Top Stories
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A Personal Journey: Jenova Chen's Goals for Games
I'm about half way through my interview with Jenova Chen when I get the impression that I've annoyed him. Talking about Thatgamecompany, and the limitations of working with only eight other people, I ask Chen if, given the resources, he'd like to develop a more mainstream game. "Well," he replies, "what is mainstream?" Immediately, I can sense his frustration: Journey, his latest game, has just become the fastest-selling PlayStation Network release ever. The many months ... -
Predicting Churn: Data-Mining Your Game
The sad truth about all online services and games? The most significant churn occurs right the first minutes and hours of gameplay. The issue has been already explored in a numerous ways, with many profound hypothesizes related to usability and simplicity of interface, availability of a free trial, learning curve, and tutorial quality. All of these factors are considered to be very important. We set a goal to investigate why new players depart so early ... -
A Revolution in Sound: Break Down the Walls!
[Rob Bridgett, audio director on Prototype 2 issues a rallying cry for the mixing of the audio discipline with the rest of the studio, and opening up the closed studio space to collaboration -- perhaps even suggesting a fundamental change in studio structure.] Video game development is a collaborative and iterative endeavor, where artistry, design, ideas, and technology intersect, with creativity at its core. There is one analogy I have found useful -- although not ... -
Finding Out What They Think: A Rough Primer To User Research, Part 2
[The following is the second of two articles by college professor and researcher Ben Lewis-Evans on games user research methodology (see Part 1, which covered focus groups, heuristics, and questionnaires, as well as giving a grounding in the topic of user research in general. In this article, Lewis-Evans covers interviews, observational methods (including think out loud and contextual inquiry), game metrics, and biometrics.] Interviews Much like a questionnaire -- a topic covered in the last ...
