Emily Brown
Professional Contexts - Week 6
About the speaker
Works at UsTwo Games
Position: Lead designer
Background
Emily has been in the industry for 15 years.
She did a psychology degree and masters in Human-Computer interaction and ergonomics at the University College of London
Reflections and what I learned
Listening to Emily talk about her experiences and interactions within the gaming industry has been very insightful and interesting. I have been able to learn a lot about the different ways in which observation during playtesting can play a key role in the creative process of refining gaming experiences.
She spoke about how she had learnt about aesthetics and usability within games, e.g. How to make things fun and researching different ways of immersion.
I have learnt that localisation in games can be very difficult. It is important to ensure that the font of the game is able to be used in many different languages. This process usually occurs quite late into the development process which makes it difficult as the User Interface needs to be flexible enough to apply different languages. Every game she has been working on has been localised on 5 different languages.
Another thing that I have learnt from this talk is that it is vital to always playtest a game. It should be a process that is done throughout the whole production of the game.
Tips :
to observe facial expressions of the playtesters. This is important as it gives Emily an idea of what works and what doesn’t. The facial expressions help Emily to understand whether or not the area in the game needs changing or not. It is important for the game to run smoothly and for the player to understand the world that is created around them. Also, the exclamations that the player makes are also good things to look at.
children are the most important test subjects. It is easy to create a prototype or a rough version of the game you are creating and to be able to get people to playtest for you. Doing so can help you understand the problems that may occur.
have a plan. For testing, you need to understand whether or not the people playing the game are the chosen demographic for the game, for example, creating a strategy game for a player that usually plays adventure RPG games may be difficult.
Compromise is key in the industry,
nothing will end up being perfect and many games have set deadlines and budgets that they need to stick to, because of this, the developers know that some bugs have to be kept, as they would not all be fixed in time for release. Many times, there are discussions on which bugs are to be kept, which is why compromise is important. // you can’t fix everything
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total word count: 3200
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