Games User Research

Dr. Anders Drachen, Ph.D. is a veteran Data Scientist, Professor at the Digital Creativity Labs, University of York (UK). His multiple award-winning work in data- and game science is focused on game analytics and business intelligence. His research and professional work is carried out in collaboration with companies spanning the industry. He is one of the most published scientists worldwide on game analytics, virtual economics, user research, game data mining, and user profiling. He is a former member of the board of the IGDA SIG on Game User Research.Lennart Nacke, PhD, is the director of the HCI Games Group and an associate professor for human-computer interaction and game design at the University of Waterloo. He is a world-leading authority on the cognitive and emotional aspects of player experience in video games, with a special focus on physiological metrics and gameful design. He has authored more than 100 research publications on these topics, which have been cited more than 8,000 times. He is also working as a gamification and user experience consultant. He chaired the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) PLAY 2014 and Gamification 2013 conferences, and is currently the chair of the CHI PLAY steering committee. He is an editor of multiple research journals and a subcommittee co-chair of CHI 2017 and CHI 2018. He has served on the steering committee of the International Game Developers Association Special Interest Group on Games User Research and loves the GUR community.Dr. Pejman Mirza-Babaei is an Assistant Professor for Human-Computer Interaction and Games User Research at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He is also the User Research Director at Execution Labs, Montreal. He has been involved with the Games User Research community since 2009, where he has published more than 40 articles, co-organized workshops and courses in international conferences. He has contributed to more than 22 published commercial games, including awards winning titles such as Pewdiepie Legend of the Brofist, Crysis 2, and Weirdwood Manor among many others.

Games user research has come a long way in the last 2 decades, and this book is a testament to that progress. With chapters on lab setup and recruiting all the way to doing research on VR, this book covers it all. It will be a great resource for those getting into the field as well as industry veterans. I can confidently say that if you are involved in games user research there will be something of value to you in this book.

• 1: Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke: Introduction to Games User Research 2: Veronica Zammitto: Games User Research as part of the Development Process in the Game Industry: Challenges and Best Practices 3: David Tisserand: It's All About Process 4: Ian Livingston: Post-launch in Game User Research 5: Graham McAllister: User experience maturity levels: Evaluating and improving Game User Research practices 6: Sebastian Long: Designing A Games User Research Lab From Scratch 7: Michael C. Medlock: An Overview of GUR Methods 8: Graham McAllister and Sebastian Long: A Framework for Player Research 9: Florian Brühlmann & Elisa D. Mekler: Surveys in Games User Research 10: Steve Bromley: Interviewing Players 11: Mirweis Sangin: Observing the Player Experience 12: Tom Knoll: The Think Aloud Protocol 13: Michael C. Medlock: The Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation Method (RITE) 14: Heather Desurvire and Dennis Wixon: Heuristic Uncovered for Game User Researchers and Game Designers 15: Janne Paavilainen: Heuristic Evaluation of Playability: Examples from Social Games Research and Free-to-Play Heuristics 16: Lennart Nacke: Introduction to Biometrics Measures for Game User Research 17: Pierre Chalfoun, Jonathan Dankoff: Developing actionable biometric insights for production teams: case studies and key learnings 18: Pejman Mirza-Babaei: Reporting User Research Findings to the Development Team 19: Anders Drachen and Shawn Connor: Game Analytics for Game User Research 20: Lysiane Charest: Punching Above Your Weight: How small studios can leverage data for an unfair advantage 21: Pejman Mirza-Babaei and Thomas Galati: Affordable and Data-Driven User Research for Indie Studios 22: Guillaume Louvel: Play as if you were home 23: James Berg: Dissecting the Dragon: GUR for Dragon Age: Inquisition 24: Julien Huguenin: Running User Tests with Limited Resources and Experience 25: Johan Dorell and Björn Berg Marklund: Starting from Scratch: Pragmatic and Scalable Guidelines to Impactful Games User Research 26: Steven Schirra and Brooke White: Strategies for Understanding and Researching Mobile Games in Context 27: Kathrin Gerling, Conor Linehan and Regan Mandryk: Involving Players With Special Needs in Games User Research 28: Nick Yee and Nicolas Ducheneaut: Gamer Motivation Profiling: Uses and Applications 29: Johanna Pirker: Social Network Analysis in Games User Research 30: Ben Lewis-Evans: A short guide to user testing for simulation sickness in Virtual Reality 31: Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke: Front lines in Games User Research