Games user research: practice, methods, and applications.

Games User Research (GUR) is an emerging field that ties together Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Game Development. The GUR community has rapidly evolved over the past few years (spawning an International Game Developers Association Special Interest Group). In this workshop, we are investigating different methodologies currently used in practice. We will highlight benefits and drawbacks in assessing game design issues hoping to gain insights into player experience. The outcome will be a collection of best practices online, showing practitioners and researchers how to apply these techniques. We will also peer-review and publish extended versions of paper submissions in a Cognitive Science Research Papers Special Issue on GUR. This will extend the discussion of topics beyond the workshop and serve as a platform for future work.