Steve Bromley

Setting the Stage for Research Success – Understanding Stakeholders to Run Better Research

• Release date: Monday November 11, 2024
• Watch Party: 4:30pm GMT / 11:30am EST / 8:30 AM PST
• Live Q&A: 5pm GMT / 12pm EST / 9 am PST

Talk Description: Game development is a high pressure and hectic decision making environment, and it’s easy for research to get forgotten about. Without appropriate work before running your study, you can end up with disengaged stakeholders, irrelevant research objectives, low impact research studies and ultimately research being ignored. 

Speaker Bio: Steve Bromley is a games user research consultant, helping teams use player insight to create successful games. He works with publishers, platforms and studios of all sizes to transform their game development process, and build product strategies that combines player data with creativity. He work from ideation to post-launch in order to de-risk game development, and make games players love. Prior to this he was a senior user researcher for PlayStation and worked on many of their top European titles, including Horizon Zero Dawn, SingStar, the LittleBigPlanet series and the PlayStation VR lineup. Steve Bromley started the IGDA’s Games User Research mentoring scheme, which has linked hundreds of students with industry professionals from top games companies such as Sony, EA, Valve, Ubisoft and Microsoft. He wrote the bestselling book How To Be A Games User Researcher to share the expertise needed to work in the games industry, and continues to teach people about Games User Research at gamesuserresearch.com

Jesse Divnich

Doing it Right – Managing a Global Research Gaming Panel

• Release date: Tuesday, November 12
• Watch Party: 6pm GMT/ 1:00pm EST / 10:00am PST
• Live Q&A: 6:45pm GMT/ 1:45pm EST/ 10:45am PST

Talk Description: When we first launched the Good Gamer Group, we never anticipated the scale it would reach. What began as a local panel, sourced from USC to support a few focus groups, has evolved into a 75,000-strong community of verified gamers. Through this journey, we’ve experienced the highs and lows of building and managing a dedicated gaming panel that operates nearly 24/7. In this session, we’ll pull back the curtain to reveal the lessons we’ve learned, the challenges we’ve faced, and the solutions that worked (and didn’t work). Our goal is to share actionable insights that will help others succeed in managing their own panels. This session will be a candid look at what it takes to build, manage, and sustain a high-performing gaming panel, sharing the critical lessons that have driven our success and growth.

Key Topics:

•       Why a Dedicated Gaming Panel is Critical: Unpacking the value of a specialized panel versus broader consumer panels.
•       Structuring for Success: The right team size, roles, and responsibilities.
•       Balancing Quality and Cost: Sourcing strategies that deliver high-quality participants while managing costs.
•       Reducing Recruiting Time and Fraud: How we’ve optimized our processes to fill studies faster while maintaining quality.
•       Combatting Churn with Engagement: Strategies to keep panelists engaged while building loyalty in an industry where churn is frequent.
•       Finding the “Goldilocks” Panel Size: How we determine the ideal size for our panel and why it’s not about being the biggest.
•       Learning from Others’ Mistakes: The common pitfalls we see in other panels—and how we’ve worked through those same pitfalls.

Speaker Bio: Jesse Divnich is the Senior Vice President at Interpret and the President of the Good Gamer Group. With 26 years of experience in the video game industry, Jesse has held diverse roles across game development, publishing, marketing, investment, and research. He also serves on several boards and advises various gaming companies. As a seasoned speaker at numerous industry conferences, Jesse is passionate about sharing his knowledge and insights to educate and inspire others in the gaming community.

John Hopson

I worked for your dream studio. It was fine.

• Release Date: Wednesday, November 13
• Watch Party: 6pm GMT / 1:00pm EST / 10:00am PST
• Live Q&A: 6:30pm GMT/ 1:30pm EST/ 10:30am PST

Talk Description: Game devs start out as gamers, and a lot of us dream of working at the specific studios that made our favorite games. Who wouldn’t want to spend every day playing their favorite game?  I’d like to talk about why working for one’s dream studio isn’t necessarily the route to a dream working environment, from increased competition for roles to the tendency to stay too long in positions that aren’t a good fit.  I’ll also offer some alternative ways for aspiring researchers to evaluate the career options available to them.  Additionally, I’ll go over some of the reasons why hiring fans might not work out for the employer either.  As someone who’s worked at several of the top destination studios, I think I have the credibility to say what new researchers need to hear and make it stick.  I will also give specific examples of how I’ve seen these issues manifest and the impact on junior devs’ careers.

Speaker Bio: John Hopson has been a researcher in the games industry for twenty years, working on some of the biggest franchises in gaming including Halo, Age of Empires, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, StarCraft, Diablo, Fortnite, Lineage, and Destiny.  He has served as chair of the IGDA’s GRUX and Analytics SIGs and is the author of the bestselling “The Secret Science of Games”.

Andrew Menger-Ogle & Jonathan Dankoff

GUR Salary Survey 2024

• Release Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024
• Watch Party: 8:30pm GMT/ 3:30pm EST/ 12:30pm PST
• Live Q&A: 9:00pm GST/ 4:00pm EST/ 1:00pm PST

This talk will present results from the 2024 GUR Salary Survey.

Nikki Crenshaw

The Carcinization of Azeroth: Exploring Arachnophobia Accessibility in World of Warcraft

• Release Date: Friday, November 15
• Watch Party: 7:00pm GMT/ 2:00pm EST/ 11:00am PST
• Live Q&A: 7:30pm GMT/ 2:30pm EST/ 11:30am PST

Description: For the last 20 years, World of Warcraft has expanded the world of Azeroth, allowing players to see new continents, new races, new enemies…and a whole lot of spiders. This talk reviews the research and development process for “Arachnophobia Mode” – a new Accessibility option introduced in The War Within to help players with arachnophobia enjoy the wide world of Azeroth more comfortably.

Key topics:

• Understanding what aspects of “spiders” contribute to arachnophobia.
• Exploring different model treatments and why they do or do not work.
• An overview of WoW’s Arachnophobia Mode feature and how it works.
• The impact of research on development.