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This talk was given in the Gamescom Congress 2017 , under the umbrella theme, “ More than gamification ”. The gamescom congress is Europe’s leading conference on the potential of computer and video games for society as well as the economy.

Why are games important for user experience design? Photo by Lea Böhm on Unsplash Gamification was proved to be more of a buzzword than a real catalyst in enterprise software, that missed the distinction between play and game, misinterpreting the role of “motivation”. Nevertheless, game experience and game research have a lot to teach us, as designers, in understanding the human behaviour and this is what I would like to share.

Are video games an aspect of Visual Culture studies? Definitely yes, but not only because Wikipedia says so. Photo by Ales Nesetril on Unsplash In the former years the video games constituted interactive sequences of images that were consumed by players, with a relatively low level of complexity in terms of user experience and user engagement. The very first game platforms offered straight forward gameplay including a controller with very few buttons as a physical interface. The multiplayer mode introduced a more sophisticated engagement involving two players, two physical interfaces as input peripherals and a single display. The pixels on the screen might had been very few in the very beginning, and might have been increasing later on indeed, but did have strong impact on this primitive game experience. In the latter years, the game experience has been advanced into a more sophisticated complex of multiple mediums. The gamer nowadays consumes real time visual information fro...

And why I needed video games to point them out! Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash I play video games, I love actually playing video games, not in a blindly addicted way, rather in a more explorative way, I love the culture around it. I also like watching people playing games, not in the typical way over twitch, but observing their behavior as they are progressing through visual and emotional experiences. While studying it, I keep getting fascinated of how game design handles design matters, develops them and gives design solutions that offer unlimited hours of engagement. In parallel, user experience in consumer and enterprise applications does focus extensively in the functionality and in the use cases, which both formulate the applications. Fun, flow, gameful, colorful, minimal, functional, multilevel, material, all these aspects are gathered and addressed with smart design solutions. Though, a major aspect that game design struggles with is keeping the users engaged for hours...

Photo by zengxiao lin on Unsplash Why people (or kids) have actually started and continued playing Super Mario? This continuity started with the very first versions for NES and is up to date with more sophisticated interactive systems, and people still repeat the levels playing again and again! Is it actually the “coinification” that motivates them? The coins constitute a quantitative aspect of the completion of the game. There are other aspects as well such as time, mushrooms, goombas and so on. Is it maybe the overall gameplay that is attractive and engages masses of gamers playing each version that comes up? According to Wikipedia, “Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player’s connection with it. Video game gameplay is distinct from graphics, and audio elements.” Succes...

Should we consider the gamer as a worker? Photo by John Sting on Unsplash There are some abstract thoughts on my mind regarding labour and gaming. Gaming would have never been considered as work until recently, since it had always to do with pleasure and fun without any financial reward. Recently though, there has been examples such as the Auction House in the PC version of Diablo 3, where someone could sell items to other players exchanging real money. This was the only — so far — legal and transparent case of exchanging real money between players on a virtual community. In most of the popular MMORPGs there have been reported cases where players have sold items or even their whole accounts exchanging real money but all these exchanges took place outside the virtual community “illegally”! Thing is of course that in both cases people use a software to generate content based on the tools provided within the terms of the software, similar though to any other business applicati...

Digital distribution vs Boxed Versions and Shops! Photo by Arturo Rey on Unsplash I belong to those who have already started collecting games and consoles which belong to a past reality that I experienced as a child in the sense of its visual culture, but I did not have the financial opportunity to possess them back then. The only limitation right now to get more is the space in the flat! :) Besides that, I am willing to invest more time and expertise in bringing some chipsets back again to life and some old pixels on the screen. Of course I spend most of the time daily on consoles of the latest generation and the purchase of a PS4 is a matter of time until the next deliverables. Though, as every 30 year old gamer who respects his hobby, or more properly to say, his way of life, I tend to romanticize many of its aspects that keep me sometimes away from following fully the trends and staying a retro guy. Not in the sense that the past was blindly better, rather than by seeking ...

Among the discussion of a gameful user experience, one of game design’s key components is the user profiling. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash One case that belongs to the previous console generation and surprised me a lot with its spectacularly continuous flow was the very first race of Need For Speed Shift (PS3, XBOX 360, PC). The player was introduced to the new game by watching a trailer, and while the video was on, it prepared her/him progressively with imagery and finally prompted her/him to race, beginning with full throttle sitting on a pretty powered car. After finishing the race, the game itself would calculate the gamer’s behavior or performance and suggest to her/him a customized level of difficulty for starting the game. Remarkable flow!

They might be relatively old, they might be not top hardware pieces any more, but who cares?! Photo by Nikita Kostrykin on Unsplash Actually, the variety of game titles that someone can find available and actually in very keen prices is huge! I was watching the other day a clip in gamesradar ​ about “ The 7 Best Average Games ” and triggered me to write down these thoughts; I actually ordered also one of the games (Azura’s Wrath) to which the reviewers referred to on the clip. I realized that I keep finding out about titles that I might had just heard of them back then or discover for the first time, in case they were not massively marketed. There are really many games out there with top gameplay and scenario, graphics are probably outdated, but who really cares or why should someone desperately seek only for last generation games and snob everything else? The consoles themselves are reasonably priced, with XBOX360 bit more tempting. Game prices, as well, are really keen fo...

I have heard the term “ecosystem” in some podcasts regarding video gaming and must say that found pretty interesting the way they approach it. Sony and Microsoft have indeed raised the concept of an ecosystem within the video games community. Maybe is important to make a slight reference to the first generation of Playstation which was said to have first introduced video gaming into a new level of social recognition and raise it into culture. Previously, Nintendo and Sega’s competition indeed made video games popular but in a more cult manner. Playstation addressed older ages and managed to gain recognition and introduce video games as a cultural aspect. Further evolution has developed the notion of the culture and addressed a broadened field of ages and social groups as gamers, and brought them together by grounding active communities per game title and console. This evolution has contributed into the current status of Playstation Network and XBox Live with millions of active gam...

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash In most of the competitive strategy video games (eg. “StarCraft”, “Rome Total War”) the player’s goal while playing a game scenario is to dominate by eliminating other players that compete in the same scenario. In reality, absolute dominance has never been accomplished, though under certain circumstances dominance within a defined chronological period and geographical area has been achieved (eg. Roman Empire). In non competitive strategy video games (eg. “SimCity”) the goal is to achieve a state of balance that will secure player’s survival within the scenario, but real-time interaction between the players is not supported. Apart from competitiveness, time is also one significant parameter in classification of strategy video games, based on which they are distinguished into real time (RTS) with continuous gameplay (eg. “Warcraft”, “Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War”) and turn based (TBS) with discrete phases (eg. “Civilization”, “Heroes of Mig...