Big Think Interview With Nicole Lazzaro | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Nicole Lazzaro

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A conversation with the founder and president of XEODesign.

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Nicole Lazzaro:

Nicole Lazzaro, Founder and President of XEODesign, Inc., has twenty years of expertise in Player Experience Design (PXD) for mass-market entertainment products. Voted by Gamasutra as one of the Top 20 women working in video games, and cited by Wired, Fast Company, CNET, ABC News, The Hollywood Reporter, and Red Herring, her clients include Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, PlayFirst, The Cartoon Network, Disney, Lucas Arts, Nickelodeon, 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 an undergraduate 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.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Nicole Lazzaro: rnOkay, good, so I’m Nicole Lazzaro and I’m president and founder ofrnXEODesign.

Question: What do you and your company do on a day-to-dayrnbasis?

Nicole Lazzaro: rnSure. Well I make gamesrnmore fun, so I’m the leading expert on emotion and the fun of games and I workrnwith companies, everyone from EA to Sony to Ubisoft to PlayFirst to make theirrngames more engaging. EssentiallyrnI’ve for the past 20 years I’ve studied how to make the screen you know morernengaging.

Question: What are the major changes you’ve seen in thernvideo game world during your career?

Nicole Lazzaro: rnThere has been an enormous amount of changes, which has been reallyrnrewarding because back in the year 2000, sort of at the turn of this century, Irnhad this revelation on top of a temple in Egypt. I was standing on a temple in Dendera looking out over therndesert. It was a hot day and Irnreached down for my canteen to get that last sip of water when there at my feetrnsomeone had carved a game board and I thought, wow, you know, two people hadrnstood where I stood and thought to pass the time with a game. And I wondered, what were theirrnfeelings? What were theirrnemotions? What engaged them inrnthat activity you know 2,000 years ago? rnAnd then what would they think of? rnHow would they respond to the games we play today? Then putting on my future hat thinkingrnabout well what kinds of engagement? rnWhat kinds of games will we play say in the year 2020? And it was then that I noticed that thernkinds of game experiences that I wanted to have were going to have to… The industry was going to have to gornthrough a significant number of changes to capture that same amount of play andrnengagement. In a sense that set mernon this train of research for the past 10 years to look at what creates… whyrnpeople play games and what makes games fun because if you think about it sortrnof like Newton watching the apple fall, emotions have this invisible pull onrnhuman action and it’s present if you see you know in any kind of game play, butrnif you look at the games that I work on in the industry they have thousands ofrnrules and maybe a handful of emotions, but if you look at a group of kidsrnplaying you know you see the whole pantheon, the entire pantheon of humanrnemotions coming from the game with a single rule. You know, tag. rnYou’re it. So it’s beenrnreally wonderful over the past 10 years to share with the game industry hundredsrnand thousands of people who have downloaded our whitepapers and our research tornlook at the whole spectrum of games evolving, so we’ve saw the entrance of arnlot of… the mechanics of easy fun with Wii, you know that exploration and rolernplay. We’ve got new kinds of gamesrnthat are both educational and good for you in a sense, so there is a lot of yournknow Brain Age and you know people playing Dance, Dance Revolution to losernweight. People playing eco gamesrnnow to you know make the world a better place and then social gaming is huge…rnis a huge trend and we see that in something we call people fun that wherernpeople really experience more emotions the more that they connect through gamernplay and so that’s a really interesting trend.

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