A walk through Valve’s game design process, and how best practices from the creation of games for entertainment can be applied to games for change. In particular, Ambinder will describe how Valve applies the scientific method and iterates through the game design hypotheses. He will provide examples of psychological science that Valve applied, and discuss its emphasis on measuring the behavioral impact of their designs. This talk will serve as an argument for a focus on the ‘game’ side of the equation before the ‘change’ side as a necessary prerequisite to succeed at both.
Mike Ambinder is a senior experimental psychologist at Valve who joined the company in 2008. He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology (with an emphasis on visual cognition) from the University of Illinois, and a BA in Computer Science and Psychology from Yale University. His work at... Read More →
