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“It
would be impossible to overestimate the
extent to which Nicole Lazzaro's research
has contributed to a better understanding
of play in the context of videogames.” -
Chris Bateman, author of 21st
Century Game Design |
Nicole Lazzaro is the Founder and
President of XEODesign, Inc. She has eighteen years
of expertise in Player Experience Design for mass-market
entertainment products. Voted by Gamasutra as one
of the Top
20 women working in video games, her clients
including Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, PlayFirst, The
Cartoon Network, Disney, LeapFrog, Mattel, Monolith,
Xfire, D.I.C.E, Leap Frog, Ugobe, The Learning Company,
Broderbund, Roxio, Cisco, Go Pets, Sierra Online,
and Maxis. She has a degree in Psychology from Stanford
University where she also studied film making and
computer programming.
Since founding XEODesign in 1992
Nicole's design and research has
improved over 40 million player experiences, including
several popular franchises for casual audiences such
as three of the Myst Series, Diner Dash, GoPets,
Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, Mavis Beacon teaches
Typing, Jeopardy Online, as well as creativity coaching
for the designers of The Sims.
Nicole was the first person to
use facial expressions to measure player experiences.
Through this research which she published in 2004
she discovered that people’s
favorite player experiences (PX) craft emotion by
offering choices in four play styles: the Hard
Fun from challenge and mastery, Easy Fun from exploration
and role play, Serious Fun for relaxation and real
work, and People Fun from the excuse to hang out
with friends. XEODesign's PX model on emotion and
games called the 4 Fun Keys inspires a wide range
of creative approaches for crafting more emotions
from play. With the 4 Fun Keys developers access
player's emotional response to innovate early in
the development cycle where there is much less risk.
More on Nicole's research
can be found in her chapter in The
Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, 2nd Edition
by Jacko and Sears. It is now available on Amazon
Free white papers on emotion and
games are here: http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames
An avid photographer, Nicole enjoys
sharing her unique perspective on Flickr.
Nicole currently serves on the
Greater IBM Social Networking Advisory Board.
Contact Nicole here: nlazz at xeodesign
dot com
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