Another article from Gamasutra, this time on the Tao of game design, which, the author (Ernest Adams) concludes, is: ‘know thyself, know thy player‘. Sounds very like the principles of user-centred design…
playful thoughts on games and learning
Another article from Gamasutra, this time on the Tao of game design, which, the author (Ernest Adams) concludes, is: ‘know thyself, know thy player‘. Sounds very like the principles of user-centred design…
Having read this article I’m not sure if he actually gets the idea of user centred design or not. On the positive side Adams explains how much more important the second precept “know thy player” is than the first and how it is important to “…study your audience” – very much in the realm of user-centeredness. However he also “… calls for the designer to envision a representative player and to accept a duty to empathize with that player”, this smacks of one of the common pitfalls that designers make – thinking about your users as a single archetype.