Game UX Resources for getting into the industry
Published in
3 min readMar 3, 2022
It’s always a struggle to know where to start when learning about Game UX, here are some resources that have proven useful for me and kickstarted my curiosity about the field.
GETTING STARTED IN GAME UX 👋
- What Is Games ‘User Experience’ (UX) and How Does It Help? — Player Research
- Introduction to UX in Game Design — Alex Harbuzinski
- Venn diagram of UX/UI/UR role similarities and differences — Fey Vercuiel
- Understanding UI/UX in Video Games — Anisa Sanusi
- Intro to UX Design: User Experience and You — Extra Credits
- How UX Breaks the Fourth Wall to Make Better Video Games — Bramha Dalvi
- Advice for getting into the games industry (UX) — Anna Brandberg
- Getting a Job in the Video Game Industry: General Tips & Focus on UX roles — Celia Hodent
- ‘Mainstream’ UX and Games UX — Alistair Greo
GAME UX COMMUNITIES💖
UX IN ACTION (DECONSTRUCTING DESIGN)🔥
- SUPERJUMP — Game Breakdowns
- UX as a tool for empathy — Nida Ahmad
- The best UX updates in Pokémon Sword & Shield — Anna Wikström
- Pacing the flow of information in AAA games — Ahmed Salama
- Game Design UX Best Practices — Amir Dori
- Design Doc — UX and Game Design Analysis Video Essays
- Game UX Summit (Talks from previous events on Youtube)
- Game Design and UX Design: Better Together — Nida Ahmad and Marina Diez
- Deconstructor of Fun (Blog covering UX, Game Design, Product and more)
- The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design — Celia Hodent
- Game UI Database (An incredible UI reference library by Edd Coates)
UX PROCESS AND EVANGELISM 🌻
- Everybody needs UX-Design skills on the team! — Nicolas Epyert
- Building Game UX Processes from scratch — Nida Ahmad, Emma Varjo and Kirk Rodger-Isordia
- How to Help UX Maturity on Projects from the HQ — Melissa Canseliet
- UX Design Process at Riot Games — Alex Wheeler
- UX Strategy — Jaime Levy
- The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide — Leah Buhley
- Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days — Jake Knapp
USER RESEARCH ✍
- Games User Research — Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke
- Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience — Katherine Isbister, Noah Schaffer
- Games User Research Conferences and Summits — Youtube
- How to be a Games User Researcher— Steve Bromley (I was an editor on this and highly recommend it!)
- Just Enough Research — Erika Hall
- UX Research Cheat Sheet — NNGroup
PSYCHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE 🧠
- Gamer Motivation Model — Nick Yee
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products — Nir Eyal
- Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness — Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions — Dan Ariely
- Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them — Jamie Madigan
- Essential Social Psychology — Richard Crisp, Rhiannon Turner
ACCESSIBILITY ✨
- Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind — Regine Gilbert
- Game Accessibility Guidelines
- Accessibility Reference Guides — Can I Play That?
- Full List of Accessibility Resources — IGDA GASIG
- Game Accessibility Conference #GAConf
- Where to start on game accessibility?
- Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
DESIGN (GAME AND GENERAL)👁
- Game Maker’s ToolKit (Youtube)
- Lost Garden — Daniel Cook (Blog on Game Design)
- The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses — Jesse Schell
- Theory of Fun for Game Design — Raph Koster
- Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation — Steve Swink
- Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things — Don Norman
- Interaction Design Foundation
- About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design — Alan Cooper
- UX Collective
- UX Planet
- Google Design
- Design Course (Youtube)
- The Futur (Youtube)
- Technically Speaking with Harrison Wheeler (Podcast)
- Design Review (Podcast)
