Designing for Player Experience: How Professional Game Developers Communicate Design Visions

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Hagen Ulf
2010 DiGRA Nordic '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International DiGRA Nordic Conference: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players

This paper investigates the prevalence of deliberate design for player experience in big game studios, and how potential visions of intended player experience are articulated and communicated to the team in the course of the development process. The primary data consist of interviews with six Swedish game developers. The study shows that the practice of designing for player experience is indeed in use by many game developers, and that a wide variety of tools are employed to articulate and communicate their visions. The main purpose of this communication is to allow everyone in the development team to make design choices that are in line with the commonly shared design vision.