The Gamer's Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design

I cannot stress enough on how amazing of a read The Gamer’s Brain by Celia Hodent is! Whether you are a designer or not, I still strongly recommend reading this book as it taps into concepts such as Player Perception, Motivation drivers and Player emotions to name a few. Whether you are a pet of the game’s industry as Game/UX designer or not, you will benefit from the learning you have to take away from this book. It will broaden your perspective towards UX in games and applications in general. Definitely recommend this book!

The Gamer's Brain doesn't beg you to take UX seriously. It approaches the concept from the ground up, building a picture of the titular "Gamer's Brain" and showing--rather than telling--how UX is sewn into the fabric of good game design. By the time Hodent establishes this picture, you'll be more than ready for the second half, in which she articulates how to execute these concepts (with dozens of real examples to boot). Yes, the book reads like a textbook for the most part, but I was grateful that it cut through unnecessary fluff, unlike some gaming textbooks padded by the authors attempting to sound cool and casual. That being said, it isn't excessively dry by any means. The Gamer's Brain is a crash introduction to psychology, neuroscience, and user experience bundled into one. If you're interested in learning why polished and streamlined games set design paradigms, rather than blindly following them, you won't be disappointed.

I'm frequently asked for recommendations from people who are interested in game design and/or UX design for games and other than referencing some of Tufte's work, Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things, and Jesse Schell's A Book of Lenses I start to run out of good material for them. This adds one to the list. Celia Hodent has been giving insightful and entertaining talks on UX in game development for years. I've enjoyed those talks and I'm thrilled that in The Gamer's Brain, she takes her psychology-tinged themes and structures them all together into a coherent and entertaining book that will inevitably become a staple text in university game design programs everywhere.

As a non designer person, I absolutely loved Celia's book as it gave me the perfect combination between helping me understand how the brain works and how that can help me in my day to day work since while I am not designing games per say, I am designing Community Experiences for players and the knowledge I acquired through this book was extremely useful. The other part I like is that Celia doesn't preach UX to be the solution to everything; her approach is very humble and she admits the field is still very young and we have still very much to learn about social behavior. It's refreshing not to get an agenda pushed onto us and that makes the book even more enjoyable to read. So yeah, all in all, for everyone who is interested in human contacts and designing human experiences, I would definitely recommend this book.

This book is fantastic. Nearly every chapter has extraordinary, practical information that gave me a new and deep understanding of my field. From the way forgetting curves interact with tutorial pacing to the way peripheral vision informs HUD design, this book is 110% worth your time. Get it, read it, learn. It'll save you weeks of missteps and false trails, which will be more than worth it for your games. Heck, even if you're just interested in how this stuff works it's still a great read. Enjoy.

I discovered this book thanks to talented Game Spectrum (French Youtuber). Celia Hodent a French philosopher. She worked from a lot of compagny, suck Epic Game (Fornite). She explained how UX in the game design can control the brain of gamer. This book is both terrifying and fabulous. Our brains are really scalable and triple A companies know it. This is an amazing book. It is a good choice.

Very informative and easy reading. Recommend for everyone who's interesting in player experience

Celia Hodent really provides an excellent service to the industry at large with this one. In it she details research that previously was only available aggregated to corporations that could pay for it. Super grateful for this book.

Book’s cover was not clean and didn’t look new

Ms. Hodent's book is clearly the best book I have ever read. For the longest time the entire concept for UX was a complex bottleneck for me as a game developer. Being a 15+ year veteran, I had vowed never to return and here I am - returning to the field with a fury thanks to this book. It made me want to make games again. What I had picked up out of academic curiosity, opened up endless possibilities in gaming, gamification and transmedia.

I cannot stress enough on how amazing of a read The Gamer’s Brain by Celia Hodent is! Whether you are a designer or not, I still strongly recommend reading this book as it taps into concepts such as Player Perception, Motivation drivers and Player emotions to name a few. Whether you are a pet of the game’s industry as Game/UX designer or not, you will benefit from the learning you have to take away from this book. It will broaden your perspective towards UX in games and applications in general. Definitely recommend this book!

The Gamer's Brain doesn't beg you to take UX seriously. It approaches the concept from the ground up, building a picture of the titular "Gamer's Brain" and showing--rather than telling--how UX is sewn into the fabric of good game design. By the time Hodent establishes this picture, you'll be more than ready for the second half, in which she articulates how to execute these concepts (with dozens of real examples to boot). Yes, the book reads like a textbook for the most part, but I was grateful that it cut through unnecessary fluff, unlike some gaming textbooks padded by the authors attempting to sound cool and casual. That being said, it isn't excessively dry by any means. The Gamer's Brain is a crash introduction to psychology, neuroscience, and user experience bundled into one. If you're interested in learning why polished and streamlined games set design paradigms, rather than blindly following them, you won't be disappointed.

I'm frequently asked for recommendations from people who are interested in game design and/or UX design for games and other than referencing some of Tufte's work, Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things, and Jesse Schell's A Book of Lenses I start to run out of good material for them. This adds one to the list. Celia Hodent has been giving insightful and entertaining talks on UX in game development for years. I've enjoyed those talks and I'm thrilled that in The Gamer's Brain, she takes her psychology-tinged themes and structures them all together into a coherent and entertaining book that will inevitably become a staple text in university game design programs everywhere.

As a non designer person, I absolutely loved Celia's book as it gave me the perfect combination between helping me understand how the brain works and how that can help me in my day to day work since while I am not designing games per say, I am designing Community Experiences for players and the knowledge I acquired through this book was extremely useful. The other part I like is that Celia doesn't preach UX to be the solution to everything; her approach is very humble and she admits the field is still very young and we have still very much to learn about social behavior. It's refreshing not to get an agenda pushed onto us and that makes the book even more enjoyable to read. So yeah, all in all, for everyone who is interested in human contacts and designing human experiences, I would definitely recommend this book.

This book is fantastic. Nearly every chapter has extraordinary, practical information that gave me a new and deep understanding of my field. From the way forgetting curves interact with tutorial pacing to the way peripheral vision informs HUD design, this book is 110% worth your time. Get it, read it, learn. It'll save you weeks of missteps and false trails, which will be more than worth it for your games. Heck, even if you're just interested in how this stuff works it's still a great read. Enjoy.

I discovered this book thanks to talented Game Spectrum (French Youtuber). Celia Hodent a French philosopher. She worked from a lot of compagny, suck Epic Game (Fornite). She explained how UX in the game design can control the brain of gamer. This book is both terrifying and fabulous. Our brains are really scalable and triple A companies know it. This is an amazing book. It is a good choice.

Very informative and easy reading. Recommend for everyone who's interesting in player experience

Celia Hodent really provides an excellent service to the industry at large with this one. In it she details research that previously was only available aggregated to corporations that could pay for it. Super grateful for this book.

Book’s cover was not clean and didn’t look new

Ms. Hodent's book is clearly the best book I have ever read. For the longest time the entire concept for UX was a complex bottleneck for me as a game developer. Being a 15+ year veteran, I had vowed never to return and here I am - returning to the field with a fury thanks to this book. It made me want to make games again. What I had picked up out of academic curiosity, opened up endless possibilities in gaming, gamification and transmedia.

The best book so far which I held in my hands. I've learnt a lot from it!

I'll preface this with saying I am an avid gamer and a UX practitioner, so this book is essentially hitting on all my interests (except the Spinal Tap references mostly went over my head). The Gamer's Brain will likely go down as one of the most influential books in my life. It has re-ignited my desire to transition into the game industry and given me the knowledge to do so. Littered with anecdotes from Celia's experience at some of the biggest game companies in the world(LucasArts, Ubisoft, Epic Games), the reader gains not only an understanding of what it is to practice UX at this scale, but also how to convert everyone around you to true believers in the value of UX. I strongly believe that every person practicing User Experience Design should read this book. It's an inspiring call to action for everyone who creates things for other people to enjoy. Reading this book makes you feel like you're in the room, having an honest conversation with one of top practitioners(my opinion) of UX/UR in the world. I've read it 3 times now and am actively trying to impart the knowledge in this book to everyone at my company. I hope for another book in the coming years!

As a game designer, this book has helped me so much to make better decisions when working on my games. It had made me pragmatically sensible about how perception, memory, attention and learning processes work and conscious about how critically important is to properly analyse how players are interacting with your game while you are still making it. The knowledge and applied experience imparted by this book is so useful beyond game design, that we ended up distributing copies among all other disciplines in our studio (coders, artists, QA Leads, producers, etc) which translated into a shared approach on how we address problems and strive for often playtest feedback. If you are making games or apps, or want to start making them, this gem is my strongest recommendation. Specially if you want to save A LOT of time by knowing how to pay attention to your future players' brains while you try to make something interesting for them.

Celia approached cognitive bias, UI and design in an extremely savvy yet humble way in this book. We just finished reading it in our book club and though only a few of us actually design videogames, it opened up a very very important conversation about behavioral design. Her opening of the book, talking about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation has immediate applicability across fields. Her emphasis on Design Thinking does as well. When she talked specifically about games, it is easy to see how what she is teaching is critical across other software applications and even Face to Face training too. I would think that after reading a book like this, that every Game studio or software application developer should hire PhDs in behavioral design! Well done Celia! You are awesome!

When I first started reading Celia Hodent's book, it was intimidating. The amount of Neuroscience was a little scary, however Celia brilliantly breaks everything down into only the necessary neuroscience to explain every UX concept in the book. As you'll read in the first few pages of the book, she spends the first half of the book getting you caught up to speed with the neuroscience that YOU need to know as a UX designer and nothing more (although she points you in the right direction if you're interested in going deeper down that rabbit hole!). She does an amazing job explaining everything you need to know about the cognitive science of UX design before you really get there. And when you do, the UX design parts of the book are incredibly deep and easy to understand. This is a book I couldn't recommend more. I've learned more about UX design from this book than I did in school or on my own research combined. If you want to learn more about the psychology of UX design as WELL as get some incredible UX design advice, I can't think of any better source to start with then this book. This is an easy 5/5! Thank you for everything, Celia!!

It is rare to see a book on design that is so firmly grounded in psychological research. By walking the reader through this important foundation, the reader is prepared to better understand the examples, guidelines, and principles laid out in the rest of the book. It helped me understand that every decision made by a designer (and others) should be based on how the resulting experience will be perceived and processed by the user. If you are looking for an eye-opening, evidence-based approach to UX and game design, this is it.

Outstanding book with excellent, easy to understand examples. As someone in the game industry and an avid gamer I keep thinking while mid game back to her book on "ooooooh, that's what's going on here" when playing a particular game. Not just for gamers but also for those wanting to understand cognitive psychology.

I feel like I've suggested this book to someone at least once a day since I finished it three weeks ago (after basically reading it twice back to back). It's a gold mine. Celia provides a framework for success through practical examples that clearly explain the methods and best practices that can be immediately implemented. This is a must read for anyone interested in the mechanisms of games and systems to drive human behavior.

This book is a really easy read, making read it a really pleasurable experience, regardless of whether you read it for professional development or fun. Hodent did an excellent job in the layout of the topic, as well as her detailed explanations. I especially enjoyed her examples. They are abundant, and clearly demonstrate all of her points. I highly recommend this book.

Very nice and well-structured book. It will be most useful for people who interested in psycology and start his/her way in Design in general

I've been making games for 25 years and in my opinion this is a treasure trove of up to date information on UX design theory and practice from an acknowledged leader in the field. It is a fairly short book (good!), but nonetheless manages to communicate a considerable amount of information in a dense but clear style. Definitely one to keep and re-read. Excellent references and examples throughout. This is a great book which will really help you get inside the player's head - recommended for anyone teaching, learning, making, or just wanting to understand videogames.

An excellent book that helps frame the challenges of design through the foundation of cognitive science. The first half is insightful and establishes the relevant areas of cognitive science, and the second half directly applies these lessons to UX. The trick, unadvertised by the book, is that the lessons explained in the second half are also broadly applicable to level design, systems design, and generalist design! Highly recommend. Be aware that the text is a bit small, which can make it feel a bit dense to read! Give yourself some time for this one, it's worth it.

I truly enjoyed this book, as a game dev it helped me understand even more how important little things can have a big impact on how players will interact with our games. So much to take in, in many different fields of game development too. I will keep some of these lessons for sure and apply them to the games that I make from now on. Really strongly recommend this book.

Clear and concise. A nice reading

No quería escribir un comentario de este libro, pero al encontrarme en cada tema y varios de sus subtemas, ideas feminazis, no puedo más que decirle a aquellos que quieran comprar este libro, que está lleno de basura ideológica. En los primeros capítulos la autora habla de prejuicios inconscientes, algo que es imposible de erradicar pero que se tiene que tratar de controlar y ser consiente de dichos prejuicios. Qué pena que la autora no siguió su propio consejo. Aunque el libro tiene varios puntos de interés que son muy útiles para el desarrollo de videojuegos, la autora tiene varias inconsistencia (creo que es debido a sus prejuicios de SJW) y manda por la borda en ciertas ocasiones a las estadísticas, como las diferencias entre hombres y mujeres. Honestamente hubiera sido un excelente libro, si solo no trataran de meterte a la fuerza sus ideas Feminazis.

Full disclosure: I'm already a huge fan of the author's career and work. This book represents a great starting point to the long journey of us education for students and pros alike. It takes some heavy massively complex ideas and distills them into normal language with a smattering of jargon. Really newbie friendly and frankly a must read for any ux student hoping to enter the games industry. If you're already in the biz then this is a great refresher of some very fundamental stuff but in context of the discipline. I've been really impressed at how easy it reads and how useful the information is. As a teacher its given me lots of new ideas to further simplify complex ux principles for students. Happy to recommend this book, as I will be recommending it to all my students too!

At long last… It is the missing link between the day to day of game development and all the (new) modern design skills around user-centrism now required to develop modern commercially successful games. After reading it you feel more in-control of everything player facing, from motivations, to human brain, usability and accessibly amongst many others, and thus better able to work on the game you have imagined more relaxed with the real feeling to be able to deliver a much higher quality product to your audiences. It is both structured as a list of topics/skills, which makes it easy to search when looking for specific info, and also ordered in a way that let understand how all those user-centric topics are connected together in a game production at large. Since it has been released, it integrated right away the list of books I share as references both to students and when giving design talks in conferences. The style feels like if you where at one of the authors master classes, super accessible and filled with real-life examples and fun anecdotes to relax your brain while learning a LOT about players brains! Must have (and must read) in any serious game-developer collection.

I'm just starting to explore the games industry and I found this book super informative. I loved the way Celia has presented the material in a way that is readable by and engaging for juniors and seniors alike. The last chapter is essential for people looking into joining the field of game UX or games research. Excellent tips on how to get involved in the community and how to structure your resume. My copy of the book now is full of highlights and notes, which I need to go back to read again. Meanwhile, here are my favourite quotes from the book "Anyone on any team can have a UX mindset; UX practitioners are only here to support the initiative by providing the right tools and enabling the right process and strategy" "UX is a philosophy more than a specific discipline. It is about shifting from our ego-centred perspective toward a player-centred one by using a scientific approach" "Be ready to learn about game design and avoid pretending you know about it just because you have played so many games. It’s like saying you can cook just because you like eating food"

The Gamer’s Brain, by Celia Hodent, is a detailed introduction to the field of study of video game player’s psychological thought processes. Deceptively small looking book richly packed with useful information to help guide game designer’s understanding in how their users approach game play. Bravo, Celia Hodent!

I bought this book for teaching purpose. And.. WOW! Finally, someone speaks about UX and Psychology in a great way without all the neuromyths, neurojunk and neuroscams! This book it's basically a bible for every student that wants to work in the Videogame field and for UXer who wants to learn how the Game industry is different. Really it's a must-have!

Endlich ein Buch das konkrete Anwendungsbeispiele gibt. Es eröffnet neue Perspektiven wie sich das Spielerlebnis im Kopf des Spielers entfaltet und bietet genügend theoretisches Wissen um seine eigenen Spiele zielgerichtet zu optimieren.

Très belle vulgarisation du sujet et bons exemples. Si vous êtes déjà dans le milieu du jeu vidéo, vous n’apprenderez rien de nouveau.

This book provides in an interesting way modern knowledge about gamer's and design. This is a must read for all professional game developers.

un libro de UX enfocado al desarrollo de videojuegos. Pocas imágenes pero un contenido muy valioso que ayuda a pensar primero en quien va a jugar los videojuegos que supuestamente desarrollaremos.

Bon recueil de ce qui se trouve déjà sur son blog, mais plutôt chargé avec peu de support visuel.

I'm a little bit disappointed because the book package arrived without any scratch but the cover of the book has some marks and bends

Highly recommended for anyone who's interested in video game UX and game design. Good read, clear structure.

Excelente

Celia's book is an amazing introduction to how we, humans, function and how to apply this knowledge to video games. Most of game developers still believe that pure instinct is going to help them make great user experiences, and games in general. It will take them a very long time to understand that science is a much faster way to better games. There is a lot to get through in this book but concepts unknown from game developers are explained simply and reused all along your read. This is a must read to anyone taking the role of entertainer seriously. Highly recommended.