Video Games Usability and User Experience

In future posts I’ll be discussing video games, however the aim will not be to review a game in a traditional manner, but instead to discuss the areas of a game where the designer’s intentions do not meet the player’s expectations. To put this in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) terminology, we’ll be discussing video game usability and user experience. We could argue over what these terms really mean, and we might just do that another time, but for now, let’s say that video game usability is concerned with a game’s ability to communicate its capabilities to the player in an intuitive manner. So what I’m interested in is moments in a video game where any of the following happen; shouting at the game, wanting to give up, palms sweat, increased heart rate, loosing track of time, thinking about how to control your character, difficulty level, the list could go on.

Why do some games ‘feel good’? Can we really expect to develop a technique to measure enjoyment and if so, can we quantify it?

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the area of video games usability and user experience is multidisciplinary and multimodal, with the main aim being to improve the overall quality or experience of a game.

Let’s be clear here, we’re not trying to devise a magic formula to design quality games, but we are interested in techniques which allow us to identify, measure and resolve issues with video games.