P1: Those Who Play, Teach – Inspector, Inspector!

Overview:

Inspector, Inspector! is a four-player asymmetrical argumentation game aiming to teach players about the various problems affecting the NYC subway system, the largest subway system in the world. Within the game, 3 transit-concerned communities from across the city partake in a series of 5-minute joint meetings with an MTA inspector. In each meeting, the inspector introduces a different problem they want addressed, and each community argues for why they should receive the most funding in order to successfully do so. After each meeting, funding that communities receive can be spent on subway investments that increase/decrease its security, accessibility, cleanliness, and revenue. If at any point a community achieves its ideal security, accessibility, cleanliness, and revenue levels, they immediately win the game.

Our initial intent behind designing a game about public transit arose from a want to teach our players how oppressive and violent the subway and its decision-makers can be, but as our game moved through its multiple, very different iterations, we chose to instead focus on educating our players on general transit issues, the multiple sides they have, and the transit-organizing groups that align with these sides. Because of our new direction, many of the aspects of our initial concept statement have been transformed or even abandoned. 

We aim to achieve our new outcome by having players themselves draw the connection between broad problems and their community-specific consequences/solutions through argumentation and knowledge-sharing. Broad problems are introduced as general facts (the MTA inspector’s cards) at the beginning of each 5-minute meeting and continually illuminated through each player’s community-specific facts (each community’s cards). 

Our game is aimed at players of all ages with a basic understanding/life experience of how subway systems function.

Assessment Goals:

Our learning outcomes included educating players on…

• social problems pertaining to subway systems.
• conflicting interests within these social problems, and possibly how these interests could work together.
• the disproportionate effects of subway pollution, subway “crime”, and subway policing on low-income communities in NYC.
• problems transit workers experience on the job and are organizing to solve within NYC.

To evaluate the effectiveness of our game in achieving these outcomes, we adopted a pre/post numerical survey and a pre/post open discussion/reflection on the NYC subway. 

During our last playtest, when answering the question “how informed are you on the NYC subway and the MTA?” players reported an average score of 2, with only one player assessing themselves at a 3. We then continued with a second question “Describe your experience/current understanding of the NYC subway?” to which the 3-score player responded, saying that they lived in NYC for 3 months, during which the subway was a very convenient method to get to anywhere at least within Manhattan (where they lived). During their stay, trains were very regular unless there was construction, and the MTA’s communication was pretty good, as Google offered very accurate arrival times through Google Maps. That said, they did note that the frequency of trains was unclear. 

After playtesting, players reported an average score of 2.875, and post-discussion involved and engaged all players. The inspector noted that listening to all the conflicting arguments and priorities in unison was particularly interesting. On a similar note, players mentioned that hearing what other players had to say in response to their own arguments was particularly enjoyable; they were equally surprised about how poorly the subway is maintained/cleaned.

While our results were overarchingly positive, players did express feeling like they had to confidently talk about problems and facts they didn’t know much about. They mentioned that personal opinion could come into play despite being given facts to base arguments on. This seems like an issue that we should’ve prioritized solving during design, given that our core game mechanic is argumentation.

Gameplay History

First Iteration (V1)

We set out to design a game that would teach players about the dynamics of New York City neighborhoods and the complexities of navigating public transportation. We wanted players to experience the realities of different socio-economic environments in the city, including how disparities affect daily commutes and opportunities. To achieve this, we developed character cards, each with a story, unique traits, and a specific objective representing a certain person with a specific occupation (ex. Professor, college student, retail worker) living in New York, focusing on the aesthetic of narrative. 

Figure 1. First Paper Prototype

The game’s core mechanic required players to commute via the subway on a physical gameboard with stations, earning money and completing tasks to score points. We wanted to have elements such as neighborhood safety (ex, lights turning off more often in certain areas, increased police presence after dark) to create more aspects of challenge.

 

Insights:

Figure 2. Player’s Deciding Whether to Jump Turnstile or not

• Players said the $5 cost per ride made it hard to plan their moves efficiently
• They questioned why professors were earning the most and felt this skewed the challenge level
• The option to “jump the turnstile” for free rides created diverse playstyles. Some players liked risking a fine, while others expressed frustration when repeatedly penalized – we saw a player get completely bankrupted by an unlucky play.
• Players felt the 50% penalty rate was higher than expected, and this decreased the strategic appeal
• Breaking the rules, such as turnstile jumping, fostered a communal sense of camaraderie, with players celebrating successful jumps together – however, this didn’t really align with the learning outcome of the game
• The lack of player-to-player interaction on the board was clear, the game felt solitary, and players didn’t engage with each other’s decisions
• Players with lower-paying jobs struggled to make progress especially when fined for turnstile jumping. In some cases, this led to players losing multiple days’ worth of earnings, which prevented them from making necessary moves. Nevertheless, we received feedback that the game could illustrate economic disparity as a result. It seems as though the game was too punitive.
• Players were surprised by some mechanics, such as spending $0 when going to university, and that task cards did not always align with their occupations

Next steps:

• Adjust cost structure/salary for various roles to create a more fair and balanced economic system and have realistic gameplay to educate players on the NYC economic system.
• Update character on cards to ensure that tasks are relevant to the player’s occupation, enhancing the narrative consistency and immersion and providing a better learning outcome of understanding NYC’s citizen profiles
• Introduce new mechanics that encourage players to engage with each other
• Adjust the probability and risk-reward structure of jumping the turnstile to align better with the game’s message – we want to avoid making it feel like gambling for fun and instead focus on its implications in the context of economic choices.
• Allow players to actively build the metro system and understand the choices that occur in the city’s development.
• Rethink how to put our learning outcomes at the forefront of the experience. 

Second Iteration (V2)

In the second iteration, we made a massive shift in the game’s direction to focus more deeply on building the people that ride the NYC subway system. We wanted to convey that people can prosper when public transit is accessible and non-oppressive, and we went back to the drawing board, realizing that we focused too much on the mechanics instead of the outcomes in our first version. Therefore, we decided to follow the MDAO framework more closely, starting from outcomes to build our new version. In this version, the game had 3 phases, each set in different subway stations. An inspector character interacts with players, each of whom has distinct backgrounds and goals and represents a person in NYC. Instead of interacting on a physical game board through jumps and moving locations on the gameboard, the core mechanic is now a discussion about how to fairly allocate the city’s resources to meet that person’s needs. 

Figure 3. Prototype of Our First Character Card

We designed mechanics to include budgeting elements, showing the allocation of resources like security spending, to prompt discussions about transit priorities where the win condition is that everyone gets their problems resolved after each citizen shares their concerns with the inspector. Together with our previous aesthetics of narrative, we wished to ensure some form of fellowship between all characters as they discussed their issues. At the same time, we felt as though embodying certain personas could help the players further empathize with struggles that might exist in the transit system. 

Insights:

• Immediately, players adopted a collaborative attitude, trying to work together to solve the system’s issues.
• One player quickly identified security as a dominant concern, reflecting the ‘magic circle’ issue where certain strategies overshadowed others.
• Some players engaged deeply by introducing themselves in character, adding a lot of humor or interaction. However, other players did not introduce themselves, missing the opportunity for deeper immersion.
• The inspector often dominated the problem-solving process, with others watching and occasionally assisting. We saw we must have clearer role differentiation.
• Players mentioned wanting more structured decision-making rounds.
• Some players focused too heavily on statistics and numbers, leading to less roleplay and more strategic optimization, which wasn’t our goal as they were focusing on numbers rather than the narrative of the game which tied into our learning outcomes.
• Some players expressed that the background information was too text-heavy, causing them to skip over it in favor of quick decision-making based on the numbers provided.

Next steps:

• Refine how points are earned and make the win conditions clear
• Emphasize the role-playing aspect and prompt the users to make story-driven decisions rather than point optimization
• Make only the inspector aware of the point system to encourage players to focus on the narrative rather than numerical outcomes.
• Decrease the amount of background text and instead present key information to keep players engaged without overwhelming them.
• Introduce a system where players can get upgrade cards to allocate resources (ex., funding for security vs. accessibility) to add more engagement and agency to their roles instead of having that be fully on the inspector.

Third Iteration (V3)

In the third iteration, we tried to refine the game’s mechanics and enhance the roleplaying elements to create a more engaging and dynamic experience. Players, now each representing different communities (ex. worker’s union, rider’s alliance) rather than individuals, drew argument cards to plead their case for resource allocation. The inspector ranked these arguments and distributed resource tokens based on the persuasiveness of each community’s case. Players could then buy station upgrades, which directly influenced the board state.

Figure 4. Players deeply engaged and listening to each other’s arguments

We ran an internal playtest, and then a final playtest, insights below:

Insights

• Players loved getting resource tokens!
• Players showed strong engagement when advocating for their community’s goals.
• Some players immediately adopted a collaborative attitude and alliances if they had aligned cards, or pushed back if they played opposing cards
• The inspector didn’t know whether to act as a government worker or as a neutral moderator, they were confused about how they should weigh the arguments and make fair decisions.
• Players suggested having events that could influence the inspector’s actions, to add unpredictability and context to their decision-making
• The game felt debate-like, with some players passionately defending their points more than others – this resulted in a competitive atmosphere, but there was also a sense of imbalance, as one community could dominate
• Some players felt limited when the available cards didn’t align with their strategy or beliefs
• Players engaged in deeper discussions about the realities of the subway system, such as security versus accessibility – they felt like they still lacked some factual context.
• There was definitely reflection on the broader implications of public transit, with some players expressing surprise at the nuances of the system, like air quality and transit worker conditions.

Final changes

While we were very satisfied with how players interacted with our learning objectives when passionately debating their communities’ pain points and recalling surprising facts that we highlighted in our cards, we also recognized that the Inspector role was slightly less exciting in comparison. With that in mind, we decided to incorporate a new mechanic: the ability to inspect a fact. Now, each player has gained an additional fake fact that could help them argue towards their community. However, the inspector can choose to inspect one fact per round. If the inspected fact is fake, that player gains 0 resource tokens. However, if they can get away with a fake fact, they end up getting 2 extra tokens. 

We felt that this new mechanic added a more dynamic gameplay style for the Inspector. Having to critically think and analyze how each player is presenting their information adds a new layer of complexity to the role. At the same time, it also introduces a message about potential dangers of having forms of misinformation prevalent within serious discussions, keeping the mechanic in line with our overall desired outcomes! We also tweaked several aspects of the game that seemed like pain points for our playtesters, such as: 

• Add clearer instructions for the inspector role, detailing how they should moderate the game and how their character might respond to different scenarios.
• Limit the time of argument rounds (i.e. 1 minute per community, 2 minutes for all community deliberation) to balance participation. 

Print At Home PDF

Figma link: https://www.figma.com/design/V95dgi5f7mDSHjtNjSnThr/Inspector%2C-Inspector?node-id=0-1&t=R91Km9zIyXxVm4bs-1 

PDF Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aY5I0xnBKNQGY8bkcq4W0F8RSBcLAOUx?usp=sharing

Note: The only non-printable element were small tokens used to keep track of each of the station’s categories (Security, Revenue, etc) current state. Place any small token on every category to keep the current resource allocation information up to date.