Applied User Research in Games

Applied games user research has a history dating back over 40 years of adapting social science methods (i.e., psychological, sociological, anthropological) to the game development process with the goal of evaluating and improving player experience (Amaya et al., 2008; Medlock, 2014). Since the late 1990s, User Research groups at Microsoft have been applying, refining, and inventing new research methods to improve both the usability and “enjoyability” of our game titles, with many other game development studios and publishers to follow (e.g., Sony, Activision, EA, UbiSoft). The purpose of this chapter is to share some of the philosophies we have developed over that time and expose best practices for applying research methodologies in game development across key topic areas. First, we describe the history of the discipline and how we define games user research. Next, we describe our approach to games user research and how it fits into the game development cycle. Finally, the chapter will conclude with concrete examples in a few focus areas of the discipline and lessons learned along the way.