Games for Learning Archives - Situated Research

How UX Research Increases Gamer Engagement, Satisfaction, and Enjoyment

January 30, 2023

User Experience (UX) research is a critical aspect of video game design that can significantly impact the success of a game. UX research involves studying and understanding the behavior, attitudes, and emotions of gamers while playing the game. The goal of UX research is to create a game that provides a satisfying and enjoyable experience for gamers. In this article, we’ll explore how UX research can improve the success of a video game and increase gamer engagement, satisfaction, and enjoyment.

Games User Research: Driving Development with Actionable Insights

November 28, 2018

Developers both large and small can benefit from an outside perspective given by a game user research, or usability research geared towards games. Indie developers can benefit from adding UX expertise to the development team, while large developers can obtain an outside perspective to compliment and verify findings from internal members of the development team. In this article, we will present three key ways in which game research can maximize a game’s success.

Road to GDC: I’m Not A Doctor, but I Simulate One in VR

March 2, 2018

We are moving into a future where games train our doctors, monitor our health, and treat our illnesses.

Hands-on with Mattel’s new AR, VR View-Master

February 20, 2015

A View-Master for virtual reality: Hands-on with Mattel’s new AR, VR phone toy

Mattel is relaunching View-Master, but as a virtual reality and augmented-reality phone toy. And I got to play around with it for a bit…or at least, some of the tech behind it.

Welcome to the Age of Holographs

January 22, 2015

Up close with the HoloLens, Microsoft’s most intriguing product in years

We just finished a heavily scripted, carefully managed, and completely amazing demonstration of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology. Four demos, actually, each designed to show off a different use case for a headset that projects holograms into real space. We played Minecraft on a coffee table. We had somebody chart out how to fix a light switch right on top of the very thing we were fixing.

Study Reveals Real Reason Behind Gaming Aggression

April 23, 2014

A new study has revealed that gamers are more likely to experience feelings of aggression from playing a game when it is too difficult or when the controls are too complicated to master.

In comparison, the research found there was “little difference” in levels of aggression when the games themselves depicted violence. Overwhelmingly, the deciding factor was “how the volunteers were able to master the electronic game after 20 minutes of play”.

IBM Forecasts Major Advances in Cognitive Computing

December 27, 2013

IBM on Tuesday released its annual “5 in 5” list of predictions about technological innovations that will change the way we live in the next five years, with the theme this year being cognitive advances in computing that help machines “learn” how to better serve us.

Serious Games and the Future of Education

September 18, 2013

Are serious games the classroom tool of the future? Is the future already here? The tablet classroom may have once been the stuff of science fiction, but modern developments in technology and brain science may have come together to create a massive change in the way we think about education.

How Google is Melding Our Real and Virtual Worlds with Games, Apps … and Glass

May 20, 2013

“The world around you is not what it seems,” says Ingress, the virtual game that uses the real world as its gamespace. And, perhaps, when Google’s semi-independent division Niantic Labs is finished with its mission, we humans won’t be, either.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable. Note carefully that Google says nothing about the Internet in that statement.

The Future of Gaming – It May All Be in Your Head

May 13, 2013

Gaming as a hobby evokes images of lethargic teenagers huddled over their controllers, submerged in their couch surrounded by candy bar wrappers. This image should soon hit the reset button since a more exciting version of gaming is coming. It’s called neurogaming, and it’s riding on the heels of some exponential technologies that are converging on each other. Many of these were on display recently in San Francisco at the NeuroGaming Conference and Expo; a first-of-its-kind conference whose existence alone signals an inflection point in the industry.