Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 28) Tim Nichols Figuring the Fun Factor T im Nichols’ job — user research engineer — is a serious one: to ensure players of Microsoft games have fun. Nichols works/plays in the Gamers User Research group at Microsoft. “The group supports practically every game title published by Microsoft Game Studios, from both first- and third-party developers,” says Nichols, MS Psy 01, PhD Psy 06. “We focus on the whole game, from the opening tutorial to that epic final boss fight. We want to measure users’ experiences across the game — what is fun, what isn’t fun, why it isn’t fun. The ‘why’ can be the tricky part.” Nichols works closely with designers to understand their visions for their games and then assesses how closely users’ actual experiences match those visions. “While a game is under development, developers have all kinds of questions about how their game plays. ‘Do people feel really powerful and awesome at this point in the game?’ ‘Will I be blowing gamers’ minds if I add in all these new systems two hours into the game?’ ‘Are they going to be ready to learn something new?’ “This is when the job gets really interesting — and fun,” Nichols says. “I have to figure out how to turn those questions about ‘sense of power’ and ‘comprehension of game systems’ into testable research questions. How do you measure how powerful someone feels while in combat? What’s the best way to test whether someone has sufficient understanding of the game that adding a new layer of complexity will enrich the experience rather than throwing the game and player into utter confusion?” Since joining Microsoft in 2006, Nichols has worked on such games as Mass Effect, Ninja Gaiden 2 and the Viva Pinata franchise. His gaming days, however, date back before his tenure at Microsoft. His profile on the Gamers User Research Web site says time spent playing the game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind delayed his departure from Tech by at least six months. Somehow he made time while at Tech to co-author a chapter on design for aging in the third edition of the “Handbook of Human Factors in Ergonomics.” Nichols also conducted research focused on implicit learning, attention and cognitive aging. Nichols, who turns 30 in October, says that at Microsoft, in addition to meetings and problem-solving sessions, his typical day includes “collaborative user testing of recently released titles.” That sounds an awful lot like playtime. — KLW 28 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008
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