To me, games user research is very similar to the process of conducting primary research for your game and they even overlap on some levels. But games user research can provide a more structured and meaningful way of conducting this. By implementing the consideration of player psychology and predicting a players actions it seems to be much more in depth and complex. As games user research can be essential for identifying areas of improvement for a game to better suit the player bases needs and wants.
Harvest 101 is a card based video game where the players goal is to make it through the game using your cards and collecting items to make it through.
Despite the simple concept I found the game to be very confusing to play at first. The ‘tutorial’ didn’t really help to guide my actions or really even explain what was going on. I do really like the art style for this game and find some of the cards to be very visually appealing, but overall the rest of the game fell short for me. Despite the cards being very visually well designed it was often times hard to understand when and even how they worked. The text size also quickly became an issue with some of the cards, oftentimes it would be a little bit too small and therefore very difficult to read.
Fixing some of the issues within this game would actually be a relatively simple task. I would first start by having a different way to introduce the player to the game, given how random the game tended to be and my personal misunderstanding of what some card might do it could be good to include some sort of guidebook for these aspects for the player to refer to when they’re stuck. The issue with the text can be very easily fixed, just by changing the font size and altering some designs to allow for this bigger text size would greatly improve the enjoyability of the game.
- Accessibility within games
Accessibility is an important consideration within games design, having better accessibility allows a wider and more diverse player base to be able to fully engage and play the game. Implementing and considering accessible features whenever possible can help to make a game’s design be more inclusive. Cames are a form of entertainment, it is important that everyone possibly has the ability to comfortably play and enjoy a game when wanted.
Accessibility within games is something I am very passionate about, i strive to try and make changes where possible to ensure that to my own ability everyone is able to play and enjoy a game as what it is, a form of entertainment and not a chore or bother. Simple features as having an option to turn off harsh visuals, allowing compatibility with a controller, and having your game being available on a wide range of platforms.
When discussing fully considering those who are less able to play games due to whatever reason a company that strives within this has to be Xbox. They developed and released their own adaptive controller that the user can adapt to their needs, this is an example of why controller compatibility is so important to include where possible, because without these tools some people are unable to experience certain games.