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Flying Labs’ Usability Lab
May 2, 2007 2:44 pm
Buried away in a Pirates of the Burning Sea status update:
Another one of our new hires runs a full time usability/playability lab, where we bring in players to see what they think of the game. We’re also conducting tests of our new marketing materials, the new web site, etc. As you might expect, this kind of data is extraordinarily useful in fine tuning the game, and it’s extremely cool to watch our test scores constantly improving.
Awesome, and to the best of my knowledge, an industry first for independent MMO developers. But will said new hire have a job after launch?
Joe Ludwig wrote:
Of COURSE Janice will still have a job after launch. She started helping us out with the first round of “pizza testing” that we did back in January, and was such a big help that we made her an offer to do it full time. (And stole her away from another local game company.
We’ve gotten some great feedback from our usability tests so far, and I’m expecting that will continue indefinitely. Development on the game does stop after launch, after all.
Posted on 02-May-07 at 8:45 pm | Permalink
Joe Ludwig’s Blog » Pizza Testing wrote:
[…] Sara discovered our secret competitive advantage. Starting a few months ago we’ve been running usability tests to try to smooth out as many rough edges in the game as possible before launch. Even though our testing isn’t particularly scientific and is extremely low budget, we have been getting fantastic feedback on the game. […]
Posted on 02-May-07 at 11:23 pm | Permalink
Sara Jensen wrote:
In my experience, many post-launch features are of the “I don’t know, come up with something you can do in data tomorrow and leave the coders alone” variety. I can see it in many games’ patch notes. (Including, uh, some games that should have more money than that.)
I know you guys know what you’re doing, though.
Posted on 03-May-07 at 1:08 pm | Permalink
bloo wrote:
zOMG. Sounds like someone has actually applied some Jacob Nielsen. That must be the promised land!
At the Texas Independent Games Festival last year, Warren Spector explained that on his current project, every Thursday at 2 PM they have an outside volunteer test something - anything - even in their very early stages of development. It might be 5 minutes, it might be 30, but they make something they have testable. And all staff are required to observe the test and/or watch the video later.
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