Full Sail Game Design Army Ta

Wargaming and Full Sail University have recently partnered up to launch the new on-campus Full Sail User Experience Lab. This endeavor introduces state-of-the-art UX testing to over 5000 play testers a year, including Full Sail students and graduates, as well as external members of the community. The lab will also help in performing over 100 research projects a year, catering for multiple industries, and also accommodate a project-based teaching environment.

So what goes in to a user experience lab like this? Well, Full Sail's lab has several usability study rooms, two playtest labs, a rapid prototyping room, and two all-purpose rooms. In these labs, you can study how users interact with a system to check its usability.

To complement the user experience lab, Full Sail also has a science lab, dedicated to 40 play test stations containing 40 PCs, 40 Xboxes, and 40 mobile stations. There's a control center for metrics tracking, with a video feed and observation area, and a full physiology suite with tools like an EEG and EKG, too. Here, students can gain solid industry experience and interact with the general public.

With the support of Wargaming, Full Sail University places itself firmly at the forefront of helping video game companies analytically and scientifically understand the varied elements that motivate player behavior. Gathering data to learn the different aspects and influences of a person within a game-centric environment is a key to refining a game and providing an excellent user experience. Here's how we do it…

UX Testing

For Wargaming, testing is an important part of our game development. As designers and developers, there is a tendency to be immersed in a project, which can often create a divide between a player and a game. Elements and mechanics that may seem simple to someone who's spent several months working on a project may be completely lost on someone picking up a mouse, tapping a keyboard, or holding a joypad for the first time.

User Experience testing is a constant battle to discover what a player likes and how to create a compelling experience. Everyone has suffered through poor instructions, overly-complicated mechanics and unintuitive functions. Sometimes you become frustrated before you've even started playing the game.

Wargaming hosts a number of testing events for the public and people close to the company. One of the very first hurdles that the different teams have to leap over takes place at one of the testing centers located in Minsk, Kyiv, or St. Petersburg, as well as Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore and Wargaming Austin. This is where developers go with a basket brimming with ideas, spill them on the floor, and figure out what works and what doesn't work. Devs need objective feedback so they can progress in the right direction, which is where the UX team enter.

The Usability Test

The UX team starts one of three tests depending on what the developers want to discover. The first—usability testing—is pretty straightforward. You observe the user under controlled conditions to determine how well a person uses the product. You sit a person in front of computer, tablet or console (in Wargaming's case) and watch how they interact with the game. Obviously, in most cases, a person will have some form of background knowledge and experience with a gaming genre or device.

With usability testing, you'll see if they can navigate menus easily, use the controls, and follow objectives. Controls, for instance, can be rather intuitive: we've been conditioned to know that "W, A, S, D" are movement related. Sit any PC gamer down at a keyboard and their fingers instinctively land there. The ability to track eye movement, body perspiration, pulse rate, brain activity, and much more, means that you can accumulate a whole heap of useful data.

Because this method allows us to focus on just one person, it's a great opportunity to gain a clear interpretation of the "player journey".

The Play Test

The second method of testing is a broader "play test". Most of us probably have a good idea what constitutes play testing: sitting there and finding out what works and what bug could potentially set your computer on fire by hogging all the CPU. Later Alpha and Beta stage testing (for the PC at least) often work with the general public. Players can be recruited via forums and given the opportunity to share their feedback with developers.

There are also tests that take place when there is a first playable version of the game. More often than not, this is rife with bugs, but you soldier on and attempt to get through the start screen anyway. Alternatively, everything can go well and you won't encounter any errors until later in the game, which are notoriously difficult to recreate and sometimes even find out why it happened in the first place.

The in-house quality assurance team (sometimes outsourced in other companies) will usually be putting the game through its paces every day, reporting bugs, checking the balance, making sure everything functions as intended.

The Expert Evaluation

The third test, the expert evaluation or review, is when you bring on qualified people with field experience. They can be from external companies or in-house. It's the expert evaluator's job to delve into the game, casting a clinical eye over different aspects from UI navigation, the game's balance, goals, and whether the pacing is fluid.

For a game in the "Worlds" series, accessibility and balance are key. The style of gameplay, progression, and intuitiveness paved the path for the game's design. In MMOs, especially ones that are competitive and ever-changing, balance is an on-going battle, which is why there will be changes to vehicles and other aspects. In these cases, it can be difficult to expertly evaluate evolving items, which is why broader testing and speaking with players is crucial. It's the reason why some vehicles need a little boost, or some need to be toned down. It's a volatile world that we fight to keep a grip on—and have a lot fun doing it!