Console Gamers Aren't PC Gamers

Seeing is Believing

Usability lab testing is simple - you take a game, a few volunteers, stick them in a room and film them playing. You don't just get to see people playing the game; you also get to hear what their thoughts are on what they are seeing. Through this process we now have hours of footage of people playing Darwinia+, which one of our coders, Leander, was given the unenviable task of sitting and watching all the way through, taking notes of all of the comments and any areas the players had difficulty with.

One thing that became increasingly clear from watching the videos was that console gamers are not the same as PC gamers. There are a certain amount of assumptions that Introversion had made about who would be playing Darwinia+, and they were based around the hard-core PC-gaming Introversion fans who had played all our games before. We had unconsciously developed a particular developer mindset that naturally evolved out the years of making Introversion games and was suited to only that audience.

We quickly learnt, for example, that XBLA gamers are as likely to be novice gamers as hard-core gamers, principally because no-fuss digital distribution services such as XBLA appeal and cater very well to those with a minimum gaming experience. We had to rethink the theory that a player would instinctively know what they needed to do in-game rather than be explicitly told.

This is actually a lot harder than it sounds - it's far too easy to think that something is obvious in the game when the reality is that not all of the players will get it. It also had massive implications for us in terms of Darwinia+, affecting all levels of the game, from the tutorials, to each mode of the game in both Darwinia and Multiwinia, and has been a major factor behind the project's delay.

On Appeal

As a developer, one of the easiest traps to fall into is making a game that appeals and caters exclusively to your own particular tastes. You can probably get away with this more easily if you have a loyal fan base that have been following your games since the beginning because chances are you share a common interest.

However, if you are keen to progress as a developer and want to explore other audiences and game styles, then an understanding of this audience's expectations and assumptions is critical. We've learnt that this can only be done by opening your doors to the gaming public and encouraging a candid overview of the game as it’s in development.

For PC-centric developers, such as Introversion, keen to broaden their audience appeal and experience level, the move to console development can be a time-consuming, frustrating and painful one, but absolutely imperative if you are ever to grow and evolve.