Games Connect Asia Pacific 2018 The Walls We've Built Ourselves

Why are some games easier to navigate than others? How do some games present huge amounts of information without overwhelming the player, all the while creating enjoyable, seamless game experiences... and yet others we uninstall within minutes? And why are good UX Design processes so crucial to every role within game development? Good UX Design manifests itself in two different ways - player facing and developer facing. So how can we use it to solve problems for our players and create clear, intuitive game UI as a result? Once you’ve identified your target audience and their key needs, how do you help your team help your players? As a developer, understanding and working with UX Design means making your team’s processes faster and more efficient, by wireframing, prototyping, and iterating on your core game mechanics. It is a way of aligning your entire team with a unified vision as you work to create your final product. Join me as I go through the differences between UX Research, UX Design and UI Art, and how to implement these into your processes to make your team as efficient as possible... all the while delivering satisfying, engaging and enjoyable gameplay experiences for your players!

In this User Experience Research workshop we will focus on an important User Testing method that can be implemented in studios of any size: 1-on-1 User Interviews. User Interviews are one of the most valuable and commonly used research tools for gathering qualitative information about your players, and often reveal crucial usability issues, content issues, and users’ mental models. User Interviews are also an incredibly useful method of testing because they can be used iteratively throughout every stage of your game’s development, from the early prototyping phase to the final stages of polish. Join me as I guide you through a practical hands-on workshop where you will learn the process for conducting great User Interviews, along with a few key techniques to put into practice when running your own future studies… and come away with tangible material specific to your own game, ready to implement when it’s time to start your own user tests. Bring a pen, a notepad – and your game in mind!

With PlayFab, Microsoft provides a complete, platform agnostic backend service for games – and applications more broadly – that currently powers over 2,000 live games, with over 100 million monthly active users (MAU). And with a huge emphasis on realtime events and live game operations, PlayFab closes the gap for developers of all sizes. This means it’s possible for teams of all sizes to have a world-class online service layer that allows them to do rich user segmentation and provide highly customized experiences based upon user behaviors – quite simply, to maximize their potential.

The key to creating meaningful player interaction is getting the player emotionally invested in your game and keeping them engaged throughout the playing experience. This talk is about how to induce this engagement by using known UX lessons, dramatic composition in narrative design and variation in the core mechanics of your game, making them deep rather than complex.

Learn how to cleverly focus on strengths of the limitations within your core game mechanics, creating immersion from the moment the player opens the game, designing an easily accessible tutorial, establishing and breaking core mechanics, utilizing the structure of your narrative design and supporting it through your level design as well as using engaging writing and powerful sound design to create memorable gaming moments for your players.

Using the award-winning privacy invasion thriller Orwell as a case study, Mel Taylor talks about game design lessons from working on the development of one of the most successful text-based indie games of the last years. Orwell explores contemporary themes of security, privacy, and our interpretation of online information. It has received critical acclaim from players and media worldwide.