May 31, 2009 | Author: Jose | Filed under: News, Events


‘Uncovering Successful Co-op Game Design Patterns’

Visiting Lecture by Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr

3:10pm Wednesday, June 3rd Room 222

Designing good co-op games is an important topic in today’s video game industry. When interviewing kids ages 8-12, we found that over 89% of the kids interviewed play games with their friends or family at home or at their friends’ home. Most new games, such as Left for Dead and Resident Evil 5, have an added a co-op component to their game play. While in the previous years, co-op game play was considered as a secondary game mechanic, now games are designed with co-op components from the very start of the design process.

This talk will discuss a study we conducted within and in collaboration with Bardel Entertainment to gauge and identify successful co-op patterns within existing games. The target market for this study was North American kids 8-12 years old. We collected background information for all subjects who participated in the study. All participants were asked to come for a 3 hour game play session, where they played in a group of 2-3 participants in a naturalistic setting. We collected video data, as well as interview and observation data. We analyzed this data to gauge user behavior correlated with co-op game design patterns we identified. In this talk, I will discuss the results of this study uncovering co-op patterns that lead to engaging game play. I will also emphasize successful methods of data collection and analysis within a game company, discussing business and legal challenges as well as approaches that worked and those that didn’t.

Bio:
Dr. Seif El-Nasr is an assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, where she directs the Engage Me In Interactive Experiences Lab. She earned her Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in Computer Science and her master’s degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Game Development, the International Journal of Intelligent Games and Simulation, and ACM Computers in Entertainment; she has chaired and organized several workshops including, American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interaction Entertainment, which has recently became its own conference AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment). She was a special theme editor for the Journal of Game Development special issue on Game Design Research. Her research work includes designing and developing tools that enhance the engagement of interactive environments used for training, education, and entertainment. She has collaborated and has on-going relationships with several game companies, including Electronic Arts, Bardel Entertainment, RedHill Studios, and Radical Entertainment. http://www.sfu.ca/~magy.

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