Trends: Player as Director

We have seen some impressive leaps in innovation such as the Nemesis System and the release of UE5 which are all important for us to understand in order to craft strategies for this fast-changing industry. We have also seen disruption within the movie industry and now many analysts are predicting that the streaming wars will eventually push companies to look into subscription-based gaming models to find growth. But when does a movie become a game and a game become a movie?

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Abdi Jama
The Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics Framework

The MDA framework is an important framework for thinking about games from both a designer’s and the players’ point of view and was developed by Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek. It’s a helpful framework to understand when developing and designing games or even introducing gamification elements to your product.

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Abdi Jama
Change Your Damn Story

Look, we all have stories we tell ourselves. Some are useful, most aren’t. And let’s be honest: a lot of the stories we carry around are total crap. They’re excuses dressed up as truth. They’re the reason you stay small, keep quiet, and avoid the big stuff.

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Abdi Jama
Play Personas: Lean in, Lean forward, Lean back and Lean out.

In Ahmed Salama the Game UX Summit 2019 talk, he laid out his ideas for play-based personas and how they can be applied during the design process for AAA games. A useful insight that can be a good tool for all designers throughout the industry to be aware of and to add to their repertoire when it comes to catering for the user’s Cognitive abilities during different Phases of play.

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Abdi Jama
Positive and Negative reinforcement in video games

Giving users feedback is an important part of any digital interaction. Behavioural learning is a theory that suggests that the use of reinforcement leads to its continued occurrence. This theory is often used in video games to reinforce certain behaviours or weaken them through the use of feedback loops.

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Abdi Jama
The Psychology Behind Game Reward Systems

Game reward systems can also be used to facilitate goal setting and achievement. By providing rewards for achieving specific goals, players are motivated to focus on these goals and work toward accomplishing them. This approach not only promotes skill development but also helps to promote a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with the game.

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Abdi Jama
The pros and cons of Destiny's free-floating cursor menus

Destiny launched in September 2014 with a sleek, modern UI with a minimalist visual style. Early in the development, the designers opted for a floating free cursor as the main user input. By choosing to utilize a free cursor, Destiny's menus are allowed to feature freely placed elements of different sizes.

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Abdi Jama
The Kobayashi Maru Lesson: Thinking Outside the Box

In the world of Star Trek, The Kobayashi Maru was a test designed to test how individuals handle an impossible situation. Kirk's reprogramming of the scenario showed that he could think outside the box and find a way to succeed where others had failed. Additionally, in real-world scenarios, the ability to find loopholes and innovative solutions to problems is often a highly valued skill.

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Abdi Jama
The diegetic UI of Dead Space

Dead Space is a sci-fi horror game, where you play as Isaac Clark an engineer stuck on The Ishimuram, a ship infested with space zombies. Your job is to fix that vessel and find your girlfriend. To maximize the playing horror experience the designers crafted a fully diegetic UI that has become very influential in the gaming industry.

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Abdi Jama
Accessibility in The Last of Us Part II

With millions of gamers facing difficulties and barriers, whether temporary or long term. Developers are seeking better ways to provide ways remove these barriers. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II has been praised for its industry-defining accessibility features. So what can we learn from it?

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Abdi Jama
Elden Ring and The psychology of gains and losses

The more difficult something is to achieve, the more people like it. This may be counterintuitive from a UX designer’s perspective as we often strive for the easiest most friction-free experience possible. But people play games for the challenge. In fact, games often introduce harsh limitations on players and put them through difficult situations. Non more so the Souls series of games by FromSoftware.

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Abdi Jama
Mobile UX: Designing for Thumbs

Smartphones have become indispensable in our daily lives. But they are not just smart companion devices, they are also tactile playthings that we use as extensions of ourselves. Although now a mature platform there are still billions of people who are still to experience life with a smartphone. So it is important for mobile designers to understand the intricacies and ergonomics of designing for that many thumbs.

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Abdi Jama
Magical Thinking

Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” The essence of his statement is that the purity and uninhibited creativity of childhood are incredibly difficult to reclaim in adulthood. Professional pressures often stifle our innate sense of wonder and imagination. We tend to prioritize logic, efficiency, and predictability, losing the ability to think freely and embrace the irrational or absurd.

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Abdi Jama
Tank, support and damage dealers

In a lot of team-based games, there are three main roles you will see, tanks, support and damage dealers which are also known as the Holy Trinity. Popularised in MMOs but can now be found in strategy games, shooters and even sports games. When you have more than one character chances are it will involve these three roles as they are designed to provide synergy between players so they can work together to achieve team targets.

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Abdi Jama
What is behaviourism?

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in applying behaviourist principles to video game design. It is can help create engaging gaming experiences but it is important to remember that every player is different and what works for one person may not work for another.

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Abdi Jama
Sensory Delight: The Evolution of Playful Interfaces and immersive experiences

The success of the iPhone interface spurred a wave of innovation in the design of playful interfaces. Designers began to incorporate more tactile and haptic feedback into their designs, creating interfaces that responded to the user's touch with vibrations and other physical sensations. These interfaces were not just visual but also tactile, providing users with a more immersive and engaging experience.

Video games are a medium that can offer a wide variety of sensory experiences. Racing and rhythm games, in particular, can provide players with a unique and immersive sensory experience that enhances their enjoyment of the game.

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Abdi Jama