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Here is my KS1 game analysis which has at the end a biblography, I will expand on this in my last post:

With particular reference to the readings you have undertaken this year what are the major design issues you have faced in developing a game for Key Stage 1 children.

During the initial conception of the game we knew we had to make a game that would appeal and be achievable for KS1 children, so we looked at our readings for help. The challenges basic issues and challenges were mainly gameplay related, and a few other more modern ones. We will look at the gameplay ones first.

In Costikyans’, 2002, ‘I have no words & I must design’ he breaks down a game into sub categories; interaction, goals, struggle, structure and endogenous meaning. For interaction he said ‘ A game needs elements that the player interacts with and this interaction must change the state of the game’, although this didn’t fully apply to the game it made us rethink how the puzzles should change; or whether they stay the same. When the player completes a puzzle the puzzle then becomes locked like that forever altering the game prior to this upon completion the puzzle although completed would revert back to its default state making it slightly confusing to the player. But also in this article Costikyan, 2002, says that ‘a puzzle is static, a game is interactive’ and this is true. We had to make an educational game fun to play so we avoided asking direct questions, rather hiding the questions as puzzles that needed to be solved to advance and rewards the player for doing so.

The goals we setup in this game were simply to solve puzzles and escape. ‘Games can be susceptible to goal directed objectives to the point that it’s a good game despite no win state’ – Costikyan, 2002, our allure of victory (escaping) is the primary goal but we added some secondary goals like least time taken and collectables which break up the main goal and allow the player to explore the environment a bit before continuing. Collectables and time taken weren’t added until we found the main goal got stale very quickly as you had no distractions other than looking at a non-intractable environment and we looked for a way to make it slightly more interesting and fun. The players’ decisions are limited to a few options inside puzzles and even fewer outside them; this was necessary evil as puzzles only have one solution but different ways to get there. Outside the puzzles the player can decide to look around or push on forward.

‘Challenging but possible’ – Costikyan, 2002, this was a constant struggle for us to make the game doable for KS1 as we weren’t that age. As our main interactive medium was puzzles we created a list of conceivable puzzles and challenges that would be challenging and yet still fun for the player. As a game requires players to struggle towards a goal we steadily raised the difficulty and complexity of the puzzles and eventually then straight forward questions as they near the end, this gave the player a sense of triumph over ever increasing odds and still coming out victorious. We found though that concentrated testing was needed to ensure these challenges were doable by those who would be playing it and also to see where they found it boring so we could tweak it ready for a wider audience.

‘A games structure shapes the player behaviour but does not determine it’ – Costikyan, 2002, for our game we wanted the players to believe that they’re all playing the same game and that the goal is important so the behave accordingly. To do this was difficult for what is essentially a side scrolling puzzle game, players would automatically complete the puzzles to progress so their behaviour was very predictable but we wanted to add some random feature that the player could then alter their behaviour and playing style to complete. Collectables were our solution; the player would have to be actively looking for them as they are hidden but also complete the puzzles. A few other ideas were thought of such as adding a penalising system so if the player got too many things wrong they would be sent backwards a predetermined amount. Loss of collectables, recorded collectables and major failing like restarting from level 1 were all put on the table for possible implementation but weren’t as although these would be common place for harder games this is a game for young children rather than teenagers who would better understand the consequences and reason for these events.

Endogenous meaning was described by Costikyan, 2002, as ‘Has no real value outside the virtual world that it is found’, for us we already had collectables that we were going to add so this now justified us adding them to the game. We noted though that although our test group had found all of the collectables they got no reward for this feat also despite this they would brag to friends about their amount. Although this was to be foreseen, we didn’t believe it would happen on such a large scale; on your own the achievement is relatively hollow as you can’t brag or tell anyone, but in a single room with multiple players each on their own computer changed this. We noted though that there was no reward for finding them all, this seemed as a let-down for those who undertook the challenge to search for them and came back empty handed. We already had some ideas of what to add to the game the most obvious one being a hidden characters or more challenges, we decided on adding a hidden character that the children wouldn’t perceive happening but it wouldn’t surprise them completely.

In ‘space of possibility and pacing in casual game design’ written by Venturelli, 2009, was broken into 2 main parts pacing and space of possibility. For our games space of possibility Venturelli, 2009 said ‘Design a game is designing a space of possibility. It is the collection of all possible actions and outcomes inside the designed space of the game’, it was very hard for us to expand on this virtual space as we had no real world that the player could run around in, for the player to interact with the environment they had to click. ‘When a game no longer has surprises and all patterns have been exhausted then there is no more fun to be had’ – Venturelli, 2009. This problem was apparent from the beginning; puzzles although they have multiple routes only have one ending, which means once the player has learnt all the answers there ceases to be any challenge. To overcome this we added randomized puzzle elements, which although had the same solution varied the route enough to keep things engaging, with the addition of hidden items it added a new layer. ‘A player must be seduced to agree to enter the games’ experience, but must then be kept seduced’ – Venturelli, 2009.

The pacing of the game was very important to use and thus was hard to get it correct. ‘Pacing is the overall rhythm of the game. By indirectly crafting the player experience through mechanics, aesthetics and dynamics’ – Venturelli, 2009, to use as player interaction was limited we had to make the sensory interaction more engrossing. Using what Venturelli said we decided on a more basic break down; movement impetus, tension, threat and tempo. Movement impetus is the players desire to move forward which we achieved by constantly rewarding the player, which although didn’t work very well on older test subjects worked surprisingly well on younger audiences. We also used other parts of the breakdown to push players onwards.

We viewed the game as designers: Mechanics – Aesthetics – Dynamics

Audience viewed the game as players: Dynamics – Aesthetics – Mechanics

To improve the game we conducted focus testing.

The threat to the player is generated by the games mechanics, which were our main focus. As there was no enemy shooting back the adversary would have to be the environment (puzzles), but we found this rather boring as the player would know that in the next room would be x amount of puzzles that they could tackle in their own time. So to alter this we added a couple of things which created a new division of threats and also influenced tempo in the process. One of these was adding a mini game where you throw tomatoes at a man in stocks, but we didn’t want players spending all their time on this, so we gave them an ammo counter. Once this counter reached 0 a question would appear, answering correctly result in more ammo and incorrectly result in the man escaping forcing the player to continue. This alters the tempo from its steady rate as your only answering questions to a bit more frantic as your having fun to a bit more frantic once you reach the final room. We were always going to have an end game boss, but we didn’t know how to implement it, we decided to add the mini game prior to this boss so the players would be a little more engaged and it would come as more of a surprise to them. The ghost asks a series of straight forward questions that will be worded as they would be in exams, as this is the ending we needed it to carry more weight. You need to answer 3 correct answers in a row to escape, originally failure 5 times threw you back to the first room but we thought this was too unfair, so we left it as you just need to get 3 correct in sequence.

‘Aesthetic resources such as sound and graphics can be used to create tension but not threat’ – Venturelli, 2009. We abided by this very closely as this was an asset heavy game, sound and art style needed to suit the each other and the theme of the room as well as the atmosphere. As our audience were young children we could have anything too frightening but we wanted a mood to reflect the room and situation, the art style we chose was a sketchy cartoon look similar to things like South park and Scooby Doo. Although these are at the extremes of viewer types we only used them for the art style, with these child friendly environments we wanted the player to be drawn in. Our sounds also had to abide by the rule of not scary but uneasy, to accomplish this we used generic noises for weather effects and back ground noise. The music however, although with the same rules had a bit more design creator freedom to operate; so long as it fitted the mood and the theme we didn’t have any targets. To emphasis a light hearted bit like the mini game we used more airy, funny sounds but for the final fight to help with the frantic, dire nature of the situation we used a darker eerier track.

We were aware from the beginning that we needed a male and female avatar; this was made even more apparent by the National Gamers Survey 2009, where statistics showed that 74% of men and 71% of women play games. With so many female players and when we knew females would be playing this as well we justified the addition of another avatar. We also saw from “Prescott and Bogg Segregation in a Male-Dominated Industry: Women Working in the Computer Games”, 2011, that woman in the work place have an impact on the types of game made but a usually found in HR and are in decline. From this we asked a few women to help out balancing the games male and female allures, this would hopefully mean a larger audience as it should now appeal to both genders.

By using the readings and articles from the year we have improved our game in areas that we either weren’t aware of, didn’t know how or both. This improves have hopefully delivered a better game on the whole and should appeal to both genders, and maybe different ages groups.

References

Costikyan 2002 - I have no words & I must design: toward a critical vocabulary for games

http://www.costik.com/nowords2002.pdf

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Doug Church, Gamasutra July 16^th 1999 – Formal abstract design tools

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php

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Costikyan,1998 - Don’t be a vidiot

http://www.costik.com/vidiot.html

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Venturelli, Gamasutra July 11^th 2009 – Space of possibility and pacing in casual game design

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20091107/3497/Space_of_Possibility_and_Pacing_in_Casual_Game_Design__A_PopCap_Case_Study.php