Dr. Lennart Nacke (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) has started a new podcast titled “The Games User Research Podcast” with co-hosts Dr. Anders Drachen (University of South Denmark) and Dr. Pejaman Mirza-Babaei (Ontario Tech University).
The
three
professors
published
their
inaugural
episode,
which
looks
at
“Player
Experience
Perspectives”,
on
April
11th.
You
can
listen
to
the
first
episode
now
and
expect
more
episodes
to
follow.
You
can
keep
updated
on
both
“The
Games
User
Podcast”
and
The
Games
User
Research
Book
(edited
by
Drs.
Nacke,
Drachen
and
Pejaman)
on
Twitter.
“Player Experience Perspectives” Episode Description
“When you play a game, something happens. You might be feeling elated, frustrated, engaged, furious, whimsical. Your heart rate might go up, and your sweat glands activate. Alpha- and beta-waves firing in your brain. You are having an experience.
The user experience we get from playing games is called “playing experience”, and it is the alpha and omega in games user research - or “GUR” - which exists to ensure that players experience games in the way the designers expect them to.
However, as important as player experience is to GUR, we have a hard time figuring out exactly what it is or how to measure it. In this inaugural episode of the Games User Research Podcast, we have a conversation about player experience: what it is, how to measure it, and why that measuring is enormously challenging.”