We had a lecture with Steve Bromley a Games User Researcher who also has published two books 'How To Be A Games User Researcher' and 'Building User Research Teams'. This lecture was to inform us in the was of play testing, the dos and don'ts, the tricks and the main obstacles small teams like us will find, here I will document them and expand on areas I think are relevant.
In this blog post I will talk about four main points covered in the workshop:
Why do we run usability tests?
How to prepare a games usability study?
How to run a games usability study?
How to analyse and find meaning from a study?
Why do we run usability tests?
When making a game or product, you will have an experience you are working towards a specific thing you want the users/ player to experience and feel from what you make. when making games you may be wondering questions about the player and how they will interact with your game for example:
-What should they understand -What should players be able to do
- Where should the challenge be, and how should it be experienced
These work as hypothesises that you can work towards in making sure that the experience comes to fruition. The importance of you testing these things is because, as the designer you can become biased and impartial to the choices in your game. So getting a fresh perspective is the best way to see if you're true to you deign goals that you aimed for in there beginning.
During these usability tests it is best to observe all aspects of the play test, the game screen itself and the player because each of these things will show really key aspects to what the player is doing and how they are feeling. For example, if you see them smiling you know it is positive emotions being evoked from that point of the game.
This type of test can be used in research for lots various aspects:
- Level design
- Mechanics
- Tutorials
- Puzzles
- Enemy and boss design
Lastly it is important to understand when is the most important time to do these tests and why it's important to do that.
You get the most out of doing usability tests during the experimental segment of development, due to the fact you need others to test if your adjustments have worked. Then keep going while the game is being build to make sure the goals have been reached during project and to make sure that all is correct for the release of the game. Once the game has been released the chances are you don't need to keep doing the usability tests as players will be communicating their thoughts through reviews.