Making fun and engaging video games is hard, and with thousands of games being released every year, the competition is fierce. Although there is no known recipe for crafting successful games, some clear ingredients exist, which game developers can use to make their own successful recipe (or product developers who wish to "gamify" their app). User experience (UX) and cognitive science disciplines combined provide developers with those ingredients --across all types of games, platforms used, or audiences targeted-- to guide them along the development process. Experiencing a game happens in the player's mind. This is why understanding the human brain (especially its limitations) while it is perceiving and interacting with a game is paramount to accomplish faster and more efficiently your developers' goals.

This workshop proposes to delve into how the human brain works in terms of perception, attention, and memory (critical elements for usability), and offers insights on human motivation, emotion, and gameflow (critical elements for engaging games). Based on these elements, the workshop proposes a UX framework and UX guidelines during the different game development stages. The ultimate goal of this workshop is to provide game developers with tools to significantly improve the experience of the game they are developing, as perceived by their target audience, not only in terms of usability, but in terms of engagement. This workshop offers numerous examples, from video games and beyond, to illustrate each point (including examples from Fortnite, since the game UX framework covered in this workshop was used during the development process).

Note that this masterclass needs a minimum or 8-10 attendees to be maintained.

Content

This Masterclass has 2 main parts and a lighter 3rd part.

Part 1 - Cognitive Science (3 hours) - Introduction to cognitive science and psychology to understand how the brain works and, more specifically, how it learns. We will look into the capabilities and limitations of human perception, attention, memory, and motivation using multiple examples taken from video games and beyond. We will also cover the 3 main learning principles (behavioral psychology principle, cognitive psychology principle, and contructivism).

Part 2 - Usability and Engageability - (3 hours) Focuses more specifically on the User Experience (UX) framework you can apply when developing your game, and how it relates to the brain capabilities and limitations. We will break down game UX into ‘usability’ (e.g. signs and feedback, form follows function, minimum workload, accessibility...) and ‘engage-ability’ (motivation, emotion, and game flow) and detail the important principles within these 2 components that can make, in the end, a great difference for your player and how they will experience your game (for the better!). Usability is about the ability of a product to be used by humans, such as how to make it intuitive to learn and easy to interact with, relative to the brain capabilities and limitations seen in Part 1. Engage-ability is about making a game emotional and engaging, which implies a deeper understanding of human motivation and emotion. We will dive into extrinsic motivation (clear goals and rewards), intrinsic motivation (self-determination theory), emotion in design, and the concept of game flow. The “engage-ability” part covers how to successfully onboard players (i.e. first time user experience over, roughly, the first minutes to an hour of play) as well as how to keep players engaged over time, with a specific focus on player motivation. This section will provide participants with a set of ingredients to make their own successful video game recipe (those “ingredients” are relevant to any type of game or platform).

Part 3 - UX strategy (30 min to 2 hours) talks about user research and analytics, and how to measure what when, depending on what stage of development a project is at. This part can also touch on UX strategy and how to develop it both at a project and studio level. We will conclude with ethics considerations (dark patterns, potentially shady practices, and considerations about the so-called “attention economy”).

"Celia Hodent truly opened our eyes on how gamers perceive information and what drives them to play. Her excellent examples and game references sparked many conversations around our studio, ranging from UI layouts to player onboarding to how we encourage player retention. We look forward to bringing her back!" -Brian Allgeier Director of Experience, Insomniac Games

Audience

Anyone can benefit from knowing more about the brain and about user experience. This Masterclass will however benefit designers, artists, gameplay/UI programmers, producers, and junior UX practitioners even more.

Main takeaways

Understand the main characteristics and limitations of the human brain (in terms of perception, attention, memory, motivation, and emotion), and how they impact game development.
Learn what makes a game engaging (in terms of motivation, emotion, and game flow) and how to foster these components in your game.
Have a clear and concrete understanding of what having a UX mindset and developing a UX strategy entail.