Our team is working on making a mystery picture drawing game that has similarities to Pictionary.
1. Who is the target user?
A game is made to be played and understanding who is playing it and how they are engaging with different mechanics is critical for building upon a prototype. User testing will be performed likely with friends and peers and we will assess who enjoys the game the most. Our users will be like us: college students with a passion for games. Especially with the social direction of P1, we will be applying our own social experiences as college students in the game’s design.
2. How does the various mechanics scale?
Knowing the scalability of different mechanics alerts us on where potential bottlenecks are. If we implement an effect that is dependent on all other effects then the complexity increases as the game’s mechanics grow. Our prototype will explore the various mechanics we create and stress test them in a way that reveals their early issues. The formalization of the mechanics will not hold up well if too many players are in our game. Having more than eight players will create coasters since participation is harder to maintain with too many players.
3. What types of fun does our game create? Were these the ones that we as designers thought it would be?
If the game is fun for the wrong reasons that detracts from the games original intention of being social. If the game is fun on top of being social that is something that we as designers can build upon. The prototype will be created with the idea of building fellowship between players who do not necessarily know themselves well by encouraging participation and breaks in conformity. Ideally the game will create fun through fellowship and competition as P1 is designed to be a social experience game. We hope to have some form of discovery as players explore the rules.
4. What aesthetics is our game trying to capture and does the prototype exemplify these?
As game designers we interact through the game design experience by creating mechanics and dynamics that create aesthetics, but it would be useful to understand what aesthetics we are trying to create. Engaging with aesthetics before anything else aligns more closely with the user experience and it would be valuable to navigate through this. We will come together to decide on the aesthetics, build the prototype, and revisit if we captured what we wanted. If not, we will iterate. I believe that we will have an aesthetic of comradery and honesty. In the prototype these will exist but the aesthetics might be anemic without the smaller details missing in prototypes.
5. What mechanics or dynamics create friction for users that would potentially make them drop the game?
We want people to learn the mechanics, explore the dynamics, and appreciate the aesthetics. If the prototype has heavy amounts of friction it is probable that not addressing these issues will make players of the future game quit early. Our prototype will balance instructions with exploration to find where the prototype is weakest at. Getting early momentum in those first moments is crucial in a social games success and that will be where the most friction will be located.
