Games, Psychology, And UX With Celia Hodent

On GDC Podcast episode 8, we have Celia Hodent, a user experience consultant, psychology PhD, and author who will get us learned about cognitive science UX, and how our brains process something as complex as a video game. Back in a few. And we're back. Hey, this is Chris Graft, editor-in-chief of Gamasutra, and I'm here with Alyssa. Yeah, this is Alyssa, and I'm already trying to interrupt you like a minute into this thing. We're a little out of practice, huh? I I think it's like we have to relearn every time. I don't I haven't talked Well, I have roommates, but I haven't like talked to people as much as usual, so it's just a little little bit rusty. And and your last name is Alyssa Macaluso. Not your last name is Alyssa Macaluso.

Yeah, one of those is correct. One of those names might be the one that belongs there. Yeah, the the gears are just starting to spin in my head, getting you know, greased up and ready to go for this. So, yeah, Alyssa Alyssa Macaluso. And anything anything new happened since the last uh Animal Crossing. It's just It's just Animal Crossing. That's That's it. How'd your GDC go? Oh, GDC Yeah, that was Animal Crossing, too. Oh, man. Oh, jeez. Uh watch some of the streams that were going all week on the GDC Twitch channel, which were pretty interesting. Popped in every now and then, but you can probably talk a little bit more about those than I can. Oh, no, I don't know if I can. No, um no, the the uh the virtual talks turned out really great, actually. And there is something to be said about hanging out in your living room uh observing content from the comfort of your own home. Uh so, we actually streamed the GDC

Awards, the Game Developers Choice Awards, um through Twitch as well as the IGF Awards. And it was a, you know, it was a a big effort on the part of people who were like our hosts and, you know, the GDC events team, um and it turned out it turned out really nice, um and just kind of uh it kind of made me feel it made me feel good, you know? There's a lot of adversity right now. It's tumultuous tumultuous times, right? Yeah, yeah. No, it was a I don't know, it was difficult for them to bring together, I imagine, and it came together in this really like heartwarming online way. Uh I think being on Twitter and in the Twitch chat throughout like the entire week and for the awards, it was like the most wholesome gathering of minds that I've seen online in a long time, which is like Wow. It was um it was shockingly wholesome for Twitch chat, uh considering how many people were watching. Uh so, thanks for everyone who who

showed up for that. And also, there are a bunch of virtual talks that are on the GDC YouTube channel. And And they're up for free on the vault, too, right? Yes. Yeah, the entire uh listing from that week is viewable. Yeah, yeah. And if they're not free now, they will be. I'm pretty sure they're all free right now. Um It's a good number of them. I'm scrolling through them right now, so there's a lot of content. Content free content is my middle name. Chris Content Graf. Uh so, yeah, other than that, you mentioned uh Animal Crossing. I think that we should just hit on that real quick because I know that our listeners want to really listen uh listen to us talk about that. 30 minutes later. Um No, Animal Crossing's real good, and what what was that, sorry? You're like some kind of professional like uh Animal Crossing player. I go to your island. You're like, you know, you're kind of like when you have rich friends or friends who are

like really well-off and I when your gates open for your island, I go there. You're like, "The streets are are paved with bells." Um Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like my real life. That's me. Mhm. Just well-organized. No, I had a lot of anxiety that can be channeled into organizing and Animal Crossing is a wonderful conduit for that. Yeah. I'm pretty sure we talked about uh the Gamasutra editorial team had at talking about all of that over yesterday in a lead on gamasutra.com. So, you can read that for my long-form opinions where I talked too much about it. No, I don't think you could ever talk too much about it. You do. You have You have very enthralling opinions. You like live on a different uh tier of Animal Crossing-ness than I do. Uh it's everything I aspire to be. Thank Thank you. I think. Yeah, okay, thank you. Anytime. Okay, so I think that we should uh get on with our uh with our guest. Yeah, game development time. I'm excited. Oh, I was I was you folks are hilarious. So,

I was muted most of the time, too, for better. Sam, but you're you're hilarious. It feels like we're starting to relearn how to interact with people. Oh my god, how do we do that? We don't know anymore. Yeah, I know. But, it's it's um it's a totally See, I haven't even introduced you properly. I'm going to give you I'm going to give you the warmest introduction here. Woo! Now, and and now you now you have to listen to it unmute it and you can react Okay. and correct me as as I'm doing it. So, all right, here we go. Um and if any of this is wrong, uh I blame your personal webpage. Oh, well, thank you. All right. Uh Celia Hodent has worked um on She has worked as a UX You Okay. Yay, that starts well. Jinx it. Okay. Our next guest has worked as a UX consultant in the game industry for over a decade. No, that's false. Over Okay, this is a bad start then. No, I've only been a consultant for the past 2 and 1/2 years, but before that I

was working in the studios directly. Okay. But it was it was close. Okay, this is good. This is live live editing. Um all right, holds holds a PhD in psychology. Yay, that's good. Okay, has worked on Ubisoft franchises like Rainbow Six, Driver, Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs. Mhm. Okay. LucasArts sadly canceled Star Wars 1313. That was sad. Yeah, or is it 1313? And she's also Was 131.3, who knows? The Kingdom Hearts approach. And also worked on a little game called Fortnite at Epic Games. Yeah, it's it's I don't know if you heard of it, but it's it's a nice game. It's a nice little app. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And all right, there's there's more. You're too accomplished. Oh, stop. Uh prolific speaker including multiple times at GDC where she is chair and

advisor of the GDC UX Summit. Yes. Yes. That's cool stuff. Author of the All right, we're we're almost through here. Um author of The Gamer's Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design and the upcoming The Science of Psychology of Video Games. Yes. Is that is that all? Is that the big the big stuff? Yeah, I think that's good. That's All right, everyone help me welcome Celia Hodent. Hey, Celia. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. We're super excited. Should we call you Dr. Celia? Uh no. You can if you want if if if it's like a fantasy of yours. How about how about just Doc? Doc, yeah, Doc is cool. Yeah. Okay. All right, Doc. Uh so Always I can say great Scott. Okay. It's a requirement, I think. Yeah. Yeah. We will allow it. All right. So, uh first, uh we kind of we kind of went over your professional background, but like what what How did you get into this? Like This is This is like I'm excited to have

you on because it's uh it's a unique thing. Uh it's not that unique, but yeah, it's uh ish What I Yeah, unique-ish. Um yeah, a lot of people ask me that question. It's It's really funny because it really happened It just happened serendipity. Um so, 12 years ago uh I was working in the in the toy industry and like doing educational games and stuff like that. But I was a gamer. I've always been a gamer my whole life. Uh you know, like light gamer. Like I play a lot of games, so not just video games. Um and so, back then I I I was always seeing a lot of parents freaking out about video games and and uh fearing that it would uh turn their kids into dumb people. I don't know why, but it's it's been around for a while. And so, back then I started to look into the science behind it and the psychology is there any uh research uh behind the impact of video games? And back then I

found some research. Um mostly about the uh positive impact on cognitive skills, um but also the worries around um you know, violence and and pathological gaming and stuff like that. And so, this is how I started to write articles about it back in France and to start going into festivals. There were a few festivals back in the day about video games and um this is how I met with Ubisoft. And so, it happened that way. I got in that way. How how Why was that um attractive to you or appealing to you? It was um was it you know, to validate your hobby or like It's It's just It was just the the convert um Everything was was really converging and all the things that I love. So, I I love arts. I In In a previous life I I was a musician. I was playing music. And And

so, I love the fact that in video games there's a lot of artists and there's a lot of way to be creative. I I love science. Um I more specifically uh cognitive psychology cognitive science, but I love all science. Um And so, there's that in in my background and and I love playing games. And so, getting in the game industry was where everything is kind of converging. So, to me that was that was kind of that this is where I don't know where all the pieces came together and I thought, "Yeah, this is this is I guess this is where I belong. I think. I hope." Yeah. Was Was Ubisoft just um looking for Was it kind of a new area for them as far as getting, you know, somebody with a psychology background? Uh yes, it was Well, that was in back in 2008. Uh and that was new and there were a a couple studios that were interested into that. Ubisoft though were always interested into enriching people's lives and back then they had um you know, some uh

some educational Not really educational, but you know, games that you want to enrich people's people's lives like the all the um coach games, you know, My Word Coach or My SAT Coach. And so, uh I was hired to to help them understand how people learn um and to work on different projects. I was on the think tank, uh the strategic innovation lab that's reporting to the CEO of Gameloft. So, I was working there, but I was also working with uh the Games for Everyone uh team and I was also working with a editorial team. So, I was I was right at HQ, so that was really cool for me to enter the game industry at a place where I could look at a lot of different um, relevant things in in games and and all the different, um, topics and and things that people were doing at Ubisoft. So, yeah, they were interested into that aspect and I think they're still interested, um, into that. And so, yeah, to me it was it was a great uh, it was really

serendipity. I was at the right, uh, moment at the right place. Um, yeah, and I was interested into it. Yeah, we we've been kind of, uh, you know, dropping the term UX and saying user experience. Yeah. Uh, but that's not, you know, we can't assume that everybody, you know, who's listening, uh, understands what that is or what that means. So, can you explain what, you know, what that is exactly and yeah, and how it relates to games? First of all, it's new in the game industry. Um, when I started at Ubisoft, that was not a term that we were using. We started to use it maybe when I was at LucasArts. Um, so, more in in 2012, 2011. Um, user experience is, um, see it as a mindset. Um, when we design things and whether it is a video game or an object or an aircraft, whatever it is, we can design it the way we find it the the the easiest, um, for engineers or for

designers, but we can also shift from that perspective and try to adopt the perspective of the user who doesn't know, uh, what's going on in the back end, who doesn't necessarily, um, know how the thing works and try to adopt that perspective so that we can design the object, the system or the game, uh, taking into account the limitations of the human who's going to use the thing. So, it started it started back in, uh World War II um, when there were a lot of pilots that were super highly trained but still made some mistakes because when you're in a war, you're stressed out, of course, and they were pressing a button instead of the other because um the dashboards in the uh the aircraft were not consistent one aircraft from the other. And so you have to always relearn for each aircraft. And of course that was making human mistakes easier. And so

people would die or would crash planes. And so this is where they really people really start to shift from All right, instead of designing the aircraft in the way it's it's going to be the easiest for the engineer, how about we design it in the way it's going to be easier for humans considering humans flaws because we are we are flawed. And so we can make it better for for uh the military. And then it it spread from the military, started there, and then it started to gain traction in product design and in healthcare and video games. So video games is pretty new. It's been less than 10 years but it's gaining traction here too. And the idea is to ensure that you're going to offer the experience that you want to offer to your players by considering their perspective first. Yeah. And that whole idea of considering people's perspective is what seems that

would make this extremely difficult to figure out because people see things in in different ways, right? Yeah, perception is subjective. We're all different so we we're all flawed in the same way. But our perception is different. There's a a little game that I often do and I I show a a picture and ask people what do you perceive in this picture and and depending on on where people are coming from they see different things and this is just to illustrate that our perception is subjective and it really highly depends on what we care about our culture it depends on the games that we play the conventions that we're used to. And so if you're even if you're a gamer like gamer there's not one gamer and we have we have gamers and depending on what type of game you're playing you're going to be used you you know certain conventions like if you play a lot of RPGs or playing a lot

of FPS there are specific conventions that you don't find necessarily in puzzle games. And so it's really important to understand different perspectives and we cannot do that by ourselves because we cannot it's just something we can't do adopt someone else's perspective we're very bad at that. So we need a methodology so we can so that's why we play test so that we can verify that the the the game that you're designing is going to be understood and perceived in the way you want it by the people who are going to play it and they might have a very different perspective than you have. So that's the basic principle. Can you can you talk a little bit about like you know basic methodology for for something like this or give an example? Sure. So first of all it's very broad

when we talk about UX a lot of people think UI. Of course UI is part of the experience and and you know the icons that we're using and the menus and organization and the HUD of course that's going to uh very impactful but it's not just the UI, it's everything. If you Let's take an example of of what you call affordance. An affordance is when you see something uh you see an object and you know you know how you're going to be able to use it and that the object is designed to help you interact with it. Um so in product design for example, if you think about a I have a mug just right in in front of me. That mug has a handle. That handle is an affordance for me to be able to just grab it with three or four fingers and lift it. Uh that's helping me uh using that object without burning my fingers if there's something warm in it. Yeah. Um in video games we don't manipulate most of the time we don't manipulate uh physical objects. So the affordances are

what we call cognitive affordances or just signifiers. But the idea is just by looking at something in your game, can I understand uh what's it's for and how I can use it? So for example, if you look at um the enemies in Mario, uh let's let's say Bowser, everybody uh knows Bowser. Um he has spikes on his back. Mhm. That's telling you that if you're going to jump on it, it's probably going to hurt you. So you should not do that. This is a cognitive affordance explaining to you how this enemy is working. So we need to uh help out players uh because we want the game to be uh uh first of all fun and also easy to understand and to and to um understand the rules of the world and and what we need to do in a intuitive way and it's through affordance that we can do that a lot um because games we don't want to read a manual before playing a game. We just want to experiment it and if we can understand just by looking at something,

so it's character design, it's environment design, and yes, it's the UI, but it's not just that. Even the music, uh uh, effect, all of that is going to be important because all of that is part of the experience and the idea is to ensure that we're going to give the experience that we want to give. Um, so in video games it's what's complicated is we we are putting some challenges in front of players. Uh, unlike other areas like military or or product design, we don't we don't want to challenge people using something. Um, but in games we do want to challenge people in the games. So, what's going to be really important to start by defining what experience do you want to offer? Where do you want to challenge players? Let's say for example Fortnite is a game where you're going to challenge uh, players with their twitch skills and combat and building uh, and coordinating with others. It's not a game where we want to challenge people into perception. A game like Monument Valley

is a game when you challenge people on their perception because you play around with perspective. Um, so it's really important to first define where you want to put a challenge, what experience you want to offer, and who is your users? Um, who are the people going to play your game? Because like I said, depending on what they're used to, um, they might see things differently. And so once you nail that, then you can start. This is where the methodology starts. Uh, and this is where you can try to anticipate problems that your uh, players are going to have and you're going to have to make trade-offs and uh, make the right choices so you can offer the experience that you want to offer to your players. Sorry, it's a bit broad, but it's a What? Sitting here intently listening. It's fascinating. Yeah, I can talk about that forever, so don't feel free to interrupt me because otherwise back into like my college shorthand when I'm taking notes. You be like, oh yes, yes, this is like sitting in on a really interesting psychology course. Yeah, the professor is in.

We're frantically taking notes here. I'm like flashing back. It's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Um, I did want to ask though like when you define your challenger your users and stuff like that, is there like moments throughout the process where you have to go back and re- reevaluate after like having some hands-on like play testing or like looking at how players are actually reacting to your game and be like, okay, we need to change our definitions and adapt to how players are receiving it or do you adapt like how do you adapt to that on the fly with UX design or like UX anything? Yeah, absolutely. You So, we use what do we we call design thinking. So, it's an interaction iteration cycle. So, you design something, you test it and depending on how people are using it, is it validating or not what you're trying to accomplish. If not, you go back to design and you iterate and then you retest. So, of course we're going to adjust a lot of stuff, but typically we don't tend to adjust what we thought the game should be about

uh because if if your if your game is about combat and building and cooperation and you see that this is not what we're trying to accomplish, it's it's rare that we're going to say, oh yeah, it's bad that our game is bad at doing that, but it's great at doing something else. Let's shift entirely and do that. I mean, it's it's possible, why not, but typically not what we do because making games is very extremely expensive. Um, so we we do have we do have a we're focusing on accomplishing certain goals that are broad goals. Uh, but then to to get there, yes, we're going to iterate on systems, we're going to iterate on the art, we're going to iterate on the UI, we're going to iterate on all these things and maybe going to adjust. Um, we're making some assumptions that might be wrong and so we might have to remove uh for example a feature that we thought would reinforce uh such a strange feeling that we want to give, but at the end of the day this isn't all

what's happening, it's actually uh removing more than adding anything. So, yes, we we adjust the features and systems, uh but typically we don't adjust the the vision that we had for the game. At least not in in my experience. In uh in one of your GDC talks uh a few years back, uh you really focused on these concepts of perception, memory, and attention. Yeah. Which was totally fascinating. Talk We talked a little bit about perception, uh but can you talk about how why those three things are important to consider and how they relate to each other? Absolutely. Um so, when we talk about I'm just going to take one step back before. Uh when we talk about UX, so we want to offer the experience we want to offer to our players, there are two main things that we need to look into to offer great user experience. The first one is usability, and the second one is what I call engageability. Usability is is making sure that the game can be used.

Uh people understand the objectives, they can manipulate all the things they need to manipulate, understand the systems. If If there's crafting in your in your game, players understand how to interact with the crafting system, and they are able to craft something. That's usability. Uh A game can be usable, like meaning that people can understand what they have to do and manipulate uh all the features in your game, uh but it could still be boring. And so, a game needs more than just usability, it needs to be engaging. But back onto usability, um to make a game usable, we need to take into account the limitations of the human brain. So, we look into mental processes, and so this is where cognitive science uh kicks in, because cognitive science is the study of mental processes. And the main mental processes um that we know well and that we are really important to make a game usable are perception, attention, and memory. So, we look at the main limitations of

at these things. Um the the brain is performing for a lot of stuff. Uh we have great capabilities, but we also have great uh limitations. So, the the the one we talked about perception is perception is subjective. And we have a hard time remembering that because for us, what we see, what we hear, everybody should have the same perception of the reality, but it's not what happens. There's one reality, and there's multiple perceptions of it. This is why it's so hard to communicate sometimes. And then, attention and memory are also very important. And memory is critical um because you don't If you learn something, it means that you memorized something new. If you don't memorize it, you don't learn it. And so, um playing a video game is a learning experience. There's a lot of things your player is going to have to learn from the controls to the objective to the story. Um and so, we need to understand how we can make sure that players are going to memorize the most important things in your game. Um and the problem with memory is that memory is pretty

flawed. Uh I'm sure you've experienced that. You forget about stuff. Perfect memory. Perfect memory. Sure. Um so, that's we have to deal with that. Uh and so, memory is pretty flawed, and we have what we call the forgetting curve. And even if you learn something by heart, and that's, you know, let's say today you've learned something entirely by heart, like a series of of numbers of or um or uh words, but then tomorrow, maybe you're only going to remember half of them, or even less than that if what you're trying to um learn was meaningless. And so, we are forgetting stuff as uh time passes. And it's really important for video games because a video game we experience that across several days or weeks or hopefully months and years. And if you play every day, you're you're less likely to forget about stuff. But a lot

of players, they're going to play a lot, let's say, a game that's complicated. Let's take the example of Red Dead Redemption 2. You you play it, there's a lot of systems to learn, and maybe you're going to play every day for a couple weeks, and then you go on vacation or there's, you know, you're going on crunch because we're making video games and we crunch. And and so you leave the game for a week or two, and when you come back, it feels like you're you're downgraded cuz now you don't remember how to do things, and it's taking a long time to get back to it. Oh, not not to get hung up on this there interrupt through this, but like this is just so striking to me. Like I I forget like where I slotted my fishing rod in my tool wheel in Animal Crossing. Like minute minute to minute. And like that's that's one of the things that's frustrating to me too about RPGs, for example, because you'll return to it and there's like for most of them, some of them are trying to do this now, but these are like epically long, you know, stories. And then you know, I'm not

playing every single day, and then I'll come back and like months later, and then I just give up cuz I'm just like, what the heck am I even doing? as well start all the way over, yeah. And like There was like a moment with that what you were describing with a kind of forgetting like small elements of something where like I previously played a lot of Hitman 2. Now I only play some Hitman 2. Um and I took a break from that game to play Horizon Zero Dawn or that was Hitman 1, I think. And then I came back to it and I'm like, all right, I'm going to go to this level I know really well, and I'm going to go through this way, and I go behind this butler and I got to sneak and open the door. And instead of hitting the open the door button, I hit what in Horizon would be the action button, and I punch this butler directly in the face. Because like my memory of the buttons had been overlapped with what I was playing at a different time, and it just it went weird, it all went bad. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great example. Uh and so as a gamer, we we typically play a lot of different games and what you're describing is is what we call muscle memory. So, in psychology, we we call that procedural memory. The memory of actions, which is a bit different from the memory of facts and and knowledge

such as, you know, what's the storyline in that in that game. That's more facts and and the buttons that you press is is more procedure. And these are two different completely separate memories and they work differently, but muscle memory is very strong and so, once you're trained on a game and you have certain button buttons layout, if you go back to another game, it's it's a nightmare because you have to relearn. It's just like if if you go from the US and you go to London and you have to look right before crossing and you're not used to that and it's going to take you a while to get used to that. Mhm. So, it's the same principle and there's a lot of games now they they care more about the onboarding. They onboard players better, but not many games think about re-onboarding players after they left the game for a little while and that's that can be okay if you're a paid-up front game. If you're free-to-play game, that could mean that players when they get back to it, they

forgot about everything and they feel like it's going to be um too hard to get better at it and they might just quit and play another game. So. harsh. Yeah, like like seriously, like I I need a like a a re you know, adjustment or like re-intro every time I I turn a game on. So, I should probably get a brain scan. No, I can assure you your brain is perfectly normal. This is We all have this problem. Humans are just flawed. That's good to know. Now now mem and then memories, so it's perception how people see things and then memory, um, you know, and and then that goes into attention. Yes. How does that go into UX? So, the the these elements are not really separated. We talk about them separately, um, but memory is the process of encoding, retaining, and then recalling information. So, it's all of that. And to encode information, you need

attention. Um, so if you don't pay attention to something, you're not going to remember it well. So, to pay attention to something, it also needs to stand out. Sorry, what was that? Which part? I'm just kidding. Yeah. I was pretending like I you lost my attention. Yeah. I'm sorry. That's terrible. No, good try. Good try. Thank you. It's difficult times. We need to laugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so now I lost my memory. Can I have my memory, please? Um, so yeah, you need So, first of all, to pay attention to something, sometimes you need to perceive it. And so, that's why we need to stuff to stand out. This is the reason why we have, you know, big flashes in games or giant exclamation mark to draw attention. Uh, but through perception. So, we draw attention, and once you pay attention to something, then you're going to process things better. So, the better you process something and the the more um, the

deeper you process something, the more likely you are to remember it. This is This is the reason why in most cases, learning by doing is more efficient than learning by reading instructions, for example. So, during the onboarding phase, it's going to be more way more efficient if you want people to remember it to put your players in a situation where they have to do something that they have to uh, experience the thing you're trying to teach them. And the This is the way really I put Fortnite together, the the Save the World parts. Uh, so the more the story mode part. For example, the first time you learn how to build, the players are in a situation where they're want they're in a cave and they need to exit the cave, but there's nothing there to exit the cave. And this is where we teach that, "Hey, if you want to exit, you need to build stairs." And so, the idea is if you place players in a situation where they they have context, it means that they can do the things that you teach them. There's a

learning by doing, and on top of that, it's meaningful. They care about it right now because they need to get out. Uh, this is when people are more likely to pay attention to what they're doing, uh, and they're more motivated to do it, and they're more likely to remember it, uh, later on. So, that's the reason why, uh, perception, attention, and memory all goes together, and that's going to be really critical, um, for your onboarding and for your game usability. Uh, and the the best, you know, the the more you craft it carefully, the better it's going to be for your game. And this is the reason why you have to, um, determine what are the most important things in your game, what's the most important thing for the the the experience of the players because you can't do that for every single feature in your game. You can't teach everything in your game through that cuz otherwise you never ship. And so, you have to determine what are the most important things for your game, and what may also what are the most difficult things to learn. Like, in Fortnite, building is quite difficult. Uh, it's new, and

there's not a lot of games, uh, uh, that will have buildings, uh, I mean, at least back then. And, uh, even it's different from building in Minecraft. So, we know that's already going to be a feature and a system that's going to be hard for players to learn. So, we need to pay more attention to that system more specifically, uh, and maybe the rest, you know, if they if they, uh, if if it's not as crafted carefully, never mind, uh, because we we can't do everything perfectly. So, if If do that, you determine what is the This is what I call the during the onboarding plan, defining what are the most important features in your game that things that if players don't understand how to do that, they're never going to have fun. Um and so you can uh place a lot of effort in that. Um and if you do that, then it's it's you are more likely to make sure that player is going to remember it. Yeah. The other trick is also so so that players don't forget is to have better affordances. Also, give away information

uh at all times. That's why HUDs are so important because if on the HUD, like on Assassin's Creed, the first um uh the first of the series, you always have on the HUD all the actions you can do in context. You don't have to learn about these. So, even if you come back um 2 weeks later, you you you you're not under the forgetting curve because the information is still on your HUD. And that's why caring about your HUD and making sure you have the right information for players and that it's intuitive, that's a it's a great thing because then when players come back, they can re-onboard more easily. Alyssa, now that you're kind of have taken all these notes, you've scribbled them them all down, how how do you grade the uh the UX in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? On a scale of 1 to 10. Uh I don't

Good luck, Alyssa. Yeah. I know, for me it's difficult cuz you it's hard to separate it from what I had as a kid and like what's like baked into my mind from so long cuz like I there's just so much in that game that's automatic for me because earlier on I learned these systems and then carried that forward. So, like it's hard for me personally to kind of like grade that one. Yeah. But it's it's always hard and it it's hard for everyone because we care about certain games more than others. Uh certain games uh I've mixed triggers, nostalgia. And so this is the reason why it's really hard as game developers or gamers to grade and to rate any of these games. This is why we need a methodology so we can detach from our own perspective and use very precise methodology to look at uh elements. So that's why uh my framework is using like the usability elements like signs and feedback are they clear? Uh do we have good form follows function? I mean do we have good affordance? Um do we minimize uh the the workload for

players when they have to play for things that they're going to have to do very often? So we look at very precise things and same thing for engagement, you know, is it motivating? Is um it's more complicated for engagement because we don't have um enough uh research on that and it's more fuzzy. But we do have elements like uh motivation, emotion, and you know, uh game feel and we look into game flow and onboarding and all that. And so this is what we do. We don't It's hard to um evaluate a game just based on our feelings um even if we're professional. This is why I highly recommend to try to detach ourselves from our own gut feeling and common sense because common sense is flawed because the brain is flawed. Especially mine, yeah. Well, again, it's not just you. I can hear that. Thank you. I'm I'm just putting out the self-deprecating stuff so you validate me and and yeah.

Um so like uh what when you're talking about getting other people's perspectives, I mean like you're you're talking about, you know, different kinds of play testing, right? Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch of things that we can anticipate cuz we have principles that we use from the human computer interaction, but I yeah, we always need to play test because at the end of the day, uh we can't anticipate everything. We have blind spots and we need to play test with a lot of different people. That's why inclusion and diversity is very important so that we can ensure to uncover our blind spots. And this is typically the moment it's it's both exhilarating and and atrocious because you bring over players from your your audience. And you watch them play and and sometimes you know, sometimes the things you were expecting to work are working and it's exhilarating and sometimes something that you thought would be obvious is actually not obvious to someone who doesn't know anything about the system.

Even though they're gamers and this is when it can be really depressing. Because sometimes like on Fortnite there are some elements like you know, play test after play test after play test so we were iterating on something and it was still not working and like and that's why that's why these rooms are soundproof. You're really like why is this not working? Like whenever whenever I play something in front of a developer and they're watching me play like I know you know, if you're at a show or something. Yeah. Like like I am super self-conscious too. Because I'm just thinking like I should know where to go and what to do and I know that that's what they're thinking like what are you doing? You Well, that's typically why we we don't have developers in the rooms when we play test because first of all, it's it's intimidating and second of all you want to be nice to the developer because you know that that person like put their heart and soul and sweat and blood in

there and you you try to figure out things way more carefully than if you were at home and especially or if you were on the commuting to work and and trying a free to play game on your phone. This is where really we don't care a lot about any of that thing. And so we don't have a lot of time to ensure that players first of all they understand what have to do and it's compelling and and then years it's done. So And there's there's like an amazing amount of like these tiny little details. You were talking about menus and Gestalt principle. Gestalt, yeah. Yeah, and you know, which you know, it's about grouping things together, right? And how your brain Yeah, so it's it's it's more than that. It's yeah, it's it's about seeing patterns and across all humans we have the same way of seeing patterns. But the problem is that we So we have different laws and principles from Gestalt that can help us anticipate how people going to see

thing, but the problem is that in real life there's all of these law and principles that are interacting with one another. But when we take them separately, we can clearly anticipate. So for example, if you just see a a block of dots that are equidistant, you're just going to see a big I don't know, like square of dots. Now if you remove the center column of these dots, then you're going to see two blocks of rectangles. Because we group things that are close to one another together. So that's one of the main principle of Gestalt which is called the law of proximity. Yeah, and and the way that you were applying it was was fascinating. Uh and it had to do with I think it was a menu in Far Cry that you that you used to level up skills and and stuff. And sometimes those things like I know that's a difficult, you know, to design at all. Um but the way that you're explaining is like see how these

are these are close together. This looks like it's vertical and it's actually horizontal progression system. Yeah. And and that and that that that I don't know. It just seems mind-bending to me. I I know and and and for us it seems so obvious and and sometimes we just do things and we're like, "Oh, we're going to iterate on that later." And that later never happens. And that's the reason why we need to anticipate things and we need to use these principles um to design so that uh from the beginning it's it's at least it's following some principles cuz we're going to have to iterate anyway. Um but there are some principles we can easily apply but we just forget. And there's a lot of things that are shipped uh that are violating these basic principles just because to us it's so obvious because we know that the system is working horizontally. And so it's it's it's again perception is flawed. So that knowledge is changing the way we perceive uh these systems. we're we're kind of running short on time. I feel like I could keep on going forever. But we still have time for a

few things. Yeah, I'm going to cut in here. I was going to ask like obviously having a UX researcher or UX designer on your team has a huge payoff as like the last 40 minutes of conversation can attest. But kind of what concepts from um like considering UX should developers and other disciplines like keep in mind to their day-to-day if they don't have someone like that on their team? Yeah, well that's that's basically the information I want to give away in my book. Uh so this is where I summarize everything. What's really important is to have the correct mindset. Uh and always think about players uh first and place them at the center of whatever you're doing. Uh so of course if you can't play test it's going to be difficult uh because you you do need to have that that that check uh because there are many things you can't anticipate. Uh but at least if you if you have a better understanding of how the brain uh works, uh the main flaws uh in terms of perception, attention, memory, and if you understand better um

how motivation works, what's going to be important to make it engaging for players, so things like motivation, emotion, and game flow. This this is just like the the basic information that at least if you have that it's going to change a bit your mindset and it's going to help you anticipate problems and iterate and find solutions faster. But of course it's not it's never going to replace a UX designer who these people are really specialized into interaction design and information architecture so they can help you define systems so that's going to be really critical if you have a game with a lot of systems and heavy UI. And play testing is always going to be important to help you out. So if you can play test there's a lot of people who can will offer these services. I assure you it is worth it. So I I know it's it's hard to to invest money in there but it's it's

an investment that you will not regret. But the basic information is on my website because I know like the book is quite expensive. But this is really the information you need to understand so that you you can start shifting your mindset from I'm going to design what I want to do to I want to offer that experience to that sort of players and I want to make sure this is really what I'm achieving. That's you know having that mindset is really key. So like speaking of consulting on these games can you I'm interested in hearing uh what you know are there what are the common mistakes or if there are or is it just like everything you know? All the things. Um Well the the common mistakes yeah it's it's often times it's the same thing where we have that that hope that things are going to be okay. And I mean it it really depends on the games but when I work with uh, with a AAA

studios and and they are making a game for hardcore gamers. The typical uh, caveat here is they they always hope that oh, because it's hardcore gamers, they will they will understand it. But this is not true and hardcore gamers, they also they it's not only your game coming out or there's a lot of games that come out and um, they're not going to blame it on their skills if if they don't understand something and as well they should. Um, they could just going to say well, I don't get it or if if they die and they didn't understand why, uh, depending on how motivated they are to play your game, they might not try to figure out um, your game and you can't count on that. It's really rare that the game has so much hype um, that even if it's confusing, players are going to really work around it and try to be motivated to figure it out or if they do, it's just a very small proportion of um, your audience. Mhm. So, that's

that's one of the main uh, flaw that I see from uh, player from a studios that are developing a hardcore a game for hardcore gamers. Yeah. That's interesting too because the way that you, you know, are taking into consideration there are other games that are coming out that, you know, but do you say that because it could like um, you know, they they're understanding how one game works that's kind of similar and then the UX doesn't apply uh, crossways or Uh, it's not just that. It's so you need to be motivated and so for my motivation there's three principles for intrinsic motivation. So the motivation of playing your game just for the pleasure of playing it, not because other people are playing it, so you want to be part of the gig. Um, but it's it's about competence, autonomy and relatedness. Um, competence is about feeling in control and feeling that you're progressing in the game. If the game is not um, making players feel competent in

playing the game, they're going to quit. Um and and competence is not I'm not saying that the game should you know you should never lose and everything is always great. You do need challenge, but competence is about if I die, I understand why I died and next time I can come back to it and get better at it. If this is not happening because the signs and feedback in the game is are not clear, because you don't have that good affordances, players are just going to quit. They and especially because there are other games out there. Um so that's that's the thing we need to to focus on. It's really important to make sure this is what the onboarding is all about. Just make sure players are going to feel competent into playing the game and they feel they can get better and progress. If they don't feel that, uh this this is when trouble starts. When when you're describing um that stuff, I'm thinking of like, you know, these really difficult like Souls-like games Yeah. that

they're they're popular. They're really popular, you know, especially considering how difficult they are. Yeah. It's kind of like they're popular because you you know that you're the one who messed up. Uh yeah, but the Souls game I mean it's it's it's in the contract. You know that you're getting into suffer and this is typically the type of of players that they're uh targeting. Um and so this is usually what I It's funny because typically Souls games are the ones that come up saying, "Oh, you know, with UX every every game is going to be easy and we can lose Souls games." Like, "Ah!" And like, "No, if your game is the experience of the game you want to offer is one for people like to suffer, we actually going to help you accomplish your sadistic goals." Um but you have to know that your audience is going to be much smaller. Uh so to to make it work, everything else has to be really well done in terms of UX. Everything is UX. Exactly.

Life is UX. Do you do you do you have a difficult time turning your your UX brain off? You're just looking at stuff and you're like, "Oh." Every Every time you go up to a door and then it looks like you push it, but it's actual pull. You're like, "What?" I I can't tell you how many times I get mad at things around me. Like everything. I'm like, "Do you think they expect me to remember that shit?" Or like if I if I see something like elevators or every time I go to a new place. Well, sometimes it's fun cuz when when I get to a new country, I try to see, "Can I operate this machine? Can I figure out how to buy, I don't know, a metro ticket?" Or Oh, yeah, I know. Oh, yeah. I've gotten lost in the first year of foreign subways. What? it's fun. It's it's it's interesting. But there's also just to to finish about the the the idea of difficulty. Yes. Um it's also really important to make your game inclusive, which means also it has to be accessible. And it's not because you define a difficulty is is really

arbitrary. It depends on how the designers they they want the game to be difficult. But I I don't see why you should make your game not accessible to a lot of people just because you can't have many different options that can alleviate barriers to enjoy your game. So that's really important and there's a lot of debate around that and I really I just really don't understand why are we still having that debate today. Yeah. Yeah, I have a difficult time with that, too. That you just brought up another topic we could talk another hour about. yeah. about accessibility. No. Yeah, we do need to wrap it up, but let's let's you know, talk a little bit more about your book. You've you know, Gamer's Brain is is out. Like it's you know, people you know, people are reading it. You have another one that you said you just finished up recently. Yeah. So, the new book The School of the Psychology of Video Games it's really more for a broad audience. Um and it's about explaining how video games are made and what is the impact of

video games. So, it's the psychology of making games also the psychology of playing games. And the idea is to go through So, first of all, UX where is it coming from and and how our psychology is used to make games cuz you have a lot of people and and and the public they don't understand and they feel oh, they have psychologists they must be trying to I don't know, manipulate my brain. And so, there's a lot of fear around that. So, I really wanted to explain what this is all about. And then also explaining a bit better the the research around the impact of video games because there's also a lot of great claims around that. So, yeah, one side saying oh, video games are going to save the world and they make everything better. Most of the time these are great claims that are not necessarily backed up by science. And yeah, on the other side you have oh my god, video games are are killing everybody and and everything is dark and and everybody is getting violent and um hooked up in games. And this also are great claims

are not backed up by science. So, the idea was to look into these things, look into the positive impact of games, when is this happening, what conditions and what are can be the the negative impact of games. And it's mainly regarding if if you're over consuming games, of course, that can lead to problems. But, the main issue is that we talk about video games as if it was a big bucket of the same thing. And we need to start stop talking about the great or bad impact of games and start to talk about more specifically what is what is bringing something interesting in in terms of health or education of our kind of skills and what are the limitations that we need to be careful about and it's mostly about mechanics and it's mostly about specific things and not just video games as a broad um topic. So

this is what I was trying to accomplish in this book and I also finish by talking about ethics and what we need to look into um because the game industry also need need to talk about ethics a bit more I think. Um How do you mean ethics? Like uh So thinking making sure that uh we are aware that there's no design is uh neutral. So everything we design is going to influence people to use the design in a way or another. So uh when we design uh games to uh encourage people to come back uh it's fair it's fair game cuz we especially for free to play we need to have that to make money so I totally understand but sometimes for example we design games that punish disengagement. Uh and this is where it can be a little bit unethical because then you're it's not that you're encouraging people to come back and they're going to be rewarded if they come back as you're going to be they're going to be be punished if you're not coming back which

is uh a little bit different and I think it's important for the game industry to look into these mechanics and define where we should draw the line. Um before because it's it's already uh you know policy makers and uh the public is is talking about these things whether it is loot boxes or um retention mechanics and we need to own that discussion and we need to start looking into where's the line. And so that we can uh address the the issue because there are some issues and we should not shy away from addressing them. And uh when is uh the new book coming out? Uh I assume it's going to be in October. So, it's not not anytime soon. I'm sorry. That's all right. But, it will be available on newsstands everywhere. So. Uh I hope so. Yeah, it's it's uh yeah, if we still have Well, yeah, in October, hopefully, we're going to be able to be out. Yeah, it's it's frustrating, but it is the way it is. That's a whole 'nother thing. Yeah. But, we're all in there together,

so. Yeah. Yeah, we are. And well, thanks so much for joining us. It's absolutely fascinating. I'm glad you find that fascinating. As you can see, I can talk about it forever. Well, we need to have you on again sometime. We can uh Anytime. All right. Well, uh thanks Doc. And uh since I have permission to contact Thanks, Chris and Lisa. Yeah, and uh take care and stay safe. Yeah. Everybody stay safe, please. And just like that, Celia was gone. Is that how I guess that's how we'll start with this this will start the third third bit like that. No, she was she was excellent. Uh

like I I'm still absorbing uh all of the information. And my practical and applicable information. It's the best kind. Yeah, that's been the nice thing about uh our GDC podcast guests so far is they can just talk about their subject matter forever and it is incredible to listen to. Yeah. I know. We like don't have to do anything. Oh my god. Just Mhm. Mhm. Every now and then and just podcast pod- podcast itself. Mhm. Mhm. Podcast podcast. Mhm. Podcast uh uh no, tongue twister. Okay. This segment's gone really well. Yep. Um back on track. I was looking forward to this one in particular. Uh this conversation in particular because um getting into more of like the behind the scenes writing about like the game industry and stuff like that. UX was one of those like early question marks, you know, where like I'm like, "Yeah, I know what game design is. I know how programming and art like they just do the typing and the drawing." And then like but UX was this like mystery one where I'm like, "I don't actually know

what that is." So like getting to uh kind of validate everything I've learned about that over the years of picking things up here and there and just hearing an expert talk about it was a really enlightening way of like all the ways it touches the different aspects of game design and how it goes unnoticed when it's done so well and uh Yeah. And there's, you know, a rising interest in it, it seems like uh like, you know, like we mentioned earlier, she runs the GDC UX Summit. Mhm. Uh she's the chair of that. And um I remember the first time that we did the summit, I think it was the first time, pretty sure, but it was just a huge, huge turnout. So this is something that, you know, is, you know, a you know, a newer field, you know, it's it's not like brand new, but it's something that, you know, people are taking more interest in and and especially if you are a small studio, you know, you might not be able to, you know, hire somebody like Celia, which by

the way, hire Celia. Mhm. And um you want to try to, you know, obtain that information for yourself if you can. And uh it's I I think I think it'll just, you know, make make for better better video games, a overall better experience. Because like like I said, you know, uh it's like every you start realizing everything is user experience. Yeah. There was like the the I think it's in the Matrix where like the everything feels back and it's just like the numbers and the data. It's like that but like everything's UX. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and and also, you know, there was I wish there was more time to talk to her about this stuff, but there's the learning aspect of it. And when I say learning aspect, it's like it seems like 90% of it is about learning. She was talking about onboarding and you know, that's a way you know, the initial learning of, you know, this new system that

you're going to be interacting with. So, that's you know, that's fascinating. There's there's that great um analogy with uh uh the first stage of Super Mario Brothers. And I don't know if you saw it, but it or I can't even remember like where it was. It's somewhere. If someone can find it that's listening. Somewhere online. Yeah, but it you know, that those very first blocks in Super Mario Brothers taught you so many things about how the rest of the game works. And then it's just like, okay, well, that's you know, that's why uh Nintendo is uh number one in the biz right there. Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff that like I'll like poke designers about when we talk to designers is like oh like intuitively teaching people things. And I didn't realize that was such a big part of like the UX side of game development um was just kind of the more data-driven looks at like creating things in a readable way. Yeah. Um we we brought out ethics uh also

talked about that for a little bit. And if you're interested in looking more on that, um Celia actually I I think if you just uh Googled uh Celia Hodent and um ethics, you'll turn up her Gamasutra blog which is like thousands of words, couple like a couple thousand words. It's an expanded GDC talk actually. And she talks about the kinds of ethics and, you know, approaching um these ethical issues in a scientific way. And it, you know, talks about loot boxes also, um all of these controversial things, and uh you know, a game addiction, which we weren't able to talk about too much, but these are things that it's it's really interesting that it's at the top of her mind. Um and of course that they should be because they're they're UX based, aren't they? Yeah. No, it's kind of married with um earlier on in the conversation, it was mentioned that like uh research doing

like a heavy research into how people think in game development, like outside it kind of looks like shady, like oh, they're trying to figure out how to best extract money from the free-to-play. Yeah. But like her article on ethics talks about a lot more of that, but in like a good multi-layered, multi-faceted way. Yeah. Uh her entire gamasutra blog is a very readable and knowledgeable, and I recommend checking it out. Mhm. Please don't judge the UX of our website. It's It's It's a What's the word? Vintage? Yeah, it's vintage. It's uh you know, it's the aesthetic that counts. A comfortable throwback to a Anyway. Simpler time. That was a great chat. She's so enthusiastic, and I love it. Yes. I'm enthusiastic about Celia's enthusiasm. All right. So, uh that's all for this week. You know, check us out on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and uh should we keep saying YouTube? I haven't uh

We haven't uploaded uh one there in a little while. something out on YouTube. It's We'll We'll We'll do it at some point. content. There's a couple things out on YouTube. how GDC content's on YouTube besides us, so. Yeah. You can go to GDC YouTube for other stuff, I guess. Yeah. So, if you liked what you heard, uh like and subscribe, please. We would love that. All right. For now, I'm Well, not for for now. I will continue to be Chris Grafft. I will do my best to continue to be Alyssa Macaluso. And uh have a All right, let me try that. Have an excellent outro. Yeah, so close. All right.