Bethesda’s officially launched on Wednesday after about a week of early access. The game’s already proven to be a big hit, with over 6 million players, making it the biggest launch in Bethesda’s history. Interestingly, the game’s high profile also seems to be helping one of its competitors, with Hello Games’s seeing massive spikes in players leading up to Starfield’s release.
Adapting your game's vision to benefit your players
21.08.2023 - 12:07 / gamesindustry.biz
At Devcom's keynote today, Funcom's lead UX designer Anna Brandberg made a case for taking the time to truly understand players.
In a talk entitled 'The Psychology of Play: The Power of Understanding Your Players', Brandberg — who's worked on The Sims, Candy Crush Saga and, most recently, Metal: Hellsinger— encouraged developers to think about the player's journey and emphasised the need for your vision to align with players' vision.
"Often the focus is on ourselves, our own talent and our own achievements and making our own big, special games that are going to change the world," she said. "But in fact, what I'm going to talk about today is the opposite of that. I'm going to tell you [to] stop focusing on yourself entirely. And to start thinking about someone else.
"Some hard to swallow pills: it's not about you. Making successful games often has very little to do about how good you are at your particular craft."
Throughout her keynote, Brandberg detailed why understanding the player is important, because, more often than not, meeting your players' needs means meeting your business' needs.
"What we have to remember is that the people playing our games are people," she continued. "And it's so easy for us to focus on the numbers, how well our games are doing, the ratings, your KPIs, daily revenue, player relation, all of these things.
"But I have a world shattering secret for you: behind each of those numbers is a person. All those numbers that people are so focused on at work, they're people. We as companies need to keep reminding themselves that we should care about people."
She highlighted that "players don't care about [developers'] genius" and that sometimes you need to step back and pivot based on player's feedback — even if it's not really what you had in mind initially. Again, your vision should match the player's vision once you've started asking for feedback.
Brandberg advocated for the importance of user research, the power of user segmentation, A/B testing and analysing and watching your playtesters.
"It's not about you. Making successful games often has very little to do about how good you are at your particular craft"
She then detailed a few "easy UX wins" that developers can easily implement straight away to start their journey on understanding player and catering to their needs
"How many times have you pressed something unsure if anything happened?," Brandberg said. "It's infuriating. Always have visible feedback. Make sure that every action gets a response — players should know when they're interacting with an element in the game."
"You wouldn't randomly change street sign designs in real life," she pointed out. "Consistency is key. What it does is help players keep their
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