Whatever your product is, considering user experience (UX) before launching your product can help you create a successful result. But, there are many misconceptions about UX in video games which usually occur in a game development team that may involve web designers, web developers, and etc. So, what are those misconceptions?
Misconception #1 – UX will distort artistic/design intents
Many developers think that regarding UX practices could hold back their creativity or distort the design intents or just make the game easier. With UX practices, your targeted audience can experience the game simulation they have dreamt about. More seriously, one of the UX pillar-usability- is about removing friction and unwanted frustration. In fact, in deeper sense, usability is about removing friction and unwanted frustration without distorting the intended experience, because this would affect the second UX pillar – gameflow – which is in a nutshell about how enjoyable and “fun” the game is. The UX expert they will define if it is an issue to address or not, depending on the experience intended. UX is aimed to convey developer’s vision.
Misconception #2 – UX is just common sense
At some point, this statement is true; UX feedback may probably present with highlight issues you already familiar with and it’s always easier to spot common sense problems after the fact. That’s actually because of a cognitive bias called the hindsight bias where usually used in many games ship with “common sense” UX issues. However, not all UX recommendations are common sense through, the researchers from any field use very standardized protocols to test their hypotheses since it’s easy to miss or misinterpret what’s going on. If your perception hinders you from getting the real description of the game, UX could help figuring it faster and more precisely to see what the real problems are.
Misconception #3 – UX is yet another opinion
UX is formed through analysis of rigorous research and anticipate problems. Therefore, UX is not opinion since they derive their analysis based on their knowledge of the brain, past experience, and data when it’s available. In fact, you can analogize UX as a doctor recommendation who tell you about the importance of eating your vegetables and fruits. Some people may live old and healthy without following a recommend diet, yet some others can be affected by terrible diseases even if they have a healthy lifestyle. But, overall, statistics shoe us that eating vegetables will provide us with greater opportunity to live longer and healthier. This works the same with UX, if done correctly; the UX feedback will provide you with neural perspective which can be useful to achieve your target audience’s wants.
Misconception #4 – There’s not enough time / money for UX
You will never know when a nasty bug can be for a game, this makes creating games is hard and testing your games is necessary as asserting your perspective will only lead you fail and when you are realize you are too late and too costly to recover.
Testing your games doesn’t always mean you have to hire a psychologist, user researchers, or a fancy lab, but you surely need to regularly adopt your audience’s perspective and test your design with people around you that don’t know about it. In this way, you can discover problems sooner and give more chances to delight your audience with great user experience.