There were several interesting highlights throughout the week. I’ll go in chronological order. The Game Developers Conference 2012 took placed on March 5-9 in San Francisco, USA.

Usability Boot Camp by Veronica Zammitto and Paul Newton

We were very pleased with the workshop! We delivered a full-day workshop on games user research (GUR). We divided the activities into 4 main sections: starting with an introduction to usability and games user research plus explaining different methods and how all these are part of the whole development process. Which set the foundations for the rest of the workshop into GUR for pre-production, production, and post-production. We had a balanced between theoretical content on how to employ the different techniques and why, and hands-on exercises were attendees tried out the techniques themselves.

The workshop had a maximum capacity of 100 people and there was pre-registration. The workshop was sold out a couple of weeks before GDC. People kept coming the day of but due to room capacity they couldn’t get a spot. We should deliver another workshop next year, there is a high level of interest and need for know-how on usability and user experience for games.

Hands-on exercises during the Usability Boot Camp at GDC2012

On Tuesday March 6th, I actually “sneaked out” from GDC to attend the Games User Research Summit on Tuesday. This was a full-day event by the IGDA GUR SIG; there were great presentations with a lot of presence from the industry, including Valve, Bungie, Microsoft Games Studios, Sony, Disney, and Electronic Arts. I truly believe that the level of camaraderie in this discipline is the highest in the whole game industry. I think that a big component of that spirit is the strong academic background where sharing of knowledge is common practice. If you look at the profile from Microsoft Games Studios‘ people, they have MSc, MA, and PhD next to their names, or the like Mike Ambinder from Valve, or like yours truly at EA    This had been the 3rd GUR Annual Summit and the community keeps growing. I’ll write a post on this event.

From left to right, Bill Fulton (Ronin UX), Mike Ambinder (Valve), and John Hopson (Bungie)

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Player Motivation: Implications for Design and Player Retention by Scott Rigby (Immersyve)

• Rigby pointed out that intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of sustained engagement.
• Intrinsic motivation is autotelic, which is self-driven; whereas extrinsic motivation is instrumental, which serves to get something. However, a motivation model has more nuances than a being good or bad, more exactly the model is a continuum:

Continuum of Motivation

• This internalization of motivation is what gives strength to engagement.
• Needs: Three basic human needs have been identified across cultures, fulfilling these needs will tap into the deeper layers of motivation.
• Competence relates to mastery, which is how effective you are on your performance. Competence is developed through grow, and this links to game achievements and character development. But bear in mind that this growth has to be meaningful.
• Relatedness taps into our gregarious self. It’s about connecting with others. In games it can be to both other players and NPCs.
• Autonomy is about empowerment through new opportunities that make player wonder what to do next. The choices have to be meaningful to allow satisfaction.
• Satisfying these three basic needs enables the internalization process of motivation.
• External rewards can undermine intrinsic value, unless they support people’s goals.

Attention, Not Immersion: Making Your Games Better with Psychology and Playtesting, the Uncharted wayby Richard Lemarchand

• To me, this was the best talk of GDC 2012
• Lemarchand’s message was that immersion and engagement are concepts defined with difficulty, and therefore vague as a framework for discussing video game experience.
• I agree that such concepts posses multiple definitions according to different authors, which stirs muddy waters. For instance, immersion has defined as a factor of presence, the ‘being there’ which is closer to how Lemarchand refered to it during the talk. But also immersion has been identified as Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, closer to an effortless interaction with reduced sense of time and concern for self.
• Lemarchand proposed using the concept of attention instead of immersion. He argued that it is more concrete, it can be measured during playtesting sessions, and therefore more useful to game designers to action on.
• In video games, the trick resides in getting attention first, and then holding attention.
• Attention is also a game component, for instance micromanagement harassment in RTS games to make the opponent loose attention, or presenting information to the player in a way that it tracks attention.
• Maintaining attention requires pacing. Periods of vigilance should be followed by a restoration period. Such restoration can be achieved, for instance, by looking at nature landscapes or switching to another activity.
• Lemarchand pointed out to three aspects of games for grabbing and holding attention:
• Beauty: which refers mostly to aesthetics from an art perspective, such as astonishing images, , but also layout, harmony, and composition.  Beauty is great for grabbing attention but weak at holding it.
• Story: narratives have a social aspect that taps our attention. We are touched by recounting shared experiences or witnessing someone’s else fears, such us in games with rich characters. Story does a decent job at both getting and holding attention.
• Gameplay: as through the lens of the MDA framework, which understands games having Mechanics (rules), dynamics (interactions), and aesthetics (emotional responses). In more general terms, what happens with the system during the act of playing. Gameplay falls short at getting attention, but does an outstanding job at holding attention.

Lemarchand's game component for getting and holding attention

• Lemarchand explained how at Naughty Dog they deal with attention. When playing Uncharted players tend to look mainly around the center of the screen, secondarily to the bottom, and lastly to the top of the screen. Their knowledge on players’ visual attention comes from observing participants, however Lemarchand would like to use eye tracking. During playtesting, their participants focus on playing, they don’t talk, telemetry data is recorded. At the end of the session, they fill out surveys or have an exit interview.

The 5 Domains of Play: Applying Psychology’s Big 5 Motivation Domains to Games by Jason VandenBerghe

This great talk covered a topic the same topic that my master thesis: personality traits according to the Big 5 theory and how it informs us about what gamers enjoy playing. My approach was more focused on game mechanics whereas Jason’s is more on ‘domains of play’.

The Big 5 is a widely known personality framework defined by the following 5 traits, each of them is treated as a continuum:

1. Openness to new experiences: an imaginative person who embraces new ideas, as opposed to a more conventional person who prefers known situations.
2. Consciousness: relates to self-control, ranging from being well-organized and strong will to difficulty achieving goals.
3. Extraversion: social style, an extroverted  person enjoys large groups, being talkative. A more introverted person is not unfriendly but reserved and independent.
4. Agreeableness: an altruist trail, ranging from empathy and being helpful to a more suspicious and competitive angle.
5. Neuroticism: emotional stability, a person with higher neuroticism is prone to experience negative states, such as fear, stress, guilt, anger.

Now that you have a sense of them, check out the VandenBerghe’s slide which powerfully summaries each trait with a character (btw, I strongly believe this slide should be included in psychology books from now on):

Big 5 traits and representative characters

VandenBerghe elaborated 5 domains of play which mapped onto the personality traits:

1. Novelty (related to Openness): such as Madden NFL on the one hand, and Minecraft on the other.
2. Challenge (related to Consciousness): for instance, Lego Star Wars versus Splinter Cell.
3. Stimulation (related to Extraversion): like Flower against Just Dance.
4. Harmony (related to Agreeableness): from Street Fighter to Little Big Planet.
5. Threat (related to Neuroticism): starting inPeggle and finishing on Call of Duty.

As you noticed, each game taps on particular personality traits. The lesson is that depending on who or how many people you want to satisfy with your game you will have to enable gameplay components that taps on those traits.

VandenBerghe and colleagues continue researching to better understand how personality profiles shape what games we prefer to play. They employ a qualitative approach by conducting interviews.

What You Don’t Know IS Hurting You: How Aggressive User-Research Improved Resistance 3 by Drew Murray

Murray did an awesome job presenting a case study on Resistance 3 which covers how Insomniac Games is dealing on the Games User Research field.

It started by identifying 4 key questions when you’re going to do GUR:

1. Who are you testing? (differentiate between internal and external testing)
2. What aspect of the experience are you measuring? (Affect, behavior, or cognition)
3. What type of data are you dealing with? (quantitative or qualitative)
4. How are you collecting the data? (observation, metrics, self-report)

Murray also made a distinction between usability and playtesting sessions. Where the former were done to collect behavioral and cognitive data, and the latter to collect behavioral and affective data.

One of the dev team’s goals during for usability sessions of Resistance 3 was improving the shooting controls. They collected quantitative data on impact location of the shooting target, then visualized it to steer adjustments.

Lot of data from playtesting sessions was analyzed as metrics. For example, to review how popular the different weapons were or how difficult the missions were. Comparing results of sessions through time also provided with great insight about how successful (or not) the fine-tuning efforts were coming.

Murray underlined the invaluable information coming from usability and playtesting sessions and therefore how GUR activities have been done more often at Insomniac. One of his pieces of advice was to automate as much as possible the collection and analysis of data, but without forgetting to double-check results manually.

Finally, I really enjoyed his visualization on the progression of GUR work at his studio:

Visualization of GUR activity at Insomniac Games

It’s that time of the year again!

I’ll be delivering a full-day tutorial on games user experience,  usability at the Game Developers Conference 2012

Here is the description:

Speaker/s: Veronica Zammitto (Electronic Arts) and Paul Newton (Electronic Arts Canada)
Day / Time / Location: Monday 10:00- 6:00 Room 3024, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Game Design / Full-Day / Tutorial / All

Description:

This full-day workshop will focus on one of the most critical components of game production: the applied practice of game usability research. Using widely-established stages of game development, attendees will be exposed to hands-on exercises, group discussion, and practical analysis of user experience methods which are intrinsic to effective game design. After building a foundation of usability discipline, attendees will be taken from pre-production through post-production and presented with a wide variety of potential usability techniques such as think-aloud, heuristics, cognitive walkthroughs, direct observation, questionnaires and metrics.

In order to understand and create the ultimate user experience we must collect relevant data. This requires defining clear usability study goals and selecting the appropriate techniques through the different stages of development. During the workshop, we will discuss the pros and cons of different testing techniques and demonstrate how they fit best in relevant usability scenarios, continuously emphasizing how all these factors play a role in shaping a successful user study design. Working in groups, participants will embody many roles in the usability process. Through concrete exercises, attendees will explore in-depth responsibilities and tasks conducted by game user researchers, facilitators and observers.

Intended Audience: The knowledge gained in this workshop will empower attendees to carry-out their own usability studies and add appreciable value to the game design process. With this understanding, designers and game user researchers alike will be able to acquire actionable user experience data through rigorous procedures to ensure better informed decisions during the game development process.
Eligible Passes:  All Access Pass, Summits & Tutorials Pass

Permanent link to the description: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/6712/Usability_Boot_Camp

Game AIs

You have the chance to nominate your favorite, talented Canadian game developers.

http://www.talentawards.ca/

Who’s got talent in the Canadian video game industry?

Nominate your peers (or yourself!) for excellence in game development.
Submit who you think should be recognized as the best of the best from the West to the East coast of Canada.

Nomination deadline is this Friday, September 2nd.

Everyone in the industry is encouraged to nominate their peers for a Talent Award in one of the following categories:
- Animator of the Year
- Audio Professional of the Year
- Designer of the Year
- Programmer of the Year
- Producer of the Year
- Visual Artist of the Year
- Emerging Talent

Nominations are free and you can nominate as many people as you like.

The full rules, instructions and the nomination form are available via:

http://www.talentawards.ca/site/en/categories/nominations

Excellent talks and time to network with your peers.

See you there!

—————–

When: Tuesday August 30th, 6:30pm to 9.00pm
Where: Vancouver Film School (VFS), 88 East Pender St, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Why:  – Social Mixer  6:30-7:30pm  &  Two Talks starting at 7:30pm

Talk 1: “Shifting the Focus”
As video games continue to mature both audience demands and game productions are becoming more complex. This talk will propose a shift in our definition of design to become more oriented towards user experience. In doing so we can better understand our design motives, encouraging holistic design practices. It will discuss what these practices are, and how they can help us to create more meaningful experiences.

Speaker: Mitchell Lagran is a passionate game developer whose career has taken him through everything from casual to indie to AAA development. During his time in the industry he has held numerous positions, including Environment and Effects Artist, Level Designer, Game Designer and Scripter. He is particularly interested in the future of Interactive Design and feels that video games are just beginning to show their true potential.  He is currently working as a Designer at Relic Entertainment on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.

Talk 2: “How to Make Your Team Ten Times More Effective: Twenty Years of Monkey Juggling”
Building software is like juggling monkeys; and not highly trained circus monkeys either. These are vicious, wild monkeys – and they
don’t like being juggled. After twenty years, Philip Harris has more than his fair share of bites and scratches. These are the lessons he’s learned along the way as he’s fought to build effective teams and great games.
The best development teams are ten times more productive than the worst. In this talk, Philip Harris has condensed twenty years of
development experience into a series of rules to help you make sure your team is one of the best and unlock that extra potential. As a
special bonus, the talk will end with a foolproof recipe for creating a great game, every time.

Speaker: Philip Harris has been developing software for more than twenty years and has worked on over thirty products. Most of that time has been spent leading game teams at companies like Codemasters and Electronic Arts, as well as several years running his own development studio. As a freelance journalist, he has written for such enigmatic magazines as EXE, CGI and WTJ. Philip is currently a Group Technical Director at Electronic Arts in Burnaby, Canada where he is responsible for the technology used to build such titles as NHL, Fight Night and SSX. He has also worked as security for Darth Vader.

RSVP: On Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=263704016976112

On LinkedIn: http://events.linkedin.com/IGDA-Vancouver-Meeting/pub/756654

Workshops: November 28, 2011

Vancouver, Canada

Proposal Submission Deadline Extended: July 25, 2011

ICIDS is the premier international conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS), bringing together researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of fields to share novel techniques, present recent results, and exchange new ideas.  ICIDS 2011 will be held in Vancouver, Canada from Tuesday, November 29 to Thursday December 1, 2011.

Enabled by the advent of interactive digital media, Interactive Digital Storytelling redefines the experience of narrative by allowing its audience to actively participate in the story. As such, IDS offers interesting new possibilities for games, training, and learning, through the enriching of virtual characters with intelligent behavior, the collaboration of humans and machines in the creative process, and the combination of narrative knowledge and user activity into novel, interactive artifacts.

Within the ICIDS 2011 framework, researchers and practitioners are invited to participate in affiliated workshops/tutorials, which will be held on Monday November 28, 2011.

Workshops

We invite proposals for practical, hands-on workshops from practitioners, professionals, and academics in the interactive digital storytelling field. We particularly welcome workshops which encourage interaction between participants, or provide insight into professional practices. All workshops must be conducted in English.

Proposal Format

All workshops proposals must consist of two documents: an extended abstract (two pages maximum in LNCS format) and an information sheet (plain text).  Proposals must be in English.

a) Extended Abstract: This component of the submission must follow the Lecture Notes in Computer Science format, and be a maximum of two pages long. Extended abstracts of accepted workshops will be included in the conference proceedings. Ensure that the following sections are included:

• Workshop objectives:
  • Think in terms of knowledge gain, expected outcome, and take away.
• Complete workshop description:
  • Elaborate on the foundations of the workshop and the main activities planned.
• References

b) Information Sheet: This document should contain more information about the organization and rationale of the workshop. No LNCS format is required for the information sheet (plain text is fine), but it should cover the following sections:

• Intended participants:
  • Who is your main intended audience? Mention what skills or background (if any) the attendees should have to fully benefit from your workshop.
  • If appropriate, indicate maximum number of participants that will be required to effectively deliver the workshop.
  • Include a 250-words call for participation that would be used for promoting the workshop.
• Workshop time:
  • Indicate how much time you would need to effectively deliver the workshop, from a minimum of 2 hours to a maximum of 6 hours. You can also think in terms of half or full day workshops. Include a tentative program with your activities.
• Materials needed:
  • Indicate if you would need supplies, equipment, AV, or specific furniture to run your workshop; we will do our best to obtain the supplies that you need.
• Workshop Organizers:
  • Include a short bio for each workshop organizer (250 words max), and their contact information.
• Any other relevant information:
  • As needed.

Submission

Send both the extended abstract and the information sheet to: vzammitto@ea.com

Important Dates:

• Proposal Submission Deadline: July 25, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance: August 12, 2011
• Camera-ready Copies Due: September 12, 2011
• ICIDS 2011 Workshops:  November 28, 2011

Questions? Contact the Workshops Chair: Veronica Zammitto, vzammitto@ea.com

GDC ’11 is just one day away!

This year I’ll be giving a talk at GDC on Game User Experience.

Here is the description:

The Science of Play Testing: EA’s Methods for User Research

Speaker: Veronica Zammitto (Electronic Arts)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 9:00-10:00 Room 3006, West Hall 3rd Fl.
Track / Format: Game Design / Lecture

Description: Playtesting is an aspect of the game development process that is gaining more recognition. It contributes to a better understanding of gamers, and provides information to developers that in turn are transformed into design decisions. This talk focuses on the newest methods for identifying gamers’ emotions, attention, and in-game behavior. From the broad array of techniques in the User eXperience (UX) field, we will address scientific methods that have been employed at Electronic Arts for assessing player experience in a more objective, reliable, and continuous way, such as employing eye-tracking, psychophysiology, and telemetry.
Takeaway: Attendees will gain knowledge on: new game user experience techniques (eye-tracking, biometrics, telemetry), identifying the concrete information these techniques provide, assessing the suitability of these methods according to their needs, and how to capture an emotional profile and engagement level of players.
Intended Audience: This talk is intended to people involved or interested in gaming user experience and playtesting. There is no mandatory pre-requisite, but previous knowledge on playstesting techniques would be beneficial.
Eligible Passes: Main Conference Pass, All Access Pass of the Game Developers Conference.

Post Event Update: Here is link to the GDC’s Vault where you can find the presentation slide-deck:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014552/The-Science-of-Play-Testing

Enjoy!

There was a good variation of talks covering different aspects of gaming:

• The first keynote was Ed Fries who gave a very inspiring, motivating talk on the beauty achieved through constrains. He started with a metaphor between the evolution of ancient base crafting and the game industry, he pointed out how the limitations in the crafting were setting the foundation of styles in the production of such beautiful pieces. The key point is that for creating beauty it is necessary to understand the limitations of the medium. In order to exemplify how comprehending limitations are critical for producing games, he showed his own work “Halo 2600”(click on the link to play it). It’s a version of Halo that he wrote for running on an Atari 2600.

• Greg Boyd is an attorney who specializes in the digital media field. He gave a presentation on intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights; neat content about how to protect your content, when to use and not to use others’ material. He even condensed the info into a chart, and he would smack anyone who would yawn during the lecture. Even after such announcement, someone yawn :-O
• I’m an avid RTS player, and there is an upcoming game that promises to challenge how RTSs are played: Achron. The new aspect that this game brings is time travelling, yes, time travel in an RTS game. That’s twisted!  Chris Hazard gave a talk on mathematical aspects on balancing games while keeping in mind that the game still have to be fun.
• Andrée-Anne Boisvert from Ubisoft Quebec on gave a talk on playtesting. She explained the importance of in-house playtesting, and quick turn-around to the development team. They employed the concept of persona to define a fictional end user, and rapid playtest with only 1 or 2 objectives; this approach helps to keep the focus on the most urgent matters, and refresh updates with the new data. Playtesting is done by the usability people themselves or others (developers, tester, end users), the number of ‘testers’ is kept low for fast data processing, and because for usability purposes 5 participants are enough  for identifying usability problems (see Nielsen). The problems identified are hypothesis that are confirmed or rejected.
• With all the buzz around Kinect, Ryan Challinor from Harmonix presented the UI adventure they went through for the game “Dance Central”. It was really interesting to hear how UI designers working on Kinect products need to change the way they assumed people interact with devices. The gestural input changes a lot of the assumed rules. “Pushing air doesn’t feel good”. The UI work at Harmonix dealt with menu navigation, list of song, and selections. They also have the challenge of working with a new device that was still under development, thus glichty.  Ryan showed different prototypes of the UI, pointing out to strength and weaknesses of each iteration.

• Todd Northcutt from Gamespy talked about leaderboards and (pretty much) how you feel about you position on the leaderboards   He covered how ‘high scores’ were actually a local competition, for instance at the arcades or your family early consoles. At home you would know and recognize whose those three letters were, and that was an incentive to beat your brother, your cousin or the neighbour. With the pass of time and the millions of gamers, some leaderboards became absurd: you’re # 3,526,489! :-/  So, the point is how leaderboards are changing to be meaningful again, which is going back to its origins. For instance, in StarCraft your rank is segmented into small clusters with people or similar skills, you can make your way through the ladder. Other strategies involve to track multiple aspect of the player, for instance areas explored, guns own, skills levels, pets collected, etc, the idea is that then you can have multiple leaderboards on multiple aspects, and users have more chances of being first at something. It sounds a little bit cruel but it’s the true. We want to be number one, at something, at anything! So, it’s a way of giving recognition to players on diverse aspects of the game.  Another leaderboard trend is to provide context, such as a leaderboard of only your friends, or of those in your same physical location (this is again going back to the origins), those who you know, which increases your interest on the leaderboard, and your desire to beat them! Lastly, Todd mentioned that leaderboards shouldn’t be kept forever, they need to be flushed out to keep the competition fresh.
• I presented the work done at Electronic Arts on user experience using psychophysiological techniques. Using sensors that measure facial muscle activity and galvanic skin response, it is possible to translate the data into emotions. Plus, by employing eye tracking, you can see where players look at on the screen.

As you’ve read the summit had different interesting talks, there was also an expo floor.

MIGS 2010 Expo Floor

Montreal is an outstanding city. It’s amazing from multiple points of view: culturally alive, great public transport, friendly locals, excellent food, and a motivated game industry.  You can’t go wrong with Montreal!

PAX lasted three day (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), there were talks, panels, workshops, rooms for gaming, and the expo floor where hundreds of companies were featuring their latest games. All this took place in Seattle, Washington, USA.

PAX banner by the convention center

PAX ’10 sold out all badges a couple of weeks before the event, and it was indeed very crowded. People would queue for hours in order to have a spot for the keynote, or play one of the hottest games. Talking with other PAX attendees who have been at several PAX editions, it was noticed that the number of people have rocketed. The Washington Convention Center seemed small for all the flocks swarming the floors. The ‘big’ events such as keynote, concert, and closing ceremony happened at the Benaroya Hall but there was not enough space for all the PAX attendees, and a lot of people were left out. It seems that PAX organizers need to resolve the ratio of people-available space.

Benaroya Hall

Panels and talks covered different topics, always leaving time for Q&A which made things more dynamic, hearing the avid geeks’ thoughts and creating a more intimate atmosphere. From all the panesl, I’ll highlight “We Study Games…Professionally: Academic Research and Game Studies”. I was really happy that such panel took place at PAX. Christopher Paul (Seattle University), Mark Chen (University of Washington), Nathan Dutton (Ohio University), Todd Harper (Ohio University), and Shawna Kelly (University of Southern California) presented on overview of their work and talked about how the game studies field is evolving. The room was completely full, and people were eager to know more about how studying games works.

"We Study Games…Professionally" Panel

Volunteers at PAX kind, cheerful and willing to help, they are called “Enforcers” which makes things even more hilarious. Wearing kilts was quite popular at PAX.

The expo floor was full of games ready to be played (plus your willingness for queuing), demos were also given often, flashy lights and music. It is a truly a never-ending source of data for us, the game user experience folks. It was really interesting to see how fast or slow people would pick up a game and be able to start playing, if they would stay there until the exhibition staff will kick them out or if they would sneak out while trying to be polite. I’ve to run a study there next year!

The final for the Omegathon was duelled with the Claw, a very exciting ending.

Is your personality playing a role when it comes to choose what games you prefer?

Would people with different personalities prefer different games? If so, which games?

These are the questions that the work “Gamers’ Personality and Their Gaming Preferences” answers.

This work explores that people with certain personality traits would prefer certain video game genres. The motivation is to contribute to demographic game design by identifying gamers’ personality profiles in order to better satisfy their needs and enjoyment. A Gaming Preferences Questionnaire was developed and validated to identify gamers’ preferences. The NEO-FFI questionnaire based on the Five Factor model was selected for measuring gamers’ personality traits.

Data from 545 participants was analyzed by multiple linear regression. Eight game genre models were found statistically significant, and accounted for 2.6% to 7.5% of gamers’ preferences for game genres based on personality factors. The relevant personality traits of the models matched game elements of the genre. This work shows that a refined itemization helps to begin to understand the psychological human complexity that drives players’ preferences.

Keywords: personality; game elements; game preference; genre; demographic game design.

Download the file here