Feedback on how well your design vision translates into the players experience is important for any designer and process for consistently making better games. Although there are elements of games where the player is looking for an efficient interaction, such as when using the menus, efficiency is not the main goal of games.
Instead challenge is an important part of games, and a key part of fun. The difficulty for game designers is making the right kind of challenge, and it’s up to user researchers to help define this. As well as discovering usability issues, balancing issues, researchers therefore have to try and discover if players are having fun.
Game designers are often maligned, definitely so in Rainbow Six: Siege when the sum of many moving parts falters and presents itself as a bug or a balancing issue, for example, especially in competitive play. However, criticism needs to be measured and needs to be constructive to allow the game designers to carry out their duties effectively. What's more, it is important to remember that every game designer is, at the end of the day, human after all.
SiegeGG had a chat with one of these humans, Julien Huguenin, the User Research Project Manager on Rainbow Six: Siege, to talk about his work and the Pro League Finals in Milan:
Firstly, can you explain to us what exactly your job entails?
What social platforms do you use to track what the community thinks?
How does the data collected influence competitive and non-competitive Rainbow Six?
Do you prioritize certain types of feedback? If so, how does that influence the conclusions of the User Research team?
The Newcomer playlist is a way for newer players to play against similarly skilled opponents. What effect do you think this has had on the newer additions to the Siege community?
When different skill levels/communities show different trends in the data (for example, Ying was better in Pro League than she was in standard play), what steps do you take in response to that?
Who do you think is going to be winning at Milan?
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The Milan finals are taking place on the 18th and 19th of May, where eight teams will fight for the title of season 9 Pro League champion. To keep up to date on Milan coverage before, during, and after the event, be sure to check back here at SiegeGG.