Artist statement:
When thinking of fellowship games, our brainstorming immediately led us to some type of competition. We began considering what roles may induce that competitive nature in all of us, and a population of ruthless people who will do anything to succeed came up—Tiger Moms! Inspired by Aunt Becky and the College Blues scandal, Tiger Moms allows players to be ruthless, sabotage each other, and do whatever is necessary for their two children to succeed. By allowing players to take such a specific, humorous role, we hypothesized that the storylines behind the game will get players into their flow state. By having specific children with names, and a Mom name for yourself, we predicted players will become immersed in a world of SAT scores and hundreds spent on piano lessons.
Tiger Moms is a game of strategy (deciding who to sabotage, when to save resources, who to negotiate with and when), luck (your turn begins with you drawing two cards from the central deck), and debating (specific cards force players to defend their children to gain an advantage or avoid a disadvantage). These mechanics and dynamics all come together to create fellowship through interactions, and potential rivalries and alliances, between Moms.
Concept Map:
Initial Decisions:
The idea of this game was generated from an in-class brainstorming exercises as one of the last ideas jotted down right before the timer was called. After deciding on Tiger Moms, we first envisioned our game to be an ownership and deck building game where players would play as a tiger mom to negotiate and balance interests when competing for resources to help their child succeed. When initially considering the impact of narrative on our players, we hypothesized that the main fun in our game would stem from the fantasy of living out the passions of a stereotypical tiger mom and the fellowship that comes from competition. From the beginning we knew we wanted to make a look and feel prototype that included character cards, resource cards, and action cards. The iterations of our gameplay and prototypes very accurately aligned with our initial vision for the game.
Testing and Iteration:
Iteration 1
Our first prototype was made from small cut out cards, folded post-it notes, and stickers which we put together to design 5 character cards, 30 resource cards (lessons, tutoring, money, connections), and 30 action cards. We knew that we wanted our tiger mom players to be competing for these different combinations of resource cards, given that each of their assigned child had a specific goal in mind (engineer, lawyer, athlete, musician, or doctor), with the caveat of negotiating and action cards that allow you to steal resources from other players. The question that we wanted our first prototype to answer was “what mechanics of Tiger Moms lead to fun among our players and how does the ability to trade resources add to fellowship”. From our own playtest of this iteration, we saw that negotiating resource cards and stealing from other players was indeed the main contributor of fun because of the competition and shared goal that we felt while playing. Due to the limited amount of resources shuffled in our deck, players were forced to rely on each other as stepping stones to their success. One key insight that we gained from this playtest was that our prototype needed consistency in the names and labels of our cards, because similar titles of resources led to a lot of confusion. For instance, due to likeness of word meanings, we renamed all our “lessons” cards to be “practice” cards to make them more differentiable from our “tutoring” cards. We also learned that we wanted each player to keep their cards in hand, as opposed to face up on the table, because it was an important mechanic for players to have a level of privacy in their personal progress towards their child’s goal.
Iteration 2
We then prototyped our game on a randomly selected group of classmates with the intention of answering the question “What is the right balance between action and resource cards to keep players and do players feel challenged while playing Tiger Moms?” We were able to gain key insights about the frequency and power of our action cards. With this question in mind, one piece of feedback that users gave was that the deck was very action heavy. It was unclear from the instructions that resources would be scarce and actions would be the main way that players would have to compete for progress. The players also shared that they liked being able to see their peers’ goals (requirements of their child to win” so that they knew who would be competing for similar resources. They mentioned that this influenced how they decided who to interact with for leverage during the game. In this prototype we included a new category of cards called “tragedy” cards which were player-wide setbacks that forced tiger moms to discard resource(s) mid game. Players liked the idea of tragedy cards and asked for more of them to keep the game exciting and stir up opportunities for conflict. In this version of playtesting, we were given TA feedback about reflecting on the decision to encourage more than just 1-on-1 deals in order to put forth the strategy of different card values as a strategy opportunity. We adopted this piece of advice and emphasized in our instructions that players have full jurisdiction in how they want to trade and negotiate resources with other players to encourage strategy and alliances between players.
Iteration 3
The third iteration of our game that now included 5 character cards, 30 resource cards, 18 action cards, and 8 tragedy cards did not go as expected as we tried to answer the question “How compelling was the storyline/theme? How did the tragedy cards add to this?” Our main insight from our next playtest of this prototype was that there were too few resource cards, which took away from a feeling of progress and which all of our playtesters agree that the game played out very slowly. Players also explained that the game started very slow, but it did pick up when they figured out when the right time was to play action cards. For instance, one player drew an action from the deck on the first round which read “pass a connection card to the player on your right” when she wanted a connection card, but it ended up working against her, as she was forced to give her connection to the person on her right and the person to her left did not have one in hand. Unlike our previous playtest, it was obvious to players that they were able to negotiate right off the bat and with however many resources they wanted to, which was a success in this round of playtesting. From our previous playtest, we also added the mechanic of being able to slap the discard pile when you see a resource that you want to pick up, with the purpose of unlocking interaction with the previously “locked” discard pile. We did this because once resources were discarded by tragedy cards that arose, it took a long time until those needed resources resurfaced to players’ use. However, this mechanic did not play as expected because there were little opportunities for cards to get discarded since tragedy cards were so scarce. We incorporated TA feedback during this round by simplifying our instructions and explaining the gameflow in a clearer, concise way for our players.
For reference, here was the boring state of our playing cards at this point
Iteration 4
The fourth iteration of our game was intended to answer the question “Do you feel like you were making continual progress as turns went around and were you engaged throughout the game?” We especially wanted to answer this question as we added a new mechanic to our game that now makes tiger moms try to accomplish the goals of two children: one of lower and one of high difficulty so that players could achieve a more attainable goal throughout the game. Additionally we incorporated 36 different storylines throughout the games different cards and character cards to make players feel more engaged. These features were to be tested in the final playtest.
Iteration 5: Final playtest
We conducted our playtest with a small group of game enthusiasts that Sherry rounded up in her dorm. Players took a while choosing their moms and cards, but were finished setting up at around the 5 minute mark. I was happy to hear one of the players say “No! Stick to the bit” when one of the players began talking about a card as though they were outside of the game’s magic circle where your role is a mom. Players also took turns showing others the drawn appearance of their mom character and giggling about the design, which already felt like they were more engaged in the game than past playtests. Similarly, at one point a player held his cards up to the camera as said “I’m (real name), a teen mom to (child card 1) and (child card 2)” and all other players then followed suit with these introductions in which they made up stories for themselves and their kids based on the stats on the cards. Players also instantly played the “claws out” cards and quickly initiated trades on their own which was an issue on some previous playtests. This final draft of the game card designs featured little stories to explain the action + claws out cards and players giggled about these descriptions as well as the names of their children (which we made to be a bit silly in this iteration). When a “claws out “ card, in which players had to argue in order escape punishment,was played, players instantly began attacking other children and making up stories about their own kids saying things such as “(kid1) is just my special little boy… he would never” or “(kid2) only cheated because he wants to be a musician…. He can’t worry about things like a math exam” or “I think it’s (child3)! Look at him, he wants to be a lawyer, we can’t trust him!” Players looked back at the instructions a few times but were able to find answers in under a minute due to the revised instructions. Every player was able to advance at least one child and correctly shouted “THAT’S MY KID”. There was a winner at the 39 minute mark (including setup) and I think ideally we would try to make the game end a bit quicker, as I noticed the players overall energy and excitement for the game died down a bit about 8-10 minutes prior. However, in their feedback shortly after, players told us they wished that they had more kids to fulfill and wished that the game was longer and with more complexities in the game where they could use strategy. Players also agreed that at the end of the game, they were sure it was a social game! If we had more time, mechanics like allowing users to swap 4 of one type of resource for one resource or their choice are mechanics that we would love to add to the game to solve issues of players having too many useless resource cards. Overall though, I think that our simplified and clarified instructions, as well as the changed mechanics of this final iteration made the game a lot more intuitive (“it felt intuitive” was a direct quote from one player). Additionally, the aesthetic aspects of changing the images and stories on all of our cards had a noticeable effect on the engagement that players felt in their roles within the environment of the game’s magic circle, and the stories they told themselves and others throughout gameplay. This last iteration accomplished our most pressing goals as a team, and left us all feeling very proud.
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Print n Play:
