GSND 6330 — Player Experience
4 semester hoursGraduateLectureusually offered: fallBostonOakland, CATraditional
Focuses on topics of player psychology—cognition; memory; emotions; attention; and game-focused theories such as engagement, fun, user experience, player-need-satisfaction model, and flow. The development cycle of any game relies on the understanding of the players, the target market of the game product. Covers game usability engineering and game-specific evaluation methods, such as play testing, rapid iterative testing and evaluation (RITE), play-heuristic evaluation, and retrospective play reviews. Offers students an opportunity to learn how to analyze qualitative and quantitative data and to apply parametric and nonparametric statistical evaluation methods, qualitative data coding and analysis, and descriptive statistics. Requires students to apply visualization techniques of data and reporting.
Prerequisites
Corequisites (same term)
- GSND 6331
Offering history
| Term | Sections | Enrolled | Capacity | Full | Open seats/section |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2023 | 2 | 37 | 48 | 77% | 5.5 |
| Fall 2024 | 3 | 50 | 63 | 79% | 4.3 |
| Fall 2025 | 3 | 37 | 50 | 74% | 4.3 |
Snapshots from scheduled scrapes — not live seat availability. "Full" can exceed 100% when sections over-enroll.
Meeting times
Share of recent sections by weekday: M 12% · T 29% · W 19% · Th 23% · F 17%
Common patterns: T (29% of sections), R (23% of sections), W (19% of sections), F (17% of sections), M (12% of sections) — in patterns, R means Thursday
Professors
Fall
- Elina Tochilnikova (30% of students) · reviews
- Mark Sivak (29% of students) · reviews
- Caroline Murphy (17% of students) · reviews
- Giovanni Troiano (16% of students) · reviews
Percentages are each professor's average share of the season's enrolled students in recent terms.
Links
Official catalog (GSND course descriptions) · Student reviews on RateMyHusky · All GSND courses · Plan it at numap.app
More
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"retiredSince": "2026-09-03"
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