Project 1: Social Mediation Game – Elevator Entourage

Created by Anthony Chu, Andreas Lorgen, Sarah Teaw, Lauren Yu

🖌️ Artist’s Statement

We created Elevator Entourage as a game that helps friends get closer as they tap into their improvisational wit and share silly moments. Through the use of improvisation and impersonation, this game provides the opportunity for a player to step outside of themselves and embody an iconic VIP character, while the others think creatively about pitches that best appeal to the VIP. As the “VIP” player impersonates their character and the others fervently pitch to them, they share chaotic moments of judging, competition, and laughter.

Additionally, we sought to motivate players to feel invested in their pitch, but also make the atmosphere light enough to encourage laughter and playful, low-stakes competition.  This required a balance of multiple different values. For instance, we initially created Elevator Entourage, we wanted to create an experience that combined silly fun along with something that would challenge players mentally. The questions are written so they could prompt humorous answers while forcing them to think creatively. This duality creates an opportunity for friends to enjoy a relaxed evening, though it also can help strangers to get past the awkwardness with something intentionally designed to provoke absurdity. 

🗺️ Concept Map: 

🧠 Initial Decisions/Mechanics

MDA Vision: 

• Mechanics
  • Visible time limit for writing prompt
  • Visible time limit for pitch
  • Shuffling/randomized assigned prompt answer
  • Turn taking for judging
  • Appeal/direct answer towards a character
  • Collecting cards upon winning a round (the best pitcher collects the character card to add to their entourage, the best writer collects the prompt card)
• Dynamics
  • Flatter the VIP character with compliments, do whatever possible to win over the judge even when the product itself isn’t the best.
  • Write a mediocre pitch to sabotage your fellow players, but risk getting that pitch yourself and forfeiting the “Best Ghost Writer”
• Aesthetics
  • Through the playful font and comic-style drawing in its box, Elevator Entourage establishes itself as a lighthearted, funny game. The drawings of the characters encourage the players to approach the game as though they themselves were characters in a show, which helps add to the impersonations that are encouraged upon a player drawing a VIP card.

Types of Fun:

• Challenge and Expression
  • This game fosters “Challenge” since it is a judging game where winning is based on beating your fellow players. Players have the ultimate journey to win either “Most Clout” or “Best Ghostwriter” and they can write good prompt answers and deliver effortful pitches to reach this goal. But, concurrently, they can engage in arguments and playful discussion to persuade the judge of their pitches or put down other players’ pitches, contributing to a friendly but competitive atmosphere that adds to the game’s fun. For “Expression”, users are encouraged to be creative and witty throughout the game. The judge has to impersonate the character they pick up, while the players have to frantically yet convincingly deliver their pitches to this VIP character.

Further Decisions:

• Players: When tasked with designing a social mediation game, we decided the foundation of the game would be multiplayer, specifically at least 4 or more people. The idea was that the game would be great to play for a group of friends on a Friday night or a group of strangers to get to know each other. We also wanted it to be flexible enough so that theoretically there can be up to 15 players, but ideally you’d play the game with 4-6 people. To encourage more dynamic gameplay and competitive flow, we decided to have multilateral competition so that everyone is always involved. 
• Objectives: For the overall objective of the game, we thought it would be fun to have the players compete to win characters each round and the first player to n character cards be the final winner. This best combined both the aspects of competition each round and gave players a fresh start once a round was over. We further expanded on this by implementing mechanics like having the Ghost Writer title for the best pitch writer who collected the most prompt cards, so there is more than one way to succeed and enjoy the game.
• Procedures: Procedurally, our game chooses one person to be a judge or VIP of the game each round. Then, we’d have the player go around in a clockwise direction to take turns pitching their answers. After the round, the player to the left of the VIP gets to be VIP next round. This is how our game maximizes fairness and gives everyone a chance to be the VIP. The game ends when a player has won 3 character cards.
• Rules: There were a few rules we thought of to ensure proper play. One rule we decided on was that the VIP should be deciding the best pitch based on their character in addition to what they found most entertaining. This ensures that the players and the VIP are truly embodying the characters of the game. An implicit rule that we embedded into the design of our game is that they should try their best with coming up with answers to the questions even though it was likely someone else would pitch it. Though we cannot fully prevent bad faith players who want to write low-quality answers, we emphasize that there is a possibility that they get their own answer to pitch!
• Resources: In this game, there are a few resources. The first is the character and prompt cards themselves which track who is winning the game. This is chiefly how the winners are determined and players compete against each other for these resources. Time is also a major resource in this game. Each player gets a fixed amount of time to come up with a good prompt answer and present a good pitch to win the VIP’s favor.
• Conflict: The main conflict we decided to focus on was the competition between each of the players. By competing against each other to be the best pitch or answer writer, the main conflict is between the players. However, there is also a dilemma conflict for the VIP as they have to decide on who is the best pitch.
• Boundaries: We initially discussed potentially having a board to track movements or play, but decided on the social space of the players and the cards be contained in the boundary. The only thing keeping you in the game is your agreement to play it!
• Outcome: For the outcome, we decided that there should be two ways to be declared a winner. You can be the player with the “Most Clout” by winning the most pitches or the best “Ghost Writer” by writing the most number of winning prompt answers. As such, even players who didn’t win had a chance to amass their own entourage could win by writing good prompt answers.

✏️ Testing and Iteration History

1. Iteration 1: Rise of the Robots

The first idea we had for a game came from an amalgamation of Coup and Fake Artist. Titled “Rise of the Robots”, we planned to create a card game that involved roles similar to Coup. However, we wanted to leverage theconcept of an imposter from Fake Artist. Thus, the plan was to have a bunch of various human roles and 1-2 robot roles (depending on the number of players). None of the players know each other’s roles, and you have to try and figure it out while eliminating each other. We ultimately abandoned this idea, as we felt like it might too heavily rely on the pure mechanics and balance or roles. We wanted to create a game that more purely fostered social interaction and fun.

2. Iteration 2: The Game of Truth

Rules: 

1. The Game of Truth was our first playtest and it centered around creativity in answering prompts, judging, and bluffing. 
2. There is one guesser and the remaining players are writers. The guesser announces a prompt provided by the game, such as “What will [the target] get cancelled for in 10 years?” 
3. The other players write their answer down on a slip of paper. The writer shuffles the answers and distributes them amongst writers. Each writer reads the answer out loud. The guesser chooses their favorite answer and the writers then argue why they “wrote” the answer. The guesser then chooses the writer that did the best job convincing them that they wrote the answer.

Playtest Participants: 4 in-class peers, strangers.

Playtest Feedback:

Things players liked	Things players suggested for improvement
Players found it fun being the judge. The player who bluffed said they enjoyed talking so that made bluffing enjoyable, but others didn’t feel the same.	Players did not keep track of points due to the short span of the game. They found it anticlimactic to hear the moderator say “you get X number of points”. There was confusion around who the [TARGET] should be (or who the writer was supposed to be writing about): the writer or the judge?

Playtest Takeaways:

The biggest takeaway for us was thinking about how to design a game that is playable by strangers and friends. We originally designed the game to be catered towards friends who could easily call the [TARGET] out for something they knew about them, but found players would just write about themselves if they didn’t know the guesser. In our final iteration, we chose to use a character as a proxy for writers to write about, which overcomes the barrier of needing to write something funny without being too personal or too targeted.

Through the test, we saw the need for a time limit and thus introduced a timer to prevent players from overthinking their answers. We also saw the need for a timer on the discussion/arguing time since the conversation lacked direction when an unspecified amount of time was given. Since players had a difficult time keeping track of their points, we brainstormed ways to create a better mechanism for keeping track of points, including a scoreboard or keeping cards. 

 

3. Iteration 3: Truth-ish

Truth-ish was our second iteration, following our first iteration from Rise of the Robots to The Game of Truth. Although the changes we made were smaller conceptually than the large pivot we made moving from Rise of the Robots, the changes were much more aligned with a more polished vision of a final game.

Iterations from Game of Truth to Truth-ish:

• Rather than writing prompts about “the target” (or judge), people wrote prompts about themselves. This made it a lot easier for groups that didn’t know each other, as we heard feedback in the previous version that trying to come up with answers about a stranger was awkward and difficult. 
• In doing the above, we also got rid of the term “the target”, which multiple players commented felt weird, confusing, and not cohesive with the theme.
• Arguably the biggest change was that we formalized our rules and point distribution more, creating 30 sec countdowns for actions such as writing down answers and arguing for an answer. Our point distribution was also simplified, as seen above. 

Rules:

1. One player starts as the judge and reads a prompt out loud from the list of prompt cards
2. The other players have 30 seconds to write down an answer to the prompt that is true-ish about themselves but also really funny. It is more about being true-ish to your personality than telling the honest truth.
3. All answers are shuffled and the players each read one out loud as the judge listens.
4. The judge picks the funniest/best answer (whatever the judge thinks)
5. The players then each get 30 seconds each to try and convince the judge that they wrote the card.
6. The judge tries to match this card as well as all the other cards up to each player
7. Here is the point distribution per round:
   1 point for having written the funniest card
   2 points for convincing judge the funniest card was yours (you get 3 points if chosen and you also wrote it)
   1 point to the judge for every correct match
8. The next judge is the player sitting on the left of the former judge. Repeat until everyone has been a judge once.

Playtest Participants: 5 in class peers, mixed levels of familiarity with each other but mainly strangers.

Playtest Takeaways:

Overall, the feedback from our playtest was more positive than with the previous version. People commented they had fun and we got a lot of silly answers. We also felt like it was easier to moderate the second time around, as we had learned from our mistakes in our first playtest. People reiterated that they enjoyed being the judge. Despite this, we still ran into some issues. 

Although we fixed the issue of strangers finding it awkward to write about each other by having players write about themselves, we still received feedback that it was tricky for the judge to guess who wrote what when they didn’t actually know the players they were playing with. 

In addition to this, we noticed that players completely lost track of the points during the game (they didn’t even really start counting them). We felt like this could’ve been due to too much moderation, maybe they felt like we were just keeping track for them, but we felt like it was likely due to a mix of the point system being complex/unwieldy as well as there not being any visual indicator of points. Because the points weren’t being tracked, we felt a lower sense of player buy-in to convincing the judge they had written the funny card, as it wasn’t really incentivized when points were “irrelevant”.

We had moved a step in the right direction, but there were still the big issues of player familiarity and keeping track of points holding us back from achieving something truly fun. This led us to contemplate a big pivot, and we eventually landed on our final version, Elevator Entourage.

 

3. Iteration 3, Final: Elevator Entourage

Elevator Entourage is a judging game built upon challenge and expression. The premise is that players have 30 seconds to win over a VIP character as they’re stuck on an elevator together—however, their answers are shuffled and players must win over the player solely using their presentation and improvisational skills. While judges impersonate their characters (ranging from Shrek to Taylor Swift), players pitch ideas and try to appeal to them.

Iterations from Truth-ish to Elevator Entourage

• We minimized elements of Truth-ish that were unenjoyable and ramped up the moments people had the most fun. Drawing from previous players’ enjoyment of the judging portion, we decided to make judging a much more significant part of our game and pivoted to completely remove the social deception element. Of the social game genres, Truth-ish had been based on social deduction with a weak focus on the MDA aesthetic of “expression”. However, this theme was not as focused and players were not motivated to buy into the gameplay or pitches—by removing the social deception element and centering the game around “challenge”, we found that players felt more incentivized to defeat their peers and were less distracted by the multiple goals of trying to deceive the judge in addition to improvising their answers. Similarly, though we previously hoped that the game would help players get to know one another, we realized that Truth-ish’s goals were too broad and decided to narrow the game’s scope to focus on this less, now aiming the game to people who know one another instead of complete strangers.
• Further, Elevator Entourage took several steps to ramp up player investment and fun. To improve player buy-in to the game, we altered the premise to follow a storyline, as our prior iteration was not based on a plot or character motivation. Additionally, we sought to make point-tracking much easier by simply allowing the winner of each round to collect the character card of the VIP they won over. With this, players did not feel as confused about the status of points and could focus on playing the game instead of trying to figure out the point system. 

Playtest Takeaways:

Our playtest included five people who were at least acquainted with one another, consisting of two CS 247G CAs, two students, and a friend of one of the students. Three players were also involved in section leading, so there were shared experiences and interactions prior to the playtest.

The playtest went well as we observed higher player buy-in, a higher ease of collecting and tracking points, and less confusion around the premise. The players became more comfortable with delivering their pitches and impersonating the characters as the game went on, indicating that, though they were not explicitly revealing facts about themselves, they were feeling more at ease as they came to know their players more. We were surprised to notice the extent to which players enjoyed impersonating the VIP character—though impersonation was only encouraged, not required, every player decided to attempt impersonating characters ranging from Homer Simpson to Drake, which allowed the judge to have fun as well while they weren’t writing or delivering the pitch.

In the player feedback, several players expressed that they really enjoyed the experience, some saying that it felt very replayable as a result of the two-deck system (one stack of cards for prompts, one for VIP character options). In terms of improvements, they expressed that they were initially unsure of the rules or tone of the discussion, but the yelling and enthusiasm during the judging parts of the game later became some of the parts they enjoyed the most. As such, we decided to emphasize these chaotic moments more on our instructions, encouraging our users to “​​…get loud or talk some smack! This is your popularity you’re fighting for, after all.” 

Additionally, players expressed frustration at writing funny pitches for other people, but not being rewarded for it. As a result, we added another mechanic where players who wrote the winning pitch would collect that card and, by the end of the game, whoever had written the most cards would earn the title “Best Ghostwriter”, in addition to the main winner who is awarded “Most Clout”. Another small change we made was to make impersonation of the VIP character a requirement in the rules—though it takes away some player autonomy, watching and delivering the impressions, both good and bad, quickly became some of the most fun parts of the playtest.

‼️ Important Links

1. Video of playtest
2. Figma design
3. Print and Play

✨ Extra Credit

Designing a physical copy

 

Wow factors:

• We used Procreate to draw the characters featured on the front of the box, then used Figma to assemble the components together. 
• We ran our chosen colors through a contrast checker to ensure that they were legible and accessible to users with potential visual impairments; in our iterations “The Game of Truth” and “Truth-ish”, the game was primarily orange with some yellow highlights, but this scored low on contrast.