Game 2: Playful Practice

Although this class has looked at play design in the context of games, elements of play can be incorporated into nearly anything. Your goal for this project is to incorporate play into your own design practice. If your own design practice involves games, make a game! However, you should feel free to add play design to an industrial design object, an architectural design, a theoretical/speculative society, an app, etc, should that hew closer to your own motivations for exploring play design.

For this project, you may work in pairs or in threes.

For groups of three, you must get approval. Groups of three must provide:

  1. A set schedule of times where all three members of the group can meet, at least 3 days per week. You don’t necessarily need to Zoom 3x per week, however, you may need to meet at different parts of the week during different phases of the project, like before then during a playtest.
  2. A clear delineation of roles. This does not mean that there can’t be overlap between team-members and the delineation doesn’t need to be skill-specific; I just need to see what each person is doing and I need to ensure that everyone is doing game design (eg, it is bad if one person just does graphic design and no game design).

Part I: Brainstorm

Due April 7

Think of an experience you want to create for players. This is before you even think about mechanics and specific interactions. Something like, “I want to create an immersive narrative experience that evokes mystery” or “I want someone who uses my app to feel like they’re in a fun competition with themselves.”

Part II: Proposal

Due April 14

Be prepared to give a brief (under 10 minutes) presentation of your game proposal. We will have time to discuss the proposed games after the presentations

We will see the presentations together as a class then split into two breakout rooms for discussion.

Prepare the following slides:

  • Team name
  • What’s your design value & the core experience you want your players to have?
  • How do you plan to use game design tools to shape the game elements to serve that experience?
  • What is your intended prototype or prototypes? What questions do you aim to ask then answer through your prototype?
  • At least three questions you would like to discuss.

Part III: Prototype

Due April 21

  • Noting that you have one week to prototype and another week to playtest, what’s a slice of your desired experience that you can put together?
  • Develop at least three design questions you would like your playtest to answer. These should be both for yourself and for your players.
  • Begin making a prototype that can answer these questions. Have it ready to show during your team meeting.

Prototypes, Playtests, & Design Questions
Before holding a playtest, it is important to have questions in mind that you hope to answer through the test. These questions will then inform the prototype that you build and bring to the playtest.

Appropriate design questions could be:

  • Does changing XP triggers away from violence without changing the framing story affect players’ moral decision-making or does it just lead to a change in the practical calculus?
  • How does ambient noise affect how players play the repurposed instruments? Does it make them less shy? Or is it annoying to compete with outside noise?
  • Is one hour per turn for making a drawing or sound too long (do too many people who want to engage find themselves unable?) or is it necessary to have the deesired depth? Does giving players two days to take a turn make participation easier or is it too hard to continue work from a previous day?

And so on.

Part IV: Playtest & Iterate

Due April 28

  • Continue developing your prototype to a playtestable state
  • Add your proposal slides to the shared deck
  • Playtest your game with at least 2 different sets of people: one internal test with fellow class members; one external test with people outside of class. These tests may be different (for example, groups doing installations should test a prototype of the installation with people IRL, but can test recordings or other documentation of the installation with classmates abroad (or a different aspect of the project - whatever makes sense!))
  • Document your playtest

Post-playtest Interview
After a playtest, you will want to talk to your players to see how they responded to your game.

Example questions:

  • How did this game make you feel?
  • What did you most like?
  • What did you least like?
  • Would you play again?
  • Is there anything else you would like to say?

You should add interview questions that pertain to any questions you wanted to answer through your playtesting process.

Playtest Reflection
Consider these questions:

  • What aspects of your designed experience worked as expected?
  • What of your designed experience did not work as expected?
  • Which, if any, deviations from your intended experience turned out to be good?
  • What did players find easy to understand?
  • What did players find difficult to understand?
  • What did players do that you didn’t expect?
  • What did players do that you did expect?
  • Were there rules that were unnecessary?
  • Did you feel like any rules were missing?

Then reflect:

  • What are some potential solutions to problems you identified?
  • What are potential changes you could make to amplify the successful aspects of your game?
  • What are possible changes to the realized form of your game (its prototypal manifestation)?
  • What do you see as the most important changes to make and why? (As in, there are a million things we could change in any project, so what changes are you prioritizing for your updated prototype for your second playtest?)

Internal Playtest Assignments

Game Facilitators Players
Space Juliyen Peter, Xiaofan, Miliaku, Collin
Abandoned Sound Bowen, Sherry, Xintong Peter, Xiaofan, Miliaku, Collin
Among Us boardgame Daniel, Sam Peter, Xiaofan, Miliaku, Collin
Unravel Miliaku Eddie, Bowen, Xintong
Stay/Go Vincent Eddie, Bowen, Xintong
Solarpunk 2112 Collin Juliyen, Deveena, Vincent
UrLingual An, Emma Sherry
Humn Deveena (+ others) Sam, Daniel
Untitled Xiaofan, David An, Emma
Untitled Peter David

Part V: Playtest & Document

Due May 5

  • Iterate your design
  • Playtest again
  • Reflect on your playtest again (refer to Part IV)
  • Add your project to the shared slide deck.

Add the following slides:

  • Team member names, project title, kinds of play; one-line or one-paragraph description
  • A document detailing the rules of your game.
  • Documentation of your prototype
  • 3+ images of your game (including playtest)
  • Optional: video summary of playtest

Criteria

  • Fidelity of imagery, sound, etc is unimportant at this stage; an unattractive game will not harm your grade and a beautiful game will not benefit your grade.

Form & Tools

  • Your game must be playtestable remotely on whatever computer other students are using. (So no heavy-duty Unreal or VR projects!)
  • There are no other constraints regarding form. You can design a game intended to be a physical boardgame or card game, then create it in Miro/Mural/etc for playtesting.
  • There is no constraint regarding tools. Recommended tools are listed on the class website. I’d recommend looking at the tools that create simple virtual spaces like Hubs or Gather if you want to re-create aspects of an in-person performative game.