In Games, people take center stage: People design and develop games for other people. As devs, you create intended and unintended effects for your players: on the levels of thoughts, emotions and actions. You create social spaces in communities and define rules on how one should interact with one another.
Problems that arise – e.g. a boring game or a toxic community – can be understood as psychological phenomena: as a lack of motivation opportunities or as a result of social processes.
Image: Gamedev Tycoon, Greenheart Games
As trained psychologists with years of experience in the games industry and in teaching aspiring game developers, we’re happy to help you make your game even better. We advise you on various topics, including:
Intuitive, easy to understand UI design
Turning your UX wishes into hands-on design proposals
Motivating game mechanics without dark patterns
Designing elegant, fun tutorials
Sensitive and professionally accurate representation of mental health topics / disorders and related topics
Useful content notes without pitfalls, based on scientific findings
Building a community with useful, hands-on action recommendations and community guidelines
Appealing, audience appropriate serious / educational games based on scientific findings on learning and teaching
Couldn’t spot your question or problem? These are just a few examples. Feel free to reach out! gamedev@behind-the-screens.de
Advice: Portrayal of a sensible topic with dark humor, clearly communicating intentions
Concept advice: Delivering a ‘serious’ topic through game mechanics
Advice: Selection of most suitable key arts based on perceptual psychology
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Narrative puzzle game
Concept advice: Story and game mechanics revolvong around coming of age, identity formation and mental health
Testimonials
Behind The Screens were an excellent sparring partner when it came to game design choices. Since Blueberry is a game about mental health, it was a very good fit and the team helped me see the challenges and opportunities of making such a game. I believe they made it possible for us to create a much better version of Blueberry.
Melanie Taylor, MELLOW Games
Working with Behind the Screens has been incredibly valuable and has enriched our development process immensely. The team’s professional psychological knowledge paired with a deep understanding of games gave us many new, useful and sometimes refreshingly sobering perspectives on our game.
Julien Trübinger, Motivationline
“The method must match the content” is probably one of the most influential sentences with witch the Behind the Screens team guided us through the concept phase of our addiction-prevention game. Thanks to their passion, professionalism and humor the collaboration led to an awesome result – and we learned a lot along the way.
Sanja Marie Hagge, Landesstelle für Suchtfragen Schleswig-Holstein e.V.
FAQ
We’re a small indie studio with little budget – can we afford your services?
We will find solutions for each budget. Just reach out! An initial session where we clarify your needs and explore together how we can best assist you, is completely free for you. We work on an hourly basis; even with just a few hours of consulting we can provide you with valuable tips.
Do we have to outsource specific elements of the design process to you (e.g. UI design)?
No, you will be in charge at any given point! We won’t provide full mockups or code anything, instead we will discuss our observations and suggest ways to improve. What you choose to implement – and how – is up to you.
What does your consulting process look like?
That depends on several factors, including whether you want a single session or multiple sessions over a longer period so we can provide feedback about your progress and iterations regularly.
For example, we worked on several projects for up to a year. We had several consulting sessions of around 2-3 hours each in which we discussed the most recent build and answered the teams’ questions.
Furthermore, we offer individually tailored workshops and training. Here, a preliminary meeting is free of charge as well.
When in our development process should we involve you?
We can be involved at any time! Depending on where you are in your process, we can support you regarding fundamental conceptual questions, polishing or anything in between. As a general rule: the earlier you reach out, the more your game can benefit from our input.
