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
Our very own Pejman Mirza-Babei is to lend his infinite expertise to the Games Research Seminar next week when he presents his paper at the conference, which is to be held in Tampere, Finland on 8-9 April.
Pejman has been working with Graham McAllister on “Using physiological measures in conjunction with other usability approaches for better understanding of the player’s gameplay experiences” which tracks the biometric responses between players of the games Haze and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Here is the abstract of the paper/talk: “In this study we capture player’s physiological measures during a gameplay session, to indicate micro-events that have caused changes in their body signals. At the post-gameplay interviews we ask participants to comment and describe their feelings on the selected events. The aim of this study is not to over-interpret physiological measures, but on using blips in measures to help identify key points in a game, which we then use to investigate further with the participant.This approach provides a method that can identify not only the negative user experience and usability issues but also the events which have a positive impact on player’s experience.”
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
Vertical Slice are pleased to announce that we are working with Relentless Software on their upcoming murder mystery game Blue Toad Murder Files. We are conducting the usability playtests for this episodic game available exclusively on the PlayStation Network in December.
Twitter: follow Vertical Slice (vsgr) and Blue Toad Murder Files (Blue_Toad).
