Learn to think from a user point of view

There's a fine line between working passionately and doing it smartly.  Most game developers get into gaming to create something of their own, start projects they would like to see materialized and played by a multitude of different people.  The plot usually starts one random day, someone playing a videogame, sombody looking and saying: "wow! I just got an idea! wouldn't it be cool if...".  The listener agrees and the generalization starts.  The developers involved start thinking they have themselves something that will work for a wide audience.  Suddenly a feature that represents an impovement to themselves is an improvement for everybody else.

However the implications of adding a new feature are far away more complex.  There's different points to be considered before, like accessibility, simplicity, usability, internationalization, and several more.  Every feature impacts each of these in different ways, and trying to view this from the user's point of view is more than a hard endeavor.

The idea behind thinking like the "user" comes from attempting to either target a wide audience or very narrow one.  For targeting wider audiences, thinking like the user seems logical seems to want to be likable from each one of them.  But is this really possible? Wide audiences are like a God, you can't really prove their existence and even if you can, you will never figure out the relevant details.  There are a lot of examples of this happening as a mistake in the process of game design, mostly nowadays where you can see mobile games trying to target casual and hardcore gamers at the same time.  As an example I can mention one in particular, Knight Storm, a game created by 505 Games and MunkyFun.  Is a good example because is easy to see that the designers behind the game tried to have it all: 3D graphics, realistic maps, characters and inventory, complete and full statistics, power ups, minigames, storyline, "innovative" game mechanics, social, and the list goes on.  However none of these define the game as either casual, hardcore, social, arcade, adventure.  Any user will be as well confused as what the purpose of the game is and either know if it is for him or not.  The answer will soon come back when he loses focus without objective or an individual engagement to the game.

 

Knight Storm

Barbie Team Gymnastics