This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast.
Like any other industry, UX has its ebbs and flows.
New technologies bring lots of excitement and promise,
and new problems bring a lot of uncertainty and trepidation.
There is, however, one corner of the UX world that stays steadfast in its dedication to fun.
Games.
Games are powerful in how they enable us to travel to new worlds, try new things, learn new skills,
and even build better relationships with the people we care about.
Working in gaming might sound like, well, fun and games, and it is,
but there is more to gaming than meets the eye or the screen.
To give us a glimpse behind the curtain, we spoke with Steve Bromley.
Steve is a games user researcher who spent much of his life writing about UX and games,
and how to grow as a researcher in the space.
In this episode, Steve tells us a bit about how he got into the games industry,
what makes game interfaces different from conventional user interfaces,
and how teams should think about gaming and gamification in order to make better design decisions.
Steve, welcome to the show.
I'm really excited to have you on because obviously we have interfaces and user experiences in every industry,
but games are this really unique corner of our industry that I think doesn't get talked about enough.
So I'm really excited to hear a bit about your story.
So I guess on that, what is your story?
Like, how did you get into games user research?
Because it sounds like such a fun place to be.
Yeah, of course. And yeah, I'm really happy to share my story.
It is a lot of fun, as you say.
So yeah, as I mentioned, my name is Steve Bromley.
I work with game teams to help them integrate games user research into how they work.
I recently wrote a book called How to Be a Games User Researcher.
It's under teachers, a lot of the practice of it.
But for my own journey, I guess it started very young.
Like many people working in games, it's a passion industry.
People do play games since they were young and get hooked into the idea of gaming.
And it builds from there.
When I was in my team, I worked on mods for the game Quake.
Mods are fan made, like expansions or fan made add-ons to existing games.
And then that was it.
I thought, oh, it's time to grow up, try to get a proper job, go and work in a bank or insurance, something like that.
I was very lucky that I ended up at a university just discovering that games user research was a thing.
One of the lecturers at Sussex University had a lab, an incubator lab,
which was working with industry to start to encourage usability testing in games and games user research more broadly.
And both through that lab, I got some experience of actually working with some game studios during my academic work, doing my masters.
I also, because I realized this was a thing in a direction, a thing you could do,
started reaching out to indie developers to say, I'm really interested in games user research.
I'd like to help out. Can I review your game? Can I spot some usability issues? Can I help?
All of that kind of coalesced into my first real job in the industry.
I was very lucky enough to join PlayStation's user research team in Europe.
I joined as a junior researcher and in my time there got to learn and grow from the experience team,
eventually leading research studies for the big titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, for their PlayStation VR games and the hardware.
And then just for fun things like Sing Star, the singing game, Little Big Planet, a huge variety of titles.
It's been really nice. And I'm really lucky that I've been able to continue that experience of working with game teams ever since.
Wow. Okay. So basically, you fell in love with games when you're younger.
You find this way to contribute to the games industry in the form of mods toward that particular game.
And now you've gone on to find a way to make a living, making games better.
It sounds like the ultimate dream job. That's amazing.
So thinking back to what you thought working in gaming would be like compared to now, how you perceived the job then,
how did reality hold up to those expectations?
Yeah. Great topic. And as you mentioned earlier, it is a lot of fun.
I guess people's imagination of what working games would be like is you play games all day and it's hanging out and sitting on a sofa and giving feedback on games.
It's not exactly like that, as you can imagine. It is a real job. You are doing real user research work.
So all the things that the user researcher would normally do, we're doing that.
But it had some pros and things that make it great. It also has some cons. I'll mention them too.
I guess the overarching positive, the pro about it is it is a passion industry.
Everyone is there because they care about games, because they've actively decided that they like games and they want to work with games.
And you see that in a couple of ways, both with the passion of your stakeholders and the colleagues that you work with.
But also actually as a researcher, you see that in your research sessions.
I imagine if you're working for an insurance company and you're bringing in a participant to test a new flow for signing up for insurance,
the person's there because they're being paid some money and it's not, obviously they're having the right time,
but it's not the most exciting thing they're going to do that day or that week.
In contrast, when you're bringing in a gamer who loves the previous games in the series,
they're coming in to play a game that hadn't been announced and they're super excited about, that is a really positive energy.
That's probably the most exciting thing that participant will be doing that month or that year.
And that energy just comes through because of that is an industry that people are very excited and enthusiastic about.
You see a lot of people consider it also as career switching.
So after they've become disillusioned with working under the industries, they think, OK, I want to do something I care about and I care about games.
So obviously there's a lot of positives about working in games, but it's not all good news.
And there are some downsides compared to other industries.
I guess the flip side of it being a passion industry is because of that, often you will be paid less for working in games
than you would if you were working in insurance or banking or especially less than big tech.
If you're going to go to Facebook or Twitter because they know that people want to work in that industry,
they can charge less for user research services, for example.
Another challenge that is very interesting is game development is quite a unique project management environment as well.
They often have very set launch dates where we know this has to come out at Christmas 2023, for example.
And because of the excessive marketing spend, there's no way that that date's going to slip.
It has to hit that date.
With games, a lot of the fun and what the game is is discovered throughout creation.
So there's not a strong spec up front.
And it's a very interdisciplinary production as well with the impact of what one game designer does,
influencing hundreds of other co-workers in other disciplines as well.
So it can be very difficult to launch something on time and to spec.
And for researchers, it can be hard for us to work out how do we integrate in that environment
and where can we best have an impact on game development.
Yeah, I bet that's incredibly challenging.
Not only are you working on these unforgiving timelines,
but you also have to deliver really high quality because you're releasing this game to a very expectant public.
And also, by the way, do this with hundreds of co-workers who are simultaneously making changes that are impacting your changes.
That's a really challenging environment to be working within.
And when I say unforgiving, I imagine that release date is pretty significant in the gaming world.
Because you have these big games.
They're often released either on the holidays or released on the holidays or released any other time.
It really doesn't matter.
But the point is, people put this date in their calendar and possibly are buying these games for other people.
So it seems like this process is pretty heavily dependent on the dates that do get set.
That's very true.
And because that is when all the marketing goes, the success or failure of that game is based on the quality of it on that launch day.
It's unlike some of the techniques you'd use in other types of tech.
That's releasing MVP and slowly build from there won't work in that kind of marketing heavy hit release driven environment.
And so, yes, it is challenging to apply typical user research approaches to what we do in games.
So I guess related to that, the user research process being pretty different in games compared to, say, conventional interfaces.
What are some of those differences?
Is it certain methods that you gravitate to a bit more or is it the criteria that you use to evaluate them is different?
Yes.
So I guess the most basic method that I think has got high level engagement involvement in games user research is just standard usability testing.
That's, as you know, as a user researcher, one of the easiest for teams to understand and see the value of.
And so that application of do players understand it?
Do they know where they're meant to go?
Do they know what they're meant to do is reasonably easy to apply to a gaming setting.
However, there are also unique objectives for games that I don't see in other sorts of tech that require some nuance or some thinking how to address.
As you mentioned earlier, it is a creative process.
And so part of what we're trying to do is create a specific emotional response or find something that's fun and discovering and measuring fun and comparing fun is quite a messy research challenge.
I see it feels quite quantity.
So you might fall to doing surveys or benchmarking different experiences against each other.
But a lot of the nuance about what makes something fun and what makes something not fun doesn't come out in a survey.
So at least a lot of mixed method studies of combining surveys with observation of people playing interviews, those type of things.
One of the more significant differences I see, though, and perhaps an area of growth for games in the future is outside of games.
As you know, there's a huge amount of value in discovery research, understanding user needs, understanding opportunities, reframing problems that they have as here's some software we're going to make to fix those problems.
Because games are a creative medium, there's also a lot of cultural understanding that it's art and how do you apply discovery research to the field of art.
If you were painting the Mona Lisa, what discovery research would you want to do before you paint the discovery research?
It's not immediately clear how that applies.
I don't think it's not possible.
I think there is a huge amount of potential for us to understand the context in which people are playing games, their motivations, their needs from that.
But that direct application of let's look for problems that people have and then turn those into opportunities doesn't translate well to games.
And isn't part of the practice that I see a huge amount of so far.
You know, it's funny you mentioned Leonardo da Vinci, because in a way, he absolutely was a researcher.
But you're right, like in a creative medium like art or like gaming, it can be hard to define discovery goals.
Now, to be fair, I do think discovery research is incredibly important and valuable, even in gaming, and especially when you're applying it to specific problems to solve.
Now, it's easy to imagine something like, oh, someone renewing their passport.
But when the problem is broader or less defined, like reaching someone emotionally or inducing some form of entertainment, like that introduces some really difficult questions.
Like what even is entertainment and what is fun?
Maybe those are two deeply philosophical questions that we may not have time to answer on the podcast.
But or let alone life, you know, but how do you define what is fun within the context of a game?
Yeah, and it's extremely challenging, right?
Because you could look at an academic answer or like a hypothetical answer, which is, well, let's get game designers to define the emotional response thereafter.
Let's introduce a quantitative measure to see if we're getting that response.
And then let's just keep putting things in front of players until we see that.
But in real life, that isn't how game development works. Game developers don't have a strong understanding of what emotional response that they're trying to create.
A lot of it is just found through looking at player reactions, looking out for interesting things and then saying, OK, cool, I like that thing.
Let's make more of that happen.
So it's not a thing that's easy to put down on paper or easy to define.
There's an interesting interplay for us as user researchers where a lot of that practice of finding the fun is what game developers have been doing forever since the first games existed.
They have been playtesting games and seeing how people react and working out what is fun.
And then the chance for us as user researchers is, can we apply more rigor to that? Can we apply more reliability?
Can we help that process? But that process is going to happen anyway with or without us.
Yeah, I can imagine the process happening without user researchers is not ideal because you may end up with a game that's not usable and that's a problem.
But I can also see the tension in a way because you have these games where the goal is to entertain and a large part of entertainment is unpredictability or surprise.
And when you think of most conventional interfaces, unpredictability or surprise is not necessarily something you want.
You might want reliability. You don't want bugginess.
And so the same holds true for games, obviously.
But there does seem to be this tension between ease of use and intentional difficulty.
What comes to mind is like soccer or the game of football as literally everyone else but the US calls it.
But basically football, soccer is fun because you have this ridiculous constraint, which is you can't touch the ball with your hands.
That makes the game so much more interesting compared to a game where you can kick, use your hands, do whatever you want, right?
That constraint makes it a challenge. So how do you negotiate the balance between ease and challenge?
I think that's a really nice question.
So obviously there is a place for consistency in heuristics and best practice.
Primarily that's often on the interaction and the interface level where you want players to see what's happening, to understand how to interact with the thing.
And so there really are, as I'm sure you're aware, heuristics around interfaces and about how to interact with the world.
Some of the work that I did when I was at PlayStation and one of the unique things about games as well, I think, is you do encounter new interaction methods reasonably frequently.
So new technology like virtual reality, like augmented reality, like motion gaming, if you remember when Wii was big a while ago, these are interaction methods that aren't defined.
And part of what we're doing as user researchers is working out what are those standards, what are those conventions and how should people interact with the world through these mediums.
Beyond that interface level though, I think it becomes a lot messier and I have yet to see a set of heuristics or best practice that really get at that deeper game design level.
Because a lot of it is, as you alluded to, surprise and discovered on the way and novelty is also a factor for what makes a game good.
The core root of the game design behind the interface often doesn't fit well with heuristics or best practice and as user researchers, again, become tremendously challenging.
We need to spend a lot of time with our game designers, understand their vision and then often just freestyle methods of, okay, how can we evaluate if this is meeting the emotional goals that you want from your experience.
So yeah, creativity is an important part for both researchers as well as game designers.
This kind of reminds me of this age old question, which is like, how do you know you've done enough quote unquote UX, right?
Like obviously there are heuristics like Jacob Nielsen's usability heuristics, which if you follow them, generally speaking, you're going to make better design decisions.
And that's what makes them so excellent and valuable.
And I know there are heuristics related to games, I'm sure, specific ones.
But what is a hard truth to swallow for any designer in any industry is the fact that good designs can't really be made by checking a series of boxes.
Like even with these heuristics, it's not like there's a clear cut formula to follow.
You can't just sprinkle 25 milligrams of surprise and 100 milligrams of difficulty.
There isn't a magic formula. A good design requires you to develop this sense of creativity and critical thinking and to use that.
And if you want to have that emotional connection that you're striving for, in many ways, it's a lot like building a real life relationship.
You want to build this empathetic connection, then surveys, they only get you so far.
And the observational methods that you mentioned can really help you connect on that deeper level and learn more about what might be driving someone to play these games in the first place.
And unlocking that knowledge can probably help you boost engagement or interest.
I think that's a really good point. Yes.
So this is sort of leading me to another question, which is about gamification.
I'm sure we have listeners here who are not working in the gaming space but are looking to use gaming principles as a way to boost engagement.
Like obviously gamification has some merit, which is why there are highly successful examples out there.
But there do seem to be some pitfalls in not implementing these techniques correctly.
What do you think are some common mistakes that people make or misconceptions that people have with gamification?
I think you're exactly right. There can be some pitfalls and there can be some naive implementations that don't result in that behavioral change you're trying to achieve from gamification.
There's a lot of prior research and best practice around players' motivation, both from the game industry that looks at, okay, some players are trying to be competitive, some are coming from a social angle.
Some are exploring and wanting to see the variety of experiences.
And I think what I've observed is sometimes teams just take those motivations, think, okay, that means we'll just add a leaderboard or we'll just add badges and then apply those to the software that they're working on.
What they've missed there is the actual game itself.
Just having those aspects around that do often feature in games but they aren't the core game experience doesn't make a game.
No game is just the badges or just the leaderboards.
You still need that core loop of I'm doing a fun thing, I'm getting a reaction I understand, I feel like I'm growing that a lot of games are based around.
There's a really nice book called A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raf Costa.
And his theory about what fun is, is its idea of hitting a challenge, not being able to overcome the challenge, learning something new, then applying your learning to do something you couldn't do before.
And I think that might well be the root of what's fun.
And a lot of these experiences are missing that core loop of, okay, where is the challenge and where am I growing and how am I advancing from that?
Now, it's not impossible to apply that gamified experiences and learnings from games to apps and traditional software.
A really good example is Duolingo, which, yes, it has leaderboards, yes, it has badges.
But behind all of that, it does have that core loop of growth and being able to do things you couldn't do yesterday and feeling like you are being challenged and you're overcoming that challenge.
And I think that's what a lot of software is missing.
They see the badges, they see the leaderboards, they think, just put that on, with missing the actual core loop of what makes games fun.
My recommendation, I guess, to teams who are working on other types of software, but looking to understand how to gamify it or how to make it more fun, is this is an experimental and iterative process.
There's a lot of techniques from game design or from games user research to find the fun through prototyping, iteratively assessing, is that prototype landing?
Are people understanding it? Are they able to do it? Are they enjoying it?
And then building from that core prototype up to a full experience is probably the more successful approach to go about gamification.
It definitely seems like there's this core loop or some deeper motivation to improve or grow yourself as a person or to be better in some shape or form.
That's what ties together these games and gamified experiences.
If anything, this sounds like it's even more important to do that than to use the gaming components themselves.
To achieve that emotional connection is more crucial than the points, badges, and leaderboards, which on their own are probably helpful, but not that helpful.
So with that said, this idea of personal growth, I don't know if I feel a sense of fun by encountering an obstacle like filing taxes.
And even if I were to learn more about taxes in the process of improving or fixing my mistake, I don't know that I'd feel enthralled by that.
So are there certain industries that maybe lend better to gamification than others?
Yeah, I think the reason why it works so well in Duolingo is because it is about learning and growth.
And so I would look for other industries that do require someone to learn something or be able to do something that they weren't doing before.
Any sort of e-learning is a direct comparison.
I'm sure there are other industries where people do, where users have to do things they couldn't do before.
Training is the same as e-learning.
But yeah, I think looking for that is the key to unlocking.
There's potential for gamification here.
Yeah, I can definitely see the education or learning space to be really an excellent case for using these methods.
It's funny, you know, now I mentioned taxes not being fun.
But then again, I could see some value in growing financial literacy or financial savviness, like that being a potential thing that I might find fun or satisfying.
Or maybe even thinking of health and fitness goals, like you're developing skills or endurance in this case.
Like maybe you want to run a distance, like a half or full marathon for the first time.
Or you want to run faster than a certain time.
Like there's a clear constraint being abilities, maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but abilities and a clear goal that needs to be overcome, right?
A distance or a time.
And it seems like being able to center an experience on constraints and goals is often what drives that effective gamification.
I think you're right. I think health and fitness are a perfect example of where this would work really well.
Yeah, it certainly seems like there are plenty of ways to bring gaming into the work that we do, even if we don't personally work in the gaming industry.
But let's just say we're thinking about it. Maybe we're interested in transitioning out of our non-gaming industry into gaming.
Do you think there are certain experiences that people need to have to make the transition?
What advice could you give to those folks looking to make the change?
I do. So gaming can be very competitive as an industry.
There's a couple of reasons for this. Obviously, a lot of people want to do it. It's very geographically specific.
So you have to live in certain areas of the world to be able to do it.
And because of those reasons, when a role does come up, there's a huge amount of competition for it.
What I recommend when I speak to people about career transitioning or even just wanting their first role to be a games user research role,
is there's three areas I'd recommend focusing on.
First of all, it's just the basics of being a good researcher.
Now, that should be fine from anyone coming from any sort of user research background.
But being able to pick an appropriate method, be able to moderate sessions, be able to write a survey, be able to analyze data,
be able to run a workshop with a team so they understand the findings and action.
All those basic research skills are things that you should have in hand and are an important thing to come with.
The second one, and the slightly more challenging one, is being comfortable with game development and understanding the process.
As we alluded to, because they often have very set launch dates, they work in a very waterfall process, how games are developed,
there's the belief inside the industry that game development itself is very bespoke and different to how other types of tech is made.
What an interviewer would be looking for is, do you understand that game development process?
Do you understand the gates that a game goes through before it's launched?
Do you understand what the roles inside game development are?
So that you can both appear credible when you're talking to stakeholders and peers,
but also so that you can have any sort of impact, so that you can work out when should we be running studies,
what should the focus of those studies be?
And then after you've run a study, who needs to care about the findings and who can actually do something about it?
So understanding game development is very important.
For people who haven't worked in games before, there are some avenues for doing that.
The game development conference often publishes videos from different disciplines about how their discipline works and what they do.
And I'd look there.
And also there are good books like Playful Production Process is the name of quite a good book about how games are made
that I'd recommend reading around.
Working with indie developers or hobbyist developers to just get some experience of assessing games and presenting results to a game developer,
and that can build a lot of credibility and just the understanding that this is a serious candidate for this role
and they understand what game development is and how to have influence in that area.
I see. So this kind of goes back to what you said earlier.
There's this perception of working in the gaming industry as being a bunch of people sitting around in beanbag chairs,
playing games, watching other people play games, and it's really a lot more sophisticated than that.
It's not just being able to think through complex problems, but maybe being excited by that prospect.
And it seems like if people want to be taken seriously as a candidate and not just seen as another gamer,
then they have to demonstrate that understanding of what game development is really like.
And more importantly, demonstrate sincere interest in having a career in this space.
So kind of a tricky question, but follow up to that is, how do you indicate that you're serious?
And I guess the second question or follow up is, is being a gamer going to impact your chance?
Because on the one hand, I could see the value in having a gaming background, having knowledge about many kinds of games,
how they work, but I can also question that. Will that backfire? What are your thoughts on that?
Yes, that definitely is a thing where hiring managers in games get two sorts of wrong applications.
They get wrong applications from people who are just applying to every job in games and have no user research background.
And so to do that, you need to have some evidence that you've done a HCI course or you want to help user researchers,
you're not just applying to every game shop ever. On the other hand, they get applications from user researchers
who are applying to every user research job out there. And again, because there's a belief in games that their development process is quite bespoke,
those people will be screened out because they haven't showed they have any interest in games.
So when applying, I think making it explicit in your CV, you're aware this is a game specific role and you at least put some thought into,
do you have any experience or anything to talk about that shows an interest in games?
And being able to show you a user researcher, which any user research CV should hopefully do, is the way to get through that check.
Your question about being a gamer, there are some ways it does help because if you're doing moderated studies,
you're going to be talking to people who play games. They're going to be making references to other games.
They're going to say, this is like Diablo or this is like Halo. And if you don't have those same references,
it's harder to both have that conversation or understand what that player is trying to tell you.
So it definitely helps to be aware of popular games. I think it's not impossible.
You could not play games yourself, but just be interested in games and to know what the references are.
But I think it does make the role easier if you've understood game culture as well.
Oh, totally. So I guess to put on my ethnographic researcher hat, you're living in that environment.
Think of it like Jane Goodall and living with monkeys. Now, obviously, this is more like you're living with contemporaries,
but you're very much in tune with what other players might be interested in.
Not just because you yourself are interested in it, but because of what you see.
You're in that gaming culture and that culture is absolutely something to study.
Right. They're going to be these social interactions and interests and general life experiences that it really is valuable to live within.
I think that's it. Yes.
Well, as we wrap up this episode, do you have any parting words of wisdom or further reading for people who are just peeling back the onion on games user research and maybe want to learn more?
Yes. So I'm very enthusiastic about helping people understand games user research and if they're interested in a career doing more on that.
As I mentioned earlier, I've got a book, How to be a Games User Researcher.
But I also every month I write some career guidance and career lessons, which are on the website GamesUserResearch.com.
So if you were interested in finding jobs, understanding what the job's like, and understanding how to convert your own experience, looking at the website GamesUserResearch.com is a good first step.
We'll make sure to include those in the episode notes.
Steve, it's been so much fun talking with you. Yes, because games are fun, but mostly this has given me a newfound appreciation for the hard work it takes to really make a great game in the first place.
I think it'll make each game that I get to play that much more special. So thank you for sharing with us today.
I thank you very much.
That was Steve Romley. As promised, you can find links to both his book and other books and websites that we mentioned in the show notes, along with some of our own free published research if you want to learn more about games and gamification.
By the way, we talked quite a bit about games and psychology principles in a couple of our UX certification courses. So if you're interested in learning with us, check out the show notes or our website www.nngroup.com.
Finally, one humble request. The best way you can support this podcast is to leave a review and to follow or subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice.
Not only does this make me happy as a host, but it also helps us share this knowledge with UXers all around the world.
This episode is hosted and produced by me, Therese Fessenden. All audio editing and post-production is by Jonas Zellner. Music is by Tiny Music and Dresden the Flamingo.
Thanks for tuning in today. Until next time, remember, keep it simple.