- Will the game spark conversations or meaningful interactions/laughter? This question is important because the focus of P1 is community interactions and the game being unable to effective spawn laughter or meaningful conversation will be not a strong game. To prototype this, it will probably be a very rough version focused more on rules than aesthetics and to grab people who are originally unfamiliar with each out. My guess is that it will turn out decent but based on the feedback given by the playtesters, we will be able to fine tune the mechanics more and iterate further with more playtesters
- Are the conversations or interactions comfortable and inclusive of everyone? The game must be balanced such that all players have a fun time in the game otherwise it is not a complete or enjoyable game. To prototype this we will try it with people who go through multiple rounds of the same game rotate through various roles this way they are able to get multiple perspectives before getting feedback. My guess is that it will be unbalanced to some degree at the beginning of the prototyping phase.
- How long will it be able to engage people for? This is important because the target audience’s attention span and willingness to continue playing the game is crucial to the ultimate design of the game. We will probably try it with a very fast win/ending condition to see how people feel and then try it with a very slow one to time it and see how long it lasted before people got bored/gave up.
- Would the game mechanism work better as a cooperative or competitive game? This is important because sometimes a mechanism would work really well as a coop but as a competition will behave very badly so being able to understand if the game mechanism is preferable for one over the other is very important for the ultimate design of P1. We could probably try different versions with varying levels of coop or competitiveness and gather feedback on how it goes. My guess is that these preferences may be player/community dependent.
