The Secret Science of Games
John Hopson
“Fun is whatever the user and the designer agree is fun.
What I like
Nice introduction book for folks that are new to games user research
Stories with examples of successes as well as mistakes, and lessons learned
Concise and easy to read, bite-sized chapters
A lot of content about the relationship between designer and developer
Communicates the value of research in the design process
What’s missing
Those familiar with user research might find content a little repetitive
More practical instruction on how to do things
Key Topics
Research, Game Design, Creating value for teams, Teams, Feedback, Experience
Review
There was a time where I desperately wanted to do games user research for a game that I was extremely passionate about. During those times I had no idea what games research, usability, user research, or even design was, I just figured that I could apply what I learned in school for Psychology to provide value for games. This hypothesis, which seriously interested me, drove me to spend two summers doing research on “The Dota Experiment” as the game grew from about 100k to 1 million players. Being the naive 22 year old that I was, I figured that research alone would be enough to land me a job working for the game I loved. During this study I ran surveys and performed interviews. The Dota Experiement Questionnaire was about 100 questions, and netted about 2k users per administration. I also ran a series of about 30 interviews with real players of various skill levels. What I wish I knew at that time was at least something about the design process, or how to pose good recommendations. This process was a whirlwind, and I think I could have done things more efficiently if I read this book before.
Fast forward to today and I have been in product for almost 10 years and I find this book. A nice little book that goes into some great stories about games user research and some of the unique phenomena and patterns of human behavior that take place within them. The author has a phD in Experimental Psychology and experience doing games research for some immensely popular games: Halo, Overwatch, Destiny, to name a few. The author’s process consists of getting to the bottom of what fun means within the context of the game. To understand what fun is, one needs to learn from the people having the fun. We can do this through time tested, scalable, quick tools like user interviews or surveys. This mantra for games user research allows us as researchers to say yes to requests for research. Over time, as we create a positive feedback loop between ourselves, design, development, and business, a virtuous cycle is created where we say yes to research, it has a positive effect, and then we get more research. The end.
What I appreciate the most about this book is the real stories about working as a part of a team and some of the decisions that need to be made on a day to day basis. The tug-of-war between research and design, the requests from business, toxicity and trolls, and the games industry mechanics, warts and all. I think this book would be really helpful for someone just getting into games user research as it provides an entry-level overview of industry and process. I would have liked to learn more about collecting and analyzing data. For me, going back to the research I did in the past, it’s helpful to know that I wasn’t too far off in process, but I’m still trying to understand what I could have done better in presenting the results.
Core Learnings
Fun is whatever the user and the designer agree is fun. The delightful things are the ways players create fun through features that were never intended to be fun.
In games user research there is a pretty straight forward rule: Have a real player play the game and get the people who made the game to watch.
When we run user research, we are not researching the user, the user is researching for us.
Designs rely on consistency so that that the same thing only needs to be designed and learned once.
A user researchers job is to shape the business to suit the user’s needs, not the other way around.
Design researchers should prioritize their research based on whom they are serving. users > developers > business
It’s more valuable in research to understand the value of components of a system than the value of the whole.
When it comes to games research it’s better to do research with speed. Quick research is cheap research which is easy. Speed allows you to say yes.
Realism is often expensive, sometimes impossible, and time consuming.
There are three kinds of data that exist: data you have, data you don't have but can get it, and data you don’t have.
Our job as a user researcher is to present areas of product pain to designers so that they can understand the severity of what needs to be fixed.
Communication is extremely important when working between multiple teams as a researcher and designer.
A goal of any research should be to create more research.
A researchers job is not to tell a designer how to design a thing, it is to give them information that helps them make better decisions.
Affective forecasting is when participants in research tell us about they would feel about something in the future, and people are generally bad at this.
Behavior is guided by circumstance, things in our environment, people, etc.
Sometimes it’s helpful to test for multiple types of experiences.
Surveys are a great way to collect a lot of feedback without the need for a moderator, and, if administered and structured properly, can lead participants to provide very honest responses under the veil of anonymity.
It’s not the instructional content that most people object to when learning a game, it’s the lack of choice.