Not just users: Mapping the range of user roles in open development games projects Luke Thominet Florida International University Miami, FL, USA
[email protected] ABSTRACT love what you’re doing, and they’re not playing a lot, Open video game development systems provide a useful model but they might be writing fanfction, they might be for designing an engaging user experience (UX) research project. drawing, they might be doing other things, and they’re While UX research has typically framed people simultaneously as not actually just a hardcore player. [19] research subjects and users of a technology, some work has also At the 2015 Game Developers Conference, a panel of experienced problematized each of these categorizations. For instance, UX prac- developers discussed their experiences with open development titioners have questioned the framing of people as generic users, projects. In the quote above, Jamie Cheng described how partici- and participatory design has repositioned participants as co-owners pants in these projects were doing a lot more than just playing the of the results of research. This article ofers a complimentary per- game. This paper expands on this observation to review the broad spective by applying the concept of user roles to the activity of range of roles that user-participants adopt in open development participation in open development. Open development, which is the systems. prolonged process where incomplete games are publicly released Broadly speaking, open development is publicly distributing an and iterated on based on player feedback, is fundamentally a UX incomplete game, sharing information about the game develop- research process.