Firstly on 24-27th of August, Graham will be heading to the ‘Measuring Behaviour’ conference in Eindhoven, Netherlands. A couple of weeks later on September 9-10, resident Vertical Slicer Pejman Mirza-Babaei will be joining Graham to discuss his paper “Using Biometrics to better understand the players’ gameplay experience” at the ‘Future Game On’ conference in the romantic capital of Europe, Paris. Let’s hope they have a nice time.

Here is what you can expect from the talk:

“This paper introduces and explores a method that enables game user researchers to
identify those events in a game with higher impact on players’ feeling. This method using
physiological measures in conjunction with other user research methods (e.g. post-session
interview), can identify key gameplay moments that may go unnoticed if using traditional
methods only.”

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.

Titled Using Biometrics to Improve Player Experience, the talk will be an hour of fun and fascination and is scheduled for Thursday the 15th of July.

Here is what you can expect to hear about:

Biometrics objectively measures a player’s emotional response to your game, such as fear, excitement and boredom. By using biomedical sensors to capture events directly from the player’s body, insights can be revealed into how gameplay affects the player in the following ways: Excitation, Brain Waves, Muscular Tension, Heart Rate, Behavioural Analysis. Alongside the standard development and playtesting procedures, these techniques can be used to ensure that the design of the game and its desired effects are aligned with the actual experience the player is having. Video footage of biometric playtest sessions are shown, indicating exactly how games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 affect the player’s biometric responses in real-time, with simultaneous broadcasting of the game, the player and the biometric data. Key events are highlighted that have the most significant impact on the player’s experience, objectively showing which specific parts of the game are most evocative for the player, both negatively and positively.

Pick up Edge 216 in stores now!

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

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

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.”

http://gamesmethods.wordpress.com/

This issue can be downloaded, for free here

This is Joel, the new Community Manager at Vertical Slice. I’m here to organise all of our playtesting sessions, spearhead publicity and all sorts of other activities. Anyone looking to contact us about PR, advertising, media collaborations, our work, game trials or anything at all please don’t hesitate to contact me at joel@verticalslice.co.uk

It’s a good time to introduce you to the team too:

Joel, Pejman, Gareth & Graham

Graham McAllister – Director

Gareth White – Playability Researcher

Pejman Mirza-Babaei - Biometrics Researcher

Joel Windels – Community Manager

Topics included:

• The traditional development lifecycle and role of Quality Assurance for functional bug testing.
• Differences between QA and usability / UX.
• Risks posed when developing for new IP, audiences, distribution methods, controllers and interfaces.
• Problems with doing testing in-house, and using industry professionals or hardcore gamers.
• Our new best practice development lifecycle and early, iterative testing.
• The use of biometrics such as EEG, EMG, GSR (EDA or EDR) and HR (EKG or ECG) for tracking players emotional states including excitement and boredom.
• Our new methodologies for predicting review scores based on user testing.