Game User Research

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Magy Seif El-Nasr
Office 460 West Village H
email: magy at neu dot edu
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Course Description:
The development cycle of any game relies on the understanding of the players, the target market of the game product. This course covers topics on player psychology, including cognition, memory, emotions, attention, and game-focused theories such as engagement theory, fun, user experience, Player Need Satistifaction model, and Flow. In addition, it will cover soci-technical context analysis methods, usability engineering and game specific evaluation methods, such as playtesting, RITE testing, play heuristic evaluation, and retrospective play reviews. To enable students to analyze qualitative and quantiative data, the course will also introduce parametric and non-parametric statistical evaluation methods, qualitaive data coding and analysis, and descriptive statistics. The course will also require students to apply visualization techniques of data and reporting.

The course will be divided into 7 Modules:
  • Psychology of Play
  • Developing a research play to evaluate a game
  • Qualitative and Quantitative data collection and analysis within context of game evaluation
  • Game Usability Evaluation
  • Game Heuristics Evaluation
  • Playtesting and Interaction Analysis
  • Reporting of results

Evaluation:
  • Assignments/Projects (80%):
    • Assign 1: Psychology of Play Assignment (5%)
    • Assign 2: IRB Training (5%)
    • Assign 3: Quantitative Analysis of Game Data (5%)
    • Assign 4: Qualitative Analysis of Metacritic Game Reviews (5%)
    • Project 1: Game Usability testing (15%)
    • Project 2: Game Heuristic Evaluation (15%)
    • Project 3: Playtesting (30%)
  • Quizzes & Class Assignments (20%)