1st Edition

Games User Research A Case Study Approach

Edited By Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz Copyright 2016
    312 Pages 76 B/W Illustrations
    by A K Peters/CRC Press

    312 Pages 76 B/W Illustrations
    by A K Peters/CRC Press

    "Fundamentally, making games is designing with others, everyone contributing from different angles towards the best possible product. Conclusively, Garcia-Ruiz has chosen a collection of chapters that demonstrates several different aspects of working in gaming and working with others that stands to raise the level of expertise in the field."
    —Veronica Zammitto, Senior Lead Games User Research, Electronic Arts, Inc., from the Foreword

    Usability is about making a product easy to use while meeting the requirements of target users. Applied to video games, this means making the game accessible and enjoyable to the player. Video games with high usability are generally played efficiently and frequently while enjoying higher sales volumes.

    The case studies in this book present the latest interdisciplinary research and applications of games user research in determining and developing usability to improve the video game user experience at the human–computer interface level. Some of the areas examined include practical and ethical concerns in conducting usability testing with children, audio experiences in games, tangible and graphical game interfaces, controller testing, and business models in mobile gaming.

    Games User Research: A Case Study Approach provides a highly useful resource for researchers, practitioners, lecturers, and students in developing and applying methods for testing player usability as well as for conducting games user research. It gives the necessary theoretical and practical background for designing and conducting a test for usability with an eye toward modifying software interfaces to improve human–computer interaction between the player and the game.

    Practical and Ethical Concerns in Usability Testing with Children
    Gavin Sim, Janet C. Read, and Matthew Horton

    You Are Not the Player: Teaching Games User Research to Undergraduate Students
    Cynthia Putnam, José P. Zagal, and Jinghui Cheng

    User Testing in the Learning Games Lab: Getting Valuable Feedback through Frequent Formative Evaluation
    Barbara Chamberlin, Jesús H. Trespalacios, Amy Smith Muise, and Michelle Coles Garza

    Usability Testing of a Three-Dimensional Library Orientation Game
    Fatih Özdinç, Hakan Tüzün, Esin Ergün, Fatma Bayrak, and Ayşe Kula

    In-Game Intoxication: Demonstrating the Evaluation of the Audio Experience of Games with a Focus on Altered States of Consciousness
    Stuart Cunningham, Jonathan Weinel, and Richard Picking

    Tangible and Graphical Game Interfaces: An Experimental Comparison
    Zeno Menestrina, Andrea Conci, Adriano Siesser, Raul Masu, Michele Bianchi, and Antonella De Angeli

    Usability Testing of Video Game Controllers: A Case Study
    G. W. Young, A. Kehoe, and D. Murphy

    Business Models within Mobile Gaming Experience
    Claudia Lucinda Hernandez Luna and David Golightly

    NerdHerder: Designing Colocated Physical–Digital Games with Sociological Theories
    Yan Xu and Blair MacIntyre

    Testing the Usability, Usefulness, and User Experience of TableTalk Poker, a Social Game for Seniors
    Karyn Moffatt, Nicholas Shim, Jeremy Birnholtz, and Ronald M. Baecker

    Usability Testing of Serious Games: The Experience of the IHCLab
    Pedro C. Santana-Mancilla, Laura S. Gaytán-Lugo, and Miguel A. Rodríguez-Ortiz

    Biography

    Miguel A. Garcia-Ruiz is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Algoma University, Ontario, Canada. He earned his MSc in computer science from the University of Colima in Mexico and his PhD in computer science and artificial intelligence at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. He held a graphics techniques internship at the Madrid Polytechnic University in Spain. He has published scientific papers on usability and user experience in major journals, has written several books and book chapters, and has directed an introductory video on virtual reality. His research interests include educational virtual environments, usability of video games, and multimodal human–computer interaction.

    "Fundamentally, making games is designing with others, everyone contributing from different angles towards the best possible product. Conclusively, Garcia-Ruiz has chosen a collection of chapters that demonstrates several different aspects of working in gaming and working with others that stands to raise the level of expertise in the field."
    —Veronica Zammitto, Senior Lead Games User Research, Electronic Arts, Inc., from the Foreword