Designing Games for Everyone: Harmonix Design in Practice

Speakers: Rob Kay, Tracy Rosenthal-Newsom

Track: Game Design

Format: Lecture

Experience Level: All

Description: Why does Harmonix design accessible games? Because we want everyone to have fun! It's often said games should be "easy to pick up and hard to master", but what practical steps can development teams take to make that a reality? How do we balance the inexperience of a non-gamer with a seasoned gamer's desire for depth? Removing the barriers to entry, providing instant gratification, and extensive focus-testing are building blocks in the Harmonix design approach. In this talk you discover how we layer gameplay mechanics, and how we structure, test and tune our difficulty ramps. You hear how we adapted to the alternate controllers that featured in Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, and how this impacted their accessibility to new players. We share our design insights, best practices and production experiences (both good and bad!) in an effort to better illuminate the craft of accessible game design.

Idea Takeaway: Attendees learn why accessibility is vital to both the industry and their project, and gain insight on how to boost accessibility and depth of gameplay into their game design with user-centered design practices. Along the way, attendees hear painful stories of accessibility failures that everyone at Harmonix would rather forget.

Intended Audience: This session is appropriate for all game industry professionals interested in improving the accessibility of their games. Particularly speaks to Project Leads, Game Designers, Producers, and Developers who conceive, create, and manage the design of videogames.