User Study - A Tool For Understanding Your Players

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TEMPLATE NAME: User Study
CORE VERSION: 1.0.191-prod-s
TEMPLATE VERSION: 1.1.2

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TEMPLATE DESCRIPTION:
In the pursuit of improving your games, the ability to directly observe players is invaluable. If you ask your community what to change about the game, they will most likely tell you things that are only relevant to them-- players who are later in the experience. However, the most important part of a game to improve is the onboarding of new players. They will go away without ever telling you what was wrong. Players that leave without having enjoyed the game are unlikely to ever come back.

The User Study component allows you to directly observe new players, without their knowledge. Examine several aspects of their experience. Build an understanding of where they are confused or struggling, then engage them through in-game chat to further improve your knowledge of the situation. This process can drive refinement of the game design and boost retention.

This package is open source and available at:

INCLUDED IN THIS PACKAGE:

  • README file - All setup and usage instructions.
  • Smooth spectator camera.
  • Screen resolution & Camera view direction indicators.
  • Example UI - Demonstrates how UI from a player can be replicated to the observer.

For questions and bugs please write in this forum thread. See the included README for instructions.

FUTURE WORK:

  • Video tutorial.
  • Command /study -join to automatically begin studying the next player who joins.
  • Command to change mouse cursor normalization mode.
  • See the subject's resources.
  • See log of significant gameplay changes to have affected the subject.
  • See key bindings pressed by the subject.
  • CPU optimizations, so clients only expend computer resources in case they are a subject.

TEMPLATE VERSION NOTES:

Version 1.0

  • Initial release

Version 1.1

  • Added commands: /options, /defaults, /resolution and /view. These allow you to hide/show some of the visual elements (screen size label and camera view, for now).
  • API.IsObserver() can now be called from a client script.
  • Can now call /end study as reduntant form of /endstudy.
  • Changed the shape of the view indicator.
  • The API can now be accessed from the global table by server and client scripts with _G.UserStudy.