EQ2_Bloggers
10-15-2010, 11:01 PM
Making Mother-Friendly Games
By Emily “Domino” Taylor
My mother turned 71 at the end of August.* I asked her if there was anything in particular she’d like for her birthday that she couldn’t get where she lives, and she said she was hoping I might help her find some computer games.
Which is, as they say in California, kind of awesome to hear from your 71-year-old mother.
However, what she was specifically looking for was a little more challenging to find.* My mother is very smart, and reasonably computer-oriented for her generation; we’ve had a computer in our home since the mid 1980s, and she even took a few high school computing courses and learned some basic programming at one point.* Nonetheless, she did not spend her formative years playing computer games, and she doesn’t have the twitch reflexes that many modern games require, nor has she grown up absorbing all the basic assumptions about how things should work (from UI to game elements) so what seems simple to me can be baffling to her.* (Example: I tried to get her to play Portal a couple of years ago; she was completely frustrated by the first person perspective and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t walk through a doorway — I could see she kept hitting the doorframe, but it was utterly *unclear to her what she was doing wrong).
She gave me some guidelines for what she wanted.* She wanted something graphically very simple, without fancy UI elements that were just flashy confusion.* (She used to be very fond of the ASCII art game Rogue, where the characters and monsters are represented by letters and symbols.)* She wanted something that did not involve a time limit, so she would not feel rushed.* She preferred something puzzle or logic based over shooting things or something based entirely on luck. She also needed something simple to use, and easy to install on her own, since I am not there to install it for her.
These aren’t the type of games that I most often play, so I pondered for quite a while and consulted various friends to come up with a list of possibilities.* I downloaded free trials and read reviews on Amazon.* Eventually I came up with the following list:
A Hoyle’s card game collection (including lots of versions of solitaire)
A collection of board games and puzzles (mah jongg, sudoku, chess, etc.)
World of Goo
Chuzzle
Plants vs. Zombies
Auditorium
Plants vs. Zombies doesn’t exactly meet her criteria since there are time restraints, but it’s such a charming game I thought I’d include it just in case she was interested.* Chuzzle is a simple match-three type game, but has a very modern soundtrack which I’m certain she’ll hate, so I included instructions on how to turn it off in the settings.
I spoke to my parents again about a month after her birthday and asked which games had worked for her.* She hasn’t tried them all yet, but so far Chuzzle seems to be getting the most screen time, as well as some of the solitaire card games.* I look forward to getting a more complete report when I visit for Christmas, by then she should have had time to try them all.
It was surprising to me how difficult it actually was to come up with some games that met her fairly simple criteria, and it reminded me how important it is that game companies consider the accessibility of their games to wider audiences, not just those players who already know all the assumptions of the genre.* One of the ways SOE internally tests our games for this kind of accessibility is in our Usability Lab.* This takes up a couple of rooms at SOE: one room in which test players sit at computers and play the game being tested, and a separate room in which the designers can sit and watch what the players are doing in-game, as well as seeing their faces and hearing their comments.* The test players may be internal volunteers from SOE, or external people recruited specifically to test a game for a particular target audience.* By seeing when players look confused or frustrated in tandem with what they are trying to do in-game, designers are much more easily able to identify areas that may need improvement.
SOE’s usability lab was heavily used while testing Free Realms™, to ensure that children of the target age were able to easily navigate the world and the Free Realms menus.* (You can see an interview about the usability lab here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAZglMkQsmg)* It has continued to be a valuable resource for our more recent releases – in fact I was a test player myself recently while the EverQuest® team was testing its new housing UI for the recent House of Thule™ expansion.* By seeing where I became confused and frustrated while trying to purchase my house or place furniture, the developers were able to make a number of changes to clarify the controls and the on-screen information.* They later told me that a number of improvements had been made based on my feedback, which is good to hear!
Of course, all the usability testing in the world won’t help if you don’t include your full potential player base.* If you test a game’s usability for the 7-15 year old age range, for example, you probably won’t catch problems that a 71-year-old might have.* And if you don’t do any kind of usability testing beyond internal play-tests with your game designers, then you risk potentially making a game that only game designers like to play!** Of course, most game designers are pretty good at looking at things from the perspective of an average player, but it can be harder to see the perspective of a non-average player like my mother.* My mother’s birthday request was an excellent reminder to me of the importance of looking at games through someone else’s eyes, in particular, someone who is not used to playing the same games that I am and who does not have the same assumptions that I do.* What is a clear and simple game to me may not be clear to someone with different experiences.* Yet another excellent example of how diversity (whether by gender, age, race, or anything else) can be a huge benefit to any design team!
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By Emily “Domino” Taylor
My mother turned 71 at the end of August.* I asked her if there was anything in particular she’d like for her birthday that she couldn’t get where she lives, and she said she was hoping I might help her find some computer games.
Which is, as they say in California, kind of awesome to hear from your 71-year-old mother.
However, what she was specifically looking for was a little more challenging to find.* My mother is very smart, and reasonably computer-oriented for her generation; we’ve had a computer in our home since the mid 1980s, and she even took a few high school computing courses and learned some basic programming at one point.* Nonetheless, she did not spend her formative years playing computer games, and she doesn’t have the twitch reflexes that many modern games require, nor has she grown up absorbing all the basic assumptions about how things should work (from UI to game elements) so what seems simple to me can be baffling to her.* (Example: I tried to get her to play Portal a couple of years ago; she was completely frustrated by the first person perspective and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t walk through a doorway — I could see she kept hitting the doorframe, but it was utterly *unclear to her what she was doing wrong).
She gave me some guidelines for what she wanted.* She wanted something graphically very simple, without fancy UI elements that were just flashy confusion.* (She used to be very fond of the ASCII art game Rogue, where the characters and monsters are represented by letters and symbols.)* She wanted something that did not involve a time limit, so she would not feel rushed.* She preferred something puzzle or logic based over shooting things or something based entirely on luck. She also needed something simple to use, and easy to install on her own, since I am not there to install it for her.
These aren’t the type of games that I most often play, so I pondered for quite a while and consulted various friends to come up with a list of possibilities.* I downloaded free trials and read reviews on Amazon.* Eventually I came up with the following list:
A Hoyle’s card game collection (including lots of versions of solitaire)
A collection of board games and puzzles (mah jongg, sudoku, chess, etc.)
World of Goo
Chuzzle
Plants vs. Zombies
Auditorium
Plants vs. Zombies doesn’t exactly meet her criteria since there are time restraints, but it’s such a charming game I thought I’d include it just in case she was interested.* Chuzzle is a simple match-three type game, but has a very modern soundtrack which I’m certain she’ll hate, so I included instructions on how to turn it off in the settings.
I spoke to my parents again about a month after her birthday and asked which games had worked for her.* She hasn’t tried them all yet, but so far Chuzzle seems to be getting the most screen time, as well as some of the solitaire card games.* I look forward to getting a more complete report when I visit for Christmas, by then she should have had time to try them all.
It was surprising to me how difficult it actually was to come up with some games that met her fairly simple criteria, and it reminded me how important it is that game companies consider the accessibility of their games to wider audiences, not just those players who already know all the assumptions of the genre.* One of the ways SOE internally tests our games for this kind of accessibility is in our Usability Lab.* This takes up a couple of rooms at SOE: one room in which test players sit at computers and play the game being tested, and a separate room in which the designers can sit and watch what the players are doing in-game, as well as seeing their faces and hearing their comments.* The test players may be internal volunteers from SOE, or external people recruited specifically to test a game for a particular target audience.* By seeing when players look confused or frustrated in tandem with what they are trying to do in-game, designers are much more easily able to identify areas that may need improvement.
SOE’s usability lab was heavily used while testing Free Realms™, to ensure that children of the target age were able to easily navigate the world and the Free Realms menus.* (You can see an interview about the usability lab here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAZglMkQsmg)* It has continued to be a valuable resource for our more recent releases – in fact I was a test player myself recently while the EverQuest® team was testing its new housing UI for the recent House of Thule™ expansion.* By seeing where I became confused and frustrated while trying to purchase my house or place furniture, the developers were able to make a number of changes to clarify the controls and the on-screen information.* They later told me that a number of improvements had been made based on my feedback, which is good to hear!
Of course, all the usability testing in the world won’t help if you don’t include your full potential player base.* If you test a game’s usability for the 7-15 year old age range, for example, you probably won’t catch problems that a 71-year-old might have.* And if you don’t do any kind of usability testing beyond internal play-tests with your game designers, then you risk potentially making a game that only game designers like to play!** Of course, most game designers are pretty good at looking at things from the perspective of an average player, but it can be harder to see the perspective of a non-average player like my mother.* My mother’s birthday request was an excellent reminder to me of the importance of looking at games through someone else’s eyes, in particular, someone who is not used to playing the same games that I am and who does not have the same assumptions that I do.* What is a clear and simple game to me may not be clear to someone with different experiences.* Yet another excellent example of how diversity (whether by gender, age, race, or anything else) can be a huge benefit to any design team!
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Author:
Visit This Blog Page... (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/making-mother-friendly-games/)
Visit StationBlog (http://stationblog.wordpress.com/)