User-centered Design in Games 1 User-centered Design in Games

The intent of this chapter is to review principles and challenges in game design and evaluation and to discuss user-centered techniques that address those challenges. First, we will present why games are important, followed by the definitions and differences between games and productivity software. In the next section, we discuss the principles and challenges that are unique to the design of games. That discussion provides a framework for what we believe are the core variables that should be measured to aid in game design and evaluation. The chapter will conclude with some examples of how those variables can be operationalized in which we will present the methods used by the Microsoft Games User-Testing group. Why games are important Computers that appeared commercially in the 1950's created a technological barrier that was not easy to overcome for the greater population. Only scientists, engineers, and highly technical persons were able to use these machines (Preece et al., 1994). As computers became less expensive, more advanced, and more reliable, the technology that was once only available to a small group of people was now permeating itself throughout the entire population and into everyday life. In order to ease this transition, the need for a well designed interface between the user and the technology became a necessity. Computers games come from similar origins, and potentially may head down a similar path. Early attempts at making commercial video games have failed due to unnecessarily high levels of complexity. The following quote from Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) states the issue quite succinctly. " No one wants to read an encyclopedia to play a game " (Kent, 2000, p.28). In retrospect, some of the most successful video games were the ones that were indeed very simple. Entertainment in general is a field of great importance to everyone (Schell, 2001). Today, the video games industry is one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment to date. According to the Digital Interactive Software Association (IDSA), revenue from computer and console games practically doubled from 3.2 billion dollars in 1994 to 6.02 billion dollars in the year 2000 where over 219 million games were sold that year (IDSA, 2000). To put this into perspective, the number of people in the United States who played video games during the year 2000 was five times that of those who went to America's top five amusement parks combined, and two times as …