Honours Project Idea Presentation

Brief overview of my Honours Project and Dissertation idea that I'm going to be working on this coming academic year.

Transcript

1. Using game analytics Tools to facilitate the Game Prototyping and Development Process by Timea Tabori BSc. (Hons) Computer Games Technology Tuesday, 30 October 12
2. Aims and Objectives My aim is to develop an intuitive game editor and prototyping tool that provides player experience feedback, game analytics and debugging information to facilitate quick iteration and balancing. Objectives: • Conduct research into what are the most useful gameplay metrics and the best way to represent and communicate them, as well as find out more about recording and using bug data to facilitate debugging and minimise overhead created by these bugs. • Develop a design tool that enables the rapid prototyping of a 2D game idea (including character and level design and core mechanics) and that provides player experience feedback, game analytics and interactive debugging data in order to facilitate and speed up balancing and iteration. • Investigate the effect that combining prototyping and design tools, visual player experience feedback and gameplay metrics into an editor that simplifies the acquirement, observation and processing of bug data, has on the game development experience and how it affects the management and quality of the project. Tuesday, 30 October 12
3. Research Question How to integrate game analytics and debugging/QA information into a game prototyping tool to facilitate game balancing and quick iteration of design ideas? Tuesday, 30 October 12
4. Literature Review In-Game Debugging and Visualisation Tools - Graham, D. (GDC 12 talk) • post-mortem of debugging and visualisation tools developed and used by the Sims 3 team • advice on features to focus on when developing a debugging tool Data Cracker: Developing a Visual Game Analytic Tool for Analysing Online Gameplay - Medler, John, Lane (paper) • analytics tool developed for DeadSpace 2 • guidelines for developing a visual game analytic tool Inventing on Principle - Victor, B. • demonstration of tool enabling interactive tweaking of game variables during run-time and seeing results immediately Tuesday, 30 October 12
5. Methodology Game Prototype Editor: drag and drop character and level editors. • measure usability and ease of use • evaluate user experience • flexibility and diversity, limitations • comparison with existing prototyping tools Visual Analytics: level and segment completion time, location and reason of death, interaction locations, player ID, etc. • user testing • measure utility of different metrics • comparison with existing metrics tools Tuesday, 30 October 12
6. Summary Currently working on: • Researching UX and HCI design • Looking at existing techniques and design inspirations • Defining feature set • Prototyping Tuesday, 30 October 12