Top Methods For Social Game Usa On Social Media

Testing games for their usability is a
relatively new field. It required a change in focus, from "Can it be used?" to "Can it be used, and is it fun?". This change in focus meant previously recognised methods had to be adjusted and entirely new ones created to enable user experience to effectively evaluate games and highlight usability issues.

So - there are now many methods available to assess game usability; however many of these methods struggle with regards to social games.

Before we go further it's best to define 'social' games. When it is used through this article, it refers to games that can be played between friends online (for example those played through the medium of Facebook).

Social games are the perfect game to receive game usability treatment for two reasons:

* They are often played by a much wider audience than typical games, meaning the focus on ease of use needs to be much sharper.
* There's no 'barrier to entry'. The games are usually free, and the player has lots to choose from. If they can't pick up a game quickly they'll take their time elsewhere.

This means developers have to take extra care to ensure that the game is understood and easily played by anyone - they can't rely on previously learnt "game knowledge", or that players will push their way through problems.
The issues with testing social game usability

The interaction required by social games doesn't lend itself easily to testing. Specifically:

* The 'social' aspect, interacting with friends. This is very hard to reproduce in a testing environment
* The time delay encouraged by games, e.g. Cityville's 'energy' (needed to do almost any development), naturally enforces breaks in play... and keeps you coming back. How do you take this into account in testing?

There are methods available to tell you whether players are able to play, such as can they play through the tutorial and beyond. However most methods struggle to reproduce the 'natural' playing experience or gather data on the social play. Essentially it's easy to assess the 'game', but much harder to assess the 'social' aspect of a social game.

Below are a summary of some of the more popular game usability techniques, and some tips to help adjusting them to assess a social game usability.

* Expert evaluation
* 1-on-1 user testing
* Usability group playtesting

* Diary studies
* Customer feedback/Forum
* Focus groups
* Analytics analysis