UX in the Game Development Process — Part 1: Ideate
In this blog series, we will walk through the game development process and point out key moments when adding UX Researchers and Designers into the discussion can reduce time, increase momentum, and positively influence the final product.
Let’s Start With Phase 1: Ideation
The ideation phase of any product development is arguably the most messy of all phases.
This is the time where the ideation cauldron is brewing a heady mix of marketing data, people’s pet projects, and usually at least one technology/innovation idea. At this time, any idea is valid and validation of an idea is not necessary for it to be taken seriously.
For those in the User Experience (UX) discipline who are following along — this is where ideas diverge.
Tap Into What Your Gamers Want — Even If They Don’t Know What They Want
Into the cauldron of game ideation, UX can bring a simple dose of reality to help define the canvas of innovation.
Real data from customers — or potential customers — allows the team working on the game to rationally decide which ideas need to be developed and matured and which ones can be dropped off to the side. This is not a groupthink, or design by consensus.
The data brought by UX Research skirt the edge of marketing and ethnographic methods. Using a mix of focus groups, surveys, and industry reporting — in other words, a mix of original and secondary research — allows the illumination of which concept ideas are truly outside the range of plausible successes. That means that we cannot guarantee a sure hit but we can definitely eliminate clear misses.
“But I know several games that were surprise hits”, you might say.
To be clear, this post is about a reliable method of producing a successful product. There are many surprise hits which did not use this process — the so called “one hit wonders”. However, a repeatable method allows the game developer to tap into the zeitgeist of their target gamers, even if the gamers themselves don’t know what they want — Insert old saying by Henry Ford here about asking customers what they want.
This process does allow for a practical approach when there is not a clear path to follow. It can point in the right direction when there are too many diverging opinions, which can cause a team to stagnate and wallow in opinion. In summary, it can’t tell you exactly what to build, but it can keep you from building the wrong thing.
Turning Undecided Gamers Into Customers
Ideation is the time when a game manufacturer has a whiff of an idea and is trying to determine the concept, genre, and classification of the game they want to develop. Alternatively, the game developer already has a baked concept, but doesn’t know if it resonates with an audience. The concept could be a sure thing, but the developer doesn’t even know who their audience is.
Questions that are typical for this phase:
Would 18–35 year old males like a turn-based fantasy game that incorporated Steampunk themes and elements of time travel and an iconic messiah protagonist?
Research can find out.
Much like TV shows and movies test concepts with a variety of focus groups to narrow their advertising, the game industry can do something similar to identify whether a game concept has legs — that is, whether it can become a successful product or not.
For example, with focus groups, you can narrow your focus early and target the people who will likely buy the game when it comes out. You can also eliminate some of the unnecessary features that will not improve the breadth of your customer pool and zero-in on those elements which could turn an undecided gamer into a customer.
Another situation that we typically see is when someone’s pet project becomes the root of a game design.
My Principal Artist wants a space setting and spaceship set pieces. Is that interesting to our target customers?
Could be. Researchers can find out.
With the right set of stimuli, a UX Researcher can find out through several methods, whether the space setting would increase or decrease interest with the type of game you want to build.
Additionally, research doesn’t need to be relegated only to preference data, but can also be used to help decide game mechanics.
Does this game play better as a first-person shooter or as a third person strategy game?
Well, it depends on who you want to sell to, but guess what? Research can point you in the right direction.
Typically, if doing the sort of exploration we are talking about in the ideation phase, the more ideas you put in front of the target audience, the clearer the opportunity becomes.
Focus Groups are not the only way to connect with target users — surveys, forums, competitive reviews, and other methods are also capable of revealing the target users’ thoughts on concepts and ideas. Having someone sift through the information and find the insights is exactly what UX professionals are trained to do.
But, Not Every Question Needs Research
While we are on the subject of research, we want to emphasize that not every question needs to be answered with customer data. In fact, in deciding between a 1st and 3rd person shooter game, we would probably reach the conclusion that this is a design decision, rather than one driven by UX Research. Some people may be asking, “What is a design decision versus a user-driven decision?” However, that is a subject for another blog post at another time.
Of course, this is merely the beginning of a journey. It’s really only the first step. Next we start to converge, bringing ideas from multiple vectors and wrapping them into a coherent story.
This is part 1 of a 3-part blog series on how UX can fit into the game development process. Check out Part 2: Converge.
