Vertical Slice are back by popular demand!
Hot off the press is the September (what happened to August?) edition of the prestigious Edge magazine. Each month they have a two-page spread on the ‘latest developments in development’ and for Edge 218 they have decided that our work was interesting enough to cover. Read all about how Vertical Slice’s pioneering approaches to video game usability is changing the face of the development process in ‘Codeshop’ on page 139.
That’s right, you heard, a studio profile on Vertical Slice can be found on page 146 of this month’s Edge magazine. You can see a delightful picture of the four of us smiling away and get a quick glance at what we do and what we have achieved.We’re quite possibly the smallest company to ever be featured in this section (the previous edition features Codemasters, with a workforce over 50 times the size of ours!).
Pick up Edge 216 in stores now!
Once again, the Vertical Slice wizards Graham McAllister and Gareth White have added their insight to another publication. This time they have a chapter in ‘Evaluating User Experience in Games: Concepts and Methods (Human-Computer Interaction Series)’.
Here is the abstract for the chapter:
“The first step in understanding the user experience needs of the video games industry is to ascertain current practice. The following chapter gives an overview of the game development process and provides background on the time frame and roles involved. We present case studies from three world-class development studios and show how the user experience is currently addressed during a game’s creation. The first case study with Disney’s Black Rock Studio details the development of their most recent racing game, Pure, and describes the usability testing which the developer believes improved the game’s Metacritic score by 10%. The second case study with Zoë Mode refers to several of their recent releases, Rock Revolution, You’re in the Movies, and games in the Eye Toy series. Special consideration is given to understanding and addressing players in a language appropriate to their background as gamers. The third case study with Relentless Software concentrates on the studio’s use of focus group testing and attention to the casual gamer demographic. In addition to showing real-world examples of current practice, this chapter identifies the contribution that HCI can make for user experience methodologies in the games industry. Recommendations are made for generally applying usability techniques earlier in development, and user experience testing later once a playable vertical slice is available. We conclude with some discussion of innovative methodologies and pose the need for a formalised framework for user experience in video game development.”
The piece is listed as chapter 7 in the book, which you can buy here and here. You can buy it from tomorrow
Following on from last month’s successful feature in Develop magazine, Graham has published the second part of his usability/development analysis is in the April edition of the prestigious publication.
The article, titled ‘Experience Points’ (again) is on page 40-41 and outlines the best strategy for focus testing games in the build up to release.
Develop magazine can be found in print or at develop-online.net.
This issue can be downloaded for free here
It features a detailed break-down of the importance of usability testing, among other interesting insights into the development/usability process
This issue can be downloaded, for free here
