Jyllian Thibodeau · Product Builder · Leadership, research and experience design · Sydney

Harmonix

I joined a celebrated game studio as they were inventing new ways to play, built their player research practice from ad-hoc playtests, and helped teach a new camera how people move.

The role at a glance

Business
Harmonix, the studio behind Rock Band and Dance Central, who had previously made Guitar Hero: music games played by millions, often together, on hardware built for them.
Hired to
Take playtesting off the developers' plates and organise it, as the studio's first dedicated player researcher.
Key wins
Built ad-hoc playtests into a player research department used on every project, made the whole studio part of playtesting, and co-developed motion detection with Microsoft for a bestselling Kinect launch title.
Moved on
At the end of 2013, to Sydney, and into UX consulting.
The business

A studio inventing new ways to play

Harmonix made music games that turned living rooms into stages: plastic guitars, drums and microphones in Rock Band, and a camera that watched you dance in Dance Central. Nobody buys a game because they have to, so every title lived or died on whether players loved it. Most shipped with hardware that had never been tested in a real living room, and many were built with partners: Microsoft, Disney, MTV Games, Electronic Arts and other studios.

The brief

Organise the playtests

Developers had been running playtests themselves, when they had time. I joined during Rock Band's crunch. I'd been running Linux usability studies at Novell, so I took on the coordination and turned it into a real process. As the studio's first dedicated player researcher, the practice was mine to build. When Kinect arrived, I also took on gesture and interaction design, drawing on my own background in dance.

What I did

A research practice, and a new kind of controller

Built player research from ad-hoc playtests

I introduced formal methods, a playtester database and clear reporting, then grew the practice into a department: at its peak, three full-time researchers and two interns. I hired and mentored junior researchers with a focus on delegation and ownership, and encouraged people to up-skill across disciplines, so everyone stayed useful between projects.

Made research everyone's job

I split the whole studio into interdisciplinary playtest groups that played every week, and shared data with the team through livestreamed sessions and stat reports. I consulted with PR and community teams on trends in the market and the player base.

Studied play where it really happens

Music games are social, so I pioneered realistic research settings: living-room labs, party sessions where testers brought friends, long-term betas and diary studies, and deliberate but realistic abuse of the hardware to find out how it would break.

Helped teach a camera to read the body

I collaborated with Microsoft on early versions of the Kinect hardware and firmware, seeded the motion data behind its machine-learning detection, and designed and tuned gesture controls based on how players naturally move.

Kept many teams in step

Projects ran on staggered schedules, often with partner studios elsewhere. I coordinated with leads and partners to align development, media and research priorities, and managed research resources across projects for their whole life, from first prototype to launch.

Stories from this role

The work, in detail

The games

Every title, and where to read about it

How it ended

A dozen games, and a discipline that stuck

I left at the end of 2013 and moved to Sydney. By then, player research was part of how Harmonix made games, from first prototype to launch, and I'd worked on a dozen titles across consoles, handhelds and mobile. The games won many awards, and much of the praise was for how friendly and accessible they were to play, even for novice and casual players. Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band and Dance Central each won Family Game of the Year at the Interactive Achievement Awards, and Dance Central sold 2.5 million copies (source). The full list is in Rock Band: Founding player research.