I believe that UX designers are well positioned to play a significant role in developing more successful implementations of games that are designed first to engage and delight people, while also achieving real-world objectives. User-centered design is closely related to the player-centric thinking that’s common to all good game experiences. I’d love to see a substantial community of UX designers attending conferences like Games for Health, Games for Change and Games, Learning, and Society to learn, connect, and introduce a UX point of view. You could get started today by checking to see whether the International Game Developer’s Association has an active chapter in your area and sitting in on their meetings. Another insight: to create high-quality player experiences, UX designers must develop a true competency with game design. While we have a lot of other skills that can translate well, game design is a robust practice in its own right, and much of it turns our usual ways of thinking upside down. Operating successfully in the games domain means learning an entirely new set of competencies and gaining experience putting them into practice. My previous article on the elements of player experience can serve as an initial orientation, and I’ve dedicated the largest portion of my upcoming book to the theory, skills, and practices that UX designers need to adopt to design successful game experiences. Critical books on game design that are not specific to UX practitioners include The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell, Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, and A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster.