
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viii Foreword Chapter 3, Presence I
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x Foreword personality which evolve
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Contents Part I Introduction to Eva
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Contributors Regina Bernhaupt IRIT,
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Contributors xvii Manfred Tscheligi
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xx About the Authors Emily Brown is
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xxiv About the Authors Christina Ko
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xxvi About the Authors MIT Media La
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xxviii About the Authors Theft Auto
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Chapter 1 User Experience Evaluatio
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1 User Experience Evaluation in Ent
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Chapter 2 Enabling Social Play: A F
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Index A Advanced interaction games,
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