Randy J. Pagulayan

Designing for fun: user-testing case studies

When we originally wrote this chapter, one of my goals was to establish some awareness (and possibly even some credibility) in two different directions. As psychology researchers born out of academia and the Human-Computer Interaction/Human Factors fields, very few of our research colleagues (if any) were talking about applying or adapting existing HCI/HF methodologies into the world of video games. Common conversations at that time revolved around silly debates for the appropriate sample size for a usability test as opposed to challenges that arise when faced with creating an experience that is ‘appropriately difficult’. This makes sense though, because why would an established field like HCI focus on unique challenges seen in video games when games weren’t seen as a legit form of computing? The idea of someone from a video games studio, publisher, or console maker showing up at a CHI conference was unheard of. At the same time, the video games world was largely unfamiliar with the techniques or approaches to user-centered design thinking that have matured from the 1980s up to that point. The closest anyone would come to user research was “playtesting”, which was still a term in the video games industry referring to bringing in your best friends to play your unfinished game in return for some pizza. In addition, anything that involved an actual customer was lovingly called a ‘focus test’ driven from marketing. Thus, we, at Microsoft, and a handful of others, straddled an interesting existential misery of not really fitting on either side of this equation. We were strangers in a foreign land.

The untapped world of video games

Due to fierce industry competition and demand for novelty, games are a fertile research setting for studying interface design, input devices, graphics, social communication and development processes. This SIG proposes to bring together researchers with a wide set of interests, to showcase and discuss their common research platform: video and computer games. We hope to educate both games researchers and interested attendees from the general CHI community. Small group discussions around game play stations will expose participants to the breadth of game genres that are being used by CHI researchers as a research platform as well as popular game genres that are currently untapped.

Beyond usability in games

Video games are an art form that combines traditional artistic endeavors such as the visual arts, story-telling, and music, with more modern technical and engineering achievements. At the center of this effort is the game designer who drives the creative vision and who decides what needs to be accomplished in the design and creation of the video game. At some level, we, as user researchers, can provide input at nearly every stage of the development process that is useful for design, but in the end, it is not up to us to design a game. Our role is to assist the designer in the facilitation of their game vision, then provide feedback to help shape that vision into something that users enjoy. Beyond previous statements made in the literature regarding the limitations of the traditional concept of usability for enjoyment or pleasure, there are certain concepts that we believe are important to address in the design of video games. These include, but are not limited to, fun, challenge, pace, learning curve, engagement, and so on [2, 3]. One of the biggest challenges for video games is taking these global concepts and deconstructing them into a real gameplay experience. However, this is where we make a clear delineation between the creation of the experience and the facilitation of the experience, by endorsing the view of Overbeek et al. that design should be left to designers, “For too long psychologists have led designers to make overly cogni-