During GDC last week, Insomniac Games Creative Director and Lead Designer Drew Murray spoke on the power of usability testing during game development. In a talk titled "What You Don't Know IS Hurting You: How Aggressive User-Research Improved Resistance 3," Murray documented the team's exhaustive efforts to make a better game through plenty of internal and external tests. And it all started with a few unwanted deaths in Resistance 2.
Murray began his talk by comparing user-research to vegetables and exercise -- developers know they encourage healthy game creation, but that slice of gaming pizza is way easier to eat. But towards the end of Resistance 2's development, one turning point for Murray came in the form of a specific round of user testing that he described as "awful." As Murray watched on, one tester died three times in less than two minutes thanks to unclear audio cues, an accidental grenade blast, and one nervous jump.
Murray began his talk by comparing user-research to vegetables and exercise -- developers know they encourage healthy game creation, but that slice of gaming pizza is way easier to eat. But towards the end of Resistance 2's development, one turning point for Murray came in the form of a specific round of user testing that he described as "awful." As Murray watched on, one tester died three times in less than two minutes thanks to unclear audio cues, an accidental grenade blast, and one nervous jump.
Murray explained that a huge gap exists between the developer's knowledge of a game and the player's knowledge. This causes many of the problems that extensive usability testing can help counter. Compared to the handful of tests performed during Resistance 2 and recent Ratchet games, Resistance 3 underwent several major internal and external tests as well as hundreds of informal developer tests. These tests helped Insomniac address numerous issues from weapon controls to difficulty spikes.
During the talk, Murray highlighted several specific examples of how testing impacted Resistance 3's development. One notable test polled users on weapon preferences and the team found that the Atomizer, Cryogun, Mutator, and Sledgehammer scored much lower than the other weapons. After some tweaking and polishing, all the weapons got a bump up in score following the next round of tests -- besides the Sledgehammer. It dropped even further down in user testing, but Insomniac decided that the weapon wasn't worth further tweaking because it was only required for a small section of the campaign and otherwise ignorable.
At the end of the panel, Murray assured the audience that the extensive testing worked and was well worth the effort, considering the number of critics claiming that Resistance 3 was the best of the series. "I'm a way better game designer having gone through this process," Murray concluded.
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