Your videogames improved WITH SCIENCE!

Testing is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. It’s where I got my start in the games biz and how I make my living to this day. Edge have posted a fascinating article on usability testing, which is an increasingly critical part of modern game development. Usability testing is sometimes mistakenly lumped in with Quality Assurance. Every QA tester in the world will tell you their opinion of games they’ve tested, but their usability feedback is rarely taken into account by most developers for any number of reasons; primarily because of their familiarity with the product.

In summary, usability testing aims to gather user feedback on specific features, UI elements, level design, etc. The participants in these studies can range from employees within the studio to your average Joe off the street. I’ve participated and managed in my fair share of usability tests, but as the article describes in moderate detail, the tools and procedures are expanding into more controversial areas such as biometrics.

High profile developers like Bungie and Valve Software have been using similar kinds of analysis to improve on player experience for years. The aim of their study is to limit player frustration and tune the experience so the user’s engagement is maintained. Not every developer is sold on this level of player feedback and analysis though, as John Hopson (from Bungie) is quoted the following:

It would be too strong to say that I consider the use of biometrics in game research to be snake oil, but it’s close to how strongly I feel about it. To pick up a problem with biometrics that you couldn’t pick up with other techniques, there’d have to be something in the game that isn’t fun, which the player never said isn’t much fun, never acts any differently, and which the experts watching them play don’t pick up on. That’s a very small category of problem.

All of this information is being collected and interpreted by external specialists and internal developers alike. The aim of usability testing is lofty: attempting to improve player experience though observation, disclosure and analysis, but all of this “data” must be handled carefully lest developers fall down the path of crowd sourcing their design. The prevailing approach to interpreting user feedback via usability testing is to identify the underlying issue, rather than to address these complaints in a literal fashion.

Finally, this data is also being used to try and boost critical response, not just the opinion of the general public. Games that have major usability issues (i.e. are too difficult or feature frustrating controls) tend to review poorly. While some publishers may downplay the effect of review scores on sales, for most titles a lower average review tends to correlate with a sales ceiling (games that sell more than 1 million units mostly rate over 80% for e.g.). So, I guess GLaDOS was only looking out for the greater good and the benefit of the share holders.