As we begin to make our first prototype iterations for our social mediation game, there are several questions that they will help be able to answer, which are crucial to our development process:
Is the game fun for players who don’t really know each other, close friends/family, or both?
This is an important question to answer because understanding the user is important to the development of any product. To answer this question, we will make several slightly varied protypes, with different questions and different levels of guidance. By creating a bluffing game, it is likely easier for players who know each other. To answer the question, we will create several prototypes that target the different possible users of the game. We can test it by having different groups of people play the game, from near-strangers to close friends. This will help us narrow down our intended audience. My prediction is that it will be more fun for players who are closer, but we can adapt our prototypes as needed.
What physical materials, if any, do we need in order to make our game fun and engaging?
This question is important to answer because physical materials drastically change the mechanics of the game. We have some prototype ideas that are nearly all spoken, and some that involve some physical pieces. For example, if we decide we need to add cards with questions, we would need to come up with a lot of cards, in order to keep the game unpredictable and interesting. To answer this question, we will make prototypes with varying amounts of physical materials, and see not only which is the most fun, but also which is the most scalable. Depending on the types of cards our game requires, players could easily run out of new material to use and not want to replay the game. I predict our most successful prototypes will involve mostly spoken mechanics. While we were brainstorming, our group agreed that those types of games tend to be our favorite, so I think this sentiment will translate in our prototypes.
What game duration will make the game the most fun and re-playable?
This is important to know because if the game is too short or too long, it can feel much less engaging. To test this out, we are going to make prototypes that we predict will take varying amounts of time, and then test them to see which is more fun. I think an important aspect of a social game is if it is fun to play multiple times/for a longer duration. Therefore, we need to find out if this long play time comes from playing the game many times, with a short game time each, or if it comes from playing a longer game fewer times. I predict that the most engaging game time will be about 15-20 minutes. I feel like this is a good chunk of time to be engaging for a single round, but also good to build on if you want to play multiple times. This is about the amount of time that a lot of my favorite social mediation games take, so I think this may also be the case for our prototype.
As we begin to make our prototypes over the next week, we hope to answer these questions and many more, in order to make the best social game that we can!
