At Devcom's keynote today, Funcom's lead UX designer Anna Brandberg made a case for taking the time to truly understand players.
In a talk entitled 'The Psychology of Play: The Power of Understanding Your Players', Brandberg — who's worked on The Sims, Candy Crush Saga and, most recently, Metal: Hellsinger— encouraged developers to think about the player's journey and emphasised the need for your vision to align with players' vision.
"Often the focus is on ourselves, our own talent and our own achievements and making our own big, special games that are going to change the world," she said. "But in fact, what I'm going to talk about today is the opposite of that. I'm going to tell you [to] stop focusing on yourself entirely. And to start thinking about someone else.