Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience
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Isbister's Better Game Characters by Design MK book was mentioned in a New York Times article, July 2007, called "Hey Man, Let's Play Video Game Dress Up."
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Computers used to be for geeks. And geeks were fine with dealing with a difficult and finicky interface - hey liked this - it was even a sort of badge of honor (e.g. the Unix geeks). But making the interface really intuitive and useful - think about the first Macintosh computers - took computers far far beyond the geek crowd. The Mac made HCI (human computer interaction) and usability very popular topics in the productivity software industry. Suddenly a new kind of experience was crucial to the success of software - the user experience. Now, 20 years later, developers are applying and extending these ideas to games. Game companies are now trying to take games beyond the 'hardcore' gamer market - the people who love challenge and are happy to master a complicated or highly genre-constrained interface.Right about now (with the growth of interest in casual games) game companies are truly realizing that usability matters, particularly to mainstream audiences. If it's not seamless and easy to use and engaging, players will just not stay to get to the 'good stuff'. By definition, usability is the ease with which people can employ a particular tool in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability refers to a computer program's efficiency or elegance. This book gives game designers a better understanding of how player characteristics impact usability strategy, and offers specific methods and measures to employ in game usability practice. The book also includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for usability and communicate results to higher-ups effectively.This book brings together the foremost experts in game usability, including great minds from Microsoft, Maxis, Sega, Ubisoft, Sony Online, Nintendo). It gives readers instantly applicable theory and tactics for designing game usability methods to improve and enhance games. Designers can pick methods to suit their needs (example Lazarro's 4 Fun Keys theory to help organize designer decisions). Contributors are at the vanguard of using physiological techniques (like measuring heart rate, tiny muscle movements, and so forth in players as they play) to measure success and game play experience - cutting-edge, future-facing techniques. Suggestions are included on selling usability to managers, and how best to report results.
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18 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Better for software engineering than for computer science
27 Sep 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I don't think the description of this book adequately addresses the question of who is the intended audience. As I see it, computer science is for people interested in the various computer related "systems" (databases, graphics, networking, operating systems, architecture, and so on). Software engineering, on the other hand, looks at the software development cycle, including gathering specifications, testing, quality assurance, human computer interaction, and so on. This book seems geared toward this latter, with chapters addressing such topics as:
* Physiological Measure for Game Evaluation
* Organizational Challenges for User Research in the Videogame
* Heuristic Evaluation of Games
Written by a variety of authors, each chapter offers experience- and research-based advice on improving video games, but the advice seems aimed more at the software engineer or the video game company CEO than at the programmers in the trenches. Indeed, one of the chapters is actually an interview with such a CEO, in which he discusses the importance of usability and design standards.
This could be a good textbook for a software engineering course, or even for the programmer interested in stepping back and looking at the "big picture" of video game usability. My only disappointment was in not realizing in advance the intended audience.
* Physiological Measure for Game Evaluation
* Organizational Challenges for User Research in the Videogame
* Heuristic Evaluation of Games
Written by a variety of authors, each chapter offers experience- and research-based advice on improving video games, but the advice seems aimed more at the software engineer or the video game company CEO than at the programmers in the trenches. Indeed, one of the chapters is actually an interview with such a CEO, in which he discusses the importance of usability and design standards.
This could be a good textbook for a software engineering course, or even for the programmer interested in stepping back and looking at the "big picture" of video game usability. My only disappointment was in not realizing in advance the intended audience.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Interesting read, but scattered focus
5 Oct 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This is a book of articles written by industry professionals. I'm not a fan of books that are a collection of articles because chapters feel disjointed and the focus is lost leaving myself, as the reader, not satisfied by the continuity of the content. There are a few interesting chapters that leave you wanting more information from that particular writer, but of course the next chapter is written by someone else. I think the information is interesting and useful as a general or introduction to usability issues in gaming read. If you are looking for something with more meat and instruction, then you should look elsewhere.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Good for a survey of topics, but lacks applicable content
9 Aug 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This book is a collection of chapters written by different authors. This style is commonly used in research communities as a way to pull together a set of influential members of a field to comment either deeply on individual topics or broadly on the effectiveness of trends. These sorts of books are handed to new graduate students or used in survey courses.
Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problem as all of these types of books: if you actually want to learn about the topic, there's little meat. It's not going to teach you how to do game usability experiments - it provides opinions on which of the different methods worked better or worse in individual projects. This book is not going to provide detailed steps or guidance on any usability efforts you'd like to roll out in your company - it'll just talk about who's doing it already.
However, if you're just looking for a survey of the field or are willing to chase down the references in each chapter to find materials you could put to work to do your own usability studies or interpret their usability results, this book is fine. There are also some excellent later materials talking about some of the interesting tricks that have been used in specific games (i.e. heat maps showing where people tend to play and tend to avoid going on levels).
Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problem as all of these types of books: if you actually want to learn about the topic, there's little meat. It's not going to teach you how to do game usability experiments - it provides opinions on which of the different methods worked better or worse in individual projects. This book is not going to provide detailed steps or guidance on any usability efforts you'd like to roll out in your company - it'll just talk about who's doing it already.
However, if you're just looking for a survey of the field or are willing to chase down the references in each chapter to find materials you could put to work to do your own usability studies or interpret their usability results, this book is fine. There are also some excellent later materials talking about some of the interesting tricks that have been used in specific games (i.e. heat maps showing where people tend to play and tend to avoid going on levels).
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