Video Game Usability Testing

Video game usability testing breaks down the wall between the game designer and the end user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in your game world. There are many benefits of video game usability testing, or gameplay testing as its also referred, get early feedback on your design choices, have our experts uncover hidden gems of creativity and jump the pitfalls in your title before it's released to the general public.

Benefits of this service

We can be involved early on in the game design process and help you to get valuable feedback on the game mechanics and art assets, so you get early validation on the concept with real customers. We can also get involved later in the process when the game, or various sections of the game, are nearing completion and you need customer feedback on gameplay, making the right design choices and freeing you up to focus on hitting those release schedules. We have access to all of the latest game consoles your project may use, from PC to PS3 to XBOX 360.

Advantages

• Increase total revenue on games titles by providing a higher standard product with customer feedback
• Consider outside input from an unbiased source on game mechanics, design decisions, target audience and more
• Save on development and maintenance costs by fixing issues during early development rather than regretting poor choices and fixing post release in an update
• Improved player experience
• Increased customer satisfaction

Disadvantages

• Once you try us you'll wonder how you ever got by without critical feedback
• Testing is done on select groups
• Can be costly in terms of facilities and equipment and also staff time
• It is not always clear what is causing video game usability problems, balance is subjective

Expert review - single or multiple playthroughs

Our expert consultants can advise on a section of the game, conduct a whole playthrough with level, enemy and flow suggestions or multiple playthroughs of the full title from start to finish over time to indicate improvements. We cater to what you need, point out good and bad areas of the game with the intended audience in mind and focus on immediate and late game improvements. We can also conduct playthroughs on games which have been out a while, but are being updated or releasing new content. We are looking to deliver an independent review and give you expert insight that is impartial to help sanity check or refocus a project.

Gameplay testing

We can recruit members of the public to give feedback on a game recording their reactions, either as single user, or in pairs or groups for multiplayer games. We can get players in to help us test at very short notice to work within your tight timescale's.

The players are encouraged to explore and play the game in an unobtrusive way and they are encouraged to give feedback on issues of control, whether the correct level of challenge is present, and finding out if the game has engaged the user and is fun to play.

The process

We recruit a representative sample of your audience. These participants are asked to play and perform a series of tasks using your game that are typical of those a user would attempt in the real world. While performing the tasks at our state of the art usability facilities, the participants are observed and recorded. We can also use eyetracking and biometrics to measure emotional engagement to monitor user's brainwaves with an EEG headset.

The deliverables

We would typically look to deliver the following to your organisation as part of the video games usability testing that we run.

Usability Report - that describes the purpose of the study, a description of the procedures, a summary of the findings, and perhaps most important, the significant themes that emerged within and between testing sessions. All of our reports are recommendation led so we will always suggest solutions based on the issue we have encountered.

Video highlights - edited video clips of the most informative parts of the tests including videos of actual gameplay, videos of facial expression and biometric data.

Presentation - an oral presentation communicating the most important findings and recommendations.

Workshop - a collaborative workshop working at our office or on site at your premises to discuss possible solutions and prioritise these against your development cycle.

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