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stevebromley.bsky.social
🎮 Games User Research Consultant, author of “How To Be A Games User Researcher” | Horizon, SingStar, LittleBigPlanet, PlayStation VR & more 🤫 | Make games players love: http://gamesuserresearch.com 👾
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Very excited to be sponsoring the Games Accessibility Gathering, alongside Develop this year. Looking forward to seeing some excellent speakers!

There are two types of how-to content. - Basic 101 level stuff. - the words “it depends on your context” repeated endlessly across hundreds of pages.

Concept testing is one of the trickiest stages for games user research. Genuine behavioural insight is difficult (because there's no code to look at), and it's easy to fall into the trap of asking 'would you play this'. Players will answer, but without real context, we can't trust it.

Given recent conversations in the industry, I wanted to highlight some amazing organizations, resources, and community-driven groups working hard to advance accessibility in gaming. There’s a lot of great work happening — and it deserves more visibility. A thread ♿️♥️

Feeding fighter jets to coyotes.

We're once again hoping to run the game accessibility gathering in July in Brighton this year! 🤞 And we're looking for speakers. 🎤 If you have an idea for a 15 minute micro talk you'd like to give on anything game accessibility, submit it here: ➡️ forms.gle/cfLgvepMVUgu...

I grew up on LAN parties with strangers I’d met from the internet. Instant order!

Enjoyed Thronglets - short, narrative based, well paced - perfect for mobile!

So many edge cases, but here’s an attempt at a decision tree for picking a GUR method: (An older attempt is on my website, focused on just the opinions vs behaviour dimensions). What big ideas are missing here?

Increasingly finding myself picking BBC Radio over Spotify - when there is infinite content, the value becomes the curation. My Spotify playlists are either too obvious, too repetitive or filled with ‘fake’ filler music.

Looking forward to the adventures of Joel and Eddie

Ensure stakeholders read your research reports *very* closely by emailing it - and then immediately emailing a second version saying “please delete the first version”.

Excellent outcome for a fantastic game - well done @coalsupper.bsky.social

This clip is very revealing about the limits of this technology. Although it might look like “a game”, the lack of curation, design or intent will make an unplayable experience.

A potential new Banksy that wasn’t there yesterday

How does it know?

User research workers at Activision unionize www.gamesindustry.biz/user-researc...

Either the lyrics to 1933’s 42nd Street had amazing predictive powers, or AI just makes plausible sounding answers up…

A fantastic effort, well done everyone involved!

No regrets about my character name [spoilers for a 20 year old game]

“This is John Williams” on Spotify doesn’t have Jaws, Hime Alone, ET or Superman, but vastly over-represents Harry Potter 3. I’m not sure if that’s a conspiracy or algorithm misfire, but it feels you could get a vaguely interesting podcast out of it.

People have forgotten the before times. In Jedi Academy (2003), the objective is to get into this building - but this door is *not* the way in. So much time walking around lost in this game…

Unlikely to finish any more now, so my final count for books read in 2024 was 53. Some favourites included - Shuggie Bane 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 - The Bee Sting 🐝 - Foster 👧 - Kindred 🕣 - The Warlock Effect 🪄 And ended the year with the very fun Elsie Drake letters! ✉️