I do pro bono work for small indie studios and I love it.
Working on games, especially those that would benefit from, but can’t afford user research, gives me immense satisfaction. It’s also a good use of my skills that I’ve acquired over the last couple decades. I enjoy adding to their understanding of their design, their players, and user research as a whole.
Sometimes it’s as simple as a conversation and advice on how to build a participant panel or run their own usability studies. Other times it’s designing, fielding, and analyzing a survey. And others, it’s me running and streaming usability studies and writing up a full report.
“When I started my own independent games studio, and released Airborne Empire into Early Access, Rich reached out to help us with UXR.
“Even though the scale of the game, the audience, and the dev team is small, the insights Rich provided us were extremely valuable and helped us focus on the most important aspects of the game.
“I have really enjoyed working with Rich. His methodology is very well thought out and professionally executed, and he also just knows games really well. We will definitely work with him again on future games.”
— Zach Mumbach, Lead Designer | Founder of The Wandering Band
Other indie games I advised about UXR.
If you’re interested in chatting more about how user research might improve your game, reach out so we can chat. You’ve got nothing to lose.
