Celia Hodent's Blog

Video games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. Although billions of people seem to be having fun playing them, the question still looms: could they also be bad for us? Many things have been said about the impact of video games on players in the past few decades, more specifically about […]

The post The Psychology of Video Games: Are Video Games Good or Bad For Players? appeared first on Celia Hodent.

Making video games for a living is a dream for many. The demand to secure a job in a game studio is quite high and as a result it can be difficult to enter the game industry, especially if you do not have a good network. A couple of decades ago, the game industry was […]

The post Getting a Job in the Video Game Industry: General Tips & Focus on UX roles appeared first on Celia Hodent.

Ethics in the videogame industry. Insights from a cognitive science viewpoint and work at Ubisoft, LucasArts, Epic Games, and as a video games UX consultant.

The post Ethics in the Videogame Industry: A Mythbusting and Scientific Approach appeared first on Celia Hodent.

Fortnite is one of the most successful video games in history, and this success fascinates and confuses many people who have made efforts to account for how a game could have become such a phenomenon so quickly. As the former Director of User Experience (UX) at Epic Games, where I worked on Fortnite from 2013 to […]

The post Understanding the Success of Fortnite: A UX & Psychology Perspective appeared first on Celia Hodent.

The UX Summit debuted at GDC this year and Anouk Ben-Tchavtchavadze and myself had the extreme honor and pleasure to serve as advisors for this inaugural year. The intent of the summit was to cover all facets of the user experience discipline within the video game industry. As you might know, UX aims to ensure […]

The post GDC 2017 UX Summit – Overview appeared first on Celia Hodent.

This is the last part of my GDC trilogy about the gamer’s brain (how cool is that!). A warm thanks to all of you who liked my previous talks, gave me constructive feedback, and supported me! 🙂 This post is a transcript of my talk with the slides. You can find transcripts of the first […]

The post The Gamer’s Brain, part 3: The UX of Engagement and Immersion (or Retention) – GDC17 talk appeared first on Celia Hodent.

What is this article about? Educators interested in using video games for educational purposes should be aware of the considerable difficulties in developing a fun and engaging game, and take into account the user experience (UX). Game developers interested in education should understand the principles of learning, and the importance of transfer when creating an educational […]

The post The elusive power of video games for education appeared first on Celia Hodent.

On May 12th 2016, Epic Games hosted the inaugural Game UX Summit in Durham (NC) – which I had the immense pleasure and honor to curate – to discuss the current state of User Experience in the video game industry. This event brought together fifteen renowned speakers from various UX-related disciplines: Human Factors, Human-Computer Interaction, […]

The post Game UX Summit 2016 – All Sessions Summary appeared first on Celia Hodent.

I gave a talk about UX for game-based learning at Games for Change Festival 2016. While at the festival I sat down with Classcraft, whose mission is to transform the learning experience by using game mechanics. In the videos below (2 parts for a total of 20 minutes), I discuss about UX and why it is important to […]

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These are the slides from my GDC 2016 presentation. This session is meant as a follow-up to my GDC 2015 talk about How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Design (hence, “part 2”). Since it seemed to generate interest, I wanted to do a deeper dive on one of the critical aspects of a game’s user […]

The post The Gamer’s Brain, Part 2: UX of Onboarding and Player Engagement (GDC16) appeared first on Celia Hodent.