'Mainstream' UX and Games UX - Alistair Greo, Player Research

oh yeah can you guys hear me okay just checking I have a projection problem when it comes to presentations cool alrighty so my talk is about the difference that I've encountered between while I'm giving a very bad description of mainstream UX and games UX this is me my name is Alistair I'm the guy in the top right and the other guy is here but he's decided to kick off just perfect timing and so who are you guys just quick show of hands how many always is in hello and how many UX professionals do we have here quick show of hands I'm assuming most of you okay how many students a few ok I'm going to try and tense you towards games we'll see how we go how many games UX professionals a few nice X's okay mostly speaking but you know good and so what make what gives me the right to do this comparison I'm going to quickly give you an overview of my work why I feel I'm fairly qualified basically I did five years in mainstream your works alright okay five years in mainstream UX and I've now done five years in games do it so just so that crossroads I'm becoming an old man I've hit ten years kind of start telling is one about why it's so interesting and shaking my stick at all the use and etcetera etcetera so I started off in 2006 as a very small ecommerce agency called ammonal I did websites just need commerce websites nothing but I was very proud to set up the first booper online store I did stores for elderly people with accessibility problems and obviously the Internet in 2006 that was a particular enjoyable challenge I also did fishing tackle and various other fishing equipment and all kinds of crazy things and then I joined where credible and you were credible about I know there are is one there's more owned up oh ok former criticals as well not even only up for that but I know you're here I can see you guys and so I was there for four and a half years and I worked on charity websites I worked with government I worked on e-commerce more I worked on insurance and banking in all kinds of things essentially so that was a great groundwork and I've got a very nice logo but I always remember them like that so 2007 over a different age so apologies if there's any current record of all that probably ruined just recreated anyway and then I went freelance 2011 or 2012 that's what I'm calling my transition periods so I spend a little bit of time doing games direct a little bit time doing mainstream Eurex dipping my toe in the water seeing how I found it and then I got offered the job at possible okay so the some of you guys have heard of it it's good and so if you happen and you like Harry Potter go to this website I'm claiming no responsibility for any user experience that you encounter once you get there now and if you use but I was around during the the launch and the month after that or whether I say the launch the the movement from beta into live so that was a particularly busy time stressful time but essentially there you go is allegedly the only place where you can buy the Harry Potter ebooks Harry Potter audiobooks on tap setting is an advert but yeah go there if you want to find out more that how it's hotter as well and then recently for this amount of time I've been at play research play with such people as one yeah and so that is a a UX or a user research agency entirely surfaced on video games and that's why I wanted to go there I wanted to do that more over the last five years I've worked on over a hundred games but quite a hit rate I've worked on and if you guys don't know these terms then why but I've worked on walking simulators strategy games match free mobile console VR touch just absolutely everything essentially I worked I was trying to work out if there's anything I'm missing and I think it's only simulation game it's the only genre I haven't really worked on and I enjoy obviously I'm still there I'm talking to you guys about it and so yeah that's essentially why I feel like I'm fairly qualified I've done a few things hopefully you guys will listen to me a little bit at least so moving from mainstream's against t-rex was a bit of a shock for me and I say that as a slight understatement it was a really significant shot the world of mainstream works it's massively different to the world of games works and here is what I think are the things I lost two things I gained four things okay and you can put any waiting you want them but I'm just trying to describe them to you so the first one the things I lost games UX is a lot less mature than mainstream your ex mainstream your ex been around for years I don't want to put date on it cuz someone will tell me I'm wrong but if in years and years and years games UX has been around since 2005 even to our to the recognizable standard so it's much much much less time to mature and that is reflected in the reactions that we get when we speak to developers there was much less buying there is much more aggression we don't need your ex our designers are too good to even think you needed why would I need this what a total waste of time okay very very friendly reactions but it's just because they don't know it they don't understand that it don't know what benefits you X offers that means because of this maturity because of this lack of understanding that you have lower budgets games cost millions and millions of pounds to produce in spite of this oh I know even and alongside this they are happy to spend millions and millions more marketing the game so you know when a big games coming out it is everywhere you can't get away from it and so they spent loads on it but they don't spend the money to make sure that the game is great to begin with and so that's what we're currently buffing battling against lower budgets lower trust lower expectation alongside this you won't count a little much less method variety so all the methods that you associate with UX because of these lower budgets you get less opportunity to the use to perform if you you know when you go into games UX so mainstream UX methods die we studies focus groups affinity diagram personas ethnographic research interviews these are really really rare and hard to persuade games developers to do little colleges here we have four games UX methods games you up games UX labs I think that Microsoft ID us play research and I can't remember but the third one is but you'll see a certain pattern hopefully you do they like to put lots of people in front of the game but they don't spend the detail to go in and really find out about it really hard to dissuade them even through one-on-one testing it's all about get 20 people in the room shuffle in front of the game Chuck them a questionnaire otters and get rid of them and move on and and so it's really really hard to sway ting to do diary studies to do the stone is the duty to daily benchvue the one provider I will add though it has got much better over the five years I've been in games which essentially was not possible to persuade them to do it with diary study it was literally impossible as soon as you said is going to cost this much and take this long they went oh yeah thanks joggin said has just emerged from a delivered today okay they go so service literally just emerged from a mind mashing diary study month-long nightmare but he has survived it but crucially he's done it and he's done it for a games development company very exciting user so it is getting better but it's just the maturity is just not at the same degree that will get competitor mainstream company the mainstream approach also the second thing that you lose the ability to talk about your work it's amazing how frustrating that can become games UX is so secretive we're talking about them sort of experience experiential products therefore it's something that if you have it spoiled for you you don't want it anymore it's like hearing the end of the sixth sense no one's asset you don't you don't want to no point watching your film once you know the end and so they the game companies go to great lengths to prevent any risks of anything like that happening to the point where it's really hard for us to talk about and share ideas methods and suggestions we can't do knowledge here as easily as mainstream york's mainstream UX is unbelievably open and that is an incredible strength but it has ideas can be shared methods can be reproduced them across the world games UX is much much more secretive so as an example I can tell you I work on FIFA 17 I'm not allowed to tell you what work we did on successor 17 I other examples of in the same company two people from different development houses doing the doing us not being allowed to talk about what they do even though everybody knew full well what games each of them were producing they couldn't submit through it they couldn't admit to which games they were producing even then we're working on it full-time and so this lack of communication occurs within companies not just without okay that's the sad stuff let's talk about some well I think more cheerful things what I've gained by moving from mainstream games games UX has more interesting research questions nervous laughter good I like that and we often flash always need to adapt old methods or create new ones and I'm sure you guys are always saying well we can do the same as well in mainstream UX a lot I won't say over a lot of your research questions will be are they able to perform this action are they able to buy something so task completion or transaction gains UX if you give a gate a true you exit again and say I want you to make that as usable as possible it's essentially a button that you press and it is win that's it there's no more the perfect UX for a game but it doesn't work for a game that that's obviously incredibly boring and so you've got to take the designers intent in with you at all times when you are assessing whatever you're assessing you constantly got to go okay that's hard but is that deliberately hard or is it annoyingly hard is that the right kind of difficult is it the right kind of challenge I mean user testing a puzzle game is an absolute nightmare because you sit there and you watch people get stuck it's that good quite often we're not entirely sure but it's a matter of thing it okay they're stuck here start the clock okay hopefully they should have fixed it in five minutes little wiener will come back it's that kind of level where you've really got to just take into account what they want what they need and then adjust accordingly and because UX in games is so fresh we are literally right now having to come up with methods and solutions that solve problems that designers are coming to us with nothing is fixed nothing is set in stone everything is open to creation everything is open to allowing you to put your mark on this tiny embryonic industry Gamzee works works with feelings I've worked on games that make you think about this it's really considering think about it long and hard I've worked on games that make you feel joyful I've made your games I've worked on games that really try to make you fear genuinely fear for your life five minutes okay oh and I love it I love that I love the fact that we're working with things left that are emotional and then generate emotions and the challenge of trying to work out whether the emotions that play is a feeling when they're seeing it on what you're trying to produce or if they're off or if they're off why and how to get them back on track it's great I love it games UX and creatives have more passion another controversial one let me explain everyone who works in games and at least 20% more any point just by walking out the door and getting a job in any other industry if you're in games your eggs you are not there for the money you're there because you want to be you get to create you get to make something that you love and at the same time the people who consume these things they could do literally anything they want it's their spare time is precious to them and yet they're choosing to spend it on this product and the thing that you're working on it is a tremendous privilege and it's it's amazing here we have a picture of what basically people playing league of legends don't know if you know it League of Legends get 65 million daily active users as more people than live in the UK or about the same every day play this game that is a picture of six people which is a team there's five people playing a one person shopping just off site off shot there is five more and another person shouting there are 60,000 people in the stadium watching this happen they love it they go nuts for it it is bizarre to watch but if you can go I really recommend it because you just get completely caught up in it and it applies for so much like em there's another company called blizzards who I'm not sure if you guys know they have a conference every year just celebrating themselves and the games they made people go dressed up as the characters they they pay money to attend talks from the designers talking about why they made such and such design decisions not only that but you can pay 25 quid to be given the privilege to watch it stream people paying money to have that company basically stream an advert to them it's crazy but that's sort of it people love this kind of thing finally games UX always get the coolest technology I did put first so then I cut it out because military always gets hurt but after military it always goes the game so boring stuff keyboard mouse and controller stylus second screen motion control the we touch VR and upcoming we have eye tracking and we have biometrics at all going to games first and it produces amazing cool design challenges how on earth do you navigate the menu only using your hands and a really quite erratic let's face it motion control sensor and these colors design changes a very first in game and that's great I get to try and tackle them first I beat you guys to it and hopefully you can do a better later so there's our fourth two things have lost in the four things of games hopefully some of you at least a little bit curious about games UX it's a little bit more so if you're thinking about switching the challenge the biggest challenge I face methods crossover so I can do user testing interviews cyrus studies cards thoughts all kinds of things all those methods cross over but all your previous experience of solutions have to get chucked out the window you have to start from the bottom I did not expect that and certainly that certainly massively by surprise so I walked in five years ago going I know this I consider it I really didn't I had to start again I had to learn afresh but those methods so useful so useful because as I say games UX is less mature some people that even know these methods exist so if you just step in and go use these methods and really genuinely helpful so some other hot topics that we're tackling right now how do you measure fun engagement and emotion how you design an assess VR this great big new challenge as well as making sure that people aren't sick in it please make sure it's fun how do you make sure it's fun how do you test the narrative games can take years to produce if it sends out the story with terrible two years ago you want to know that sooner for how can you test narratives as soon as possible how do you monetize free-to-play how do you monetize at all so games in the past was just a box product here you go buy it 30 great thanks very much they get away nowadays everything's online you can do so much more microtransactions and free to play and everything it all that is entirely new to developers they literally don't have a clue they are making it up as they go along and so they need to learn it they need to learn it and they need your help to do that and then how do you personalize experience yep play with it too tiring funny funny that the sizing application date is this Sunday so please if you're thinking about it even if you thinking about it put your CV in and then if you tell out later you know full fun thank you much [Applause]

Channel: UXPA UK

Views: 8,614

Rating: 4.8441558 out of 5

Keywords: ux, uxpa, technology, tech, games ux, user research

Id: XxZeFJpqlDY

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2017