![\"File_000\"](\"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/File_000.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn addition to observing players and seeing what was unclear and confusing, we also handed out\u00a0Immersion Experience Questionnaires, as well as additional questions aimed at getting peoples’ opinions on free-to-play games and the lottery. \u00a0The survey will be more useful later, when we can compare the results across multiple playtests, however discussing the lottery and free-to-play games gave us some interesting insights and perspective on the lottery. \u00a0One player in particular compared our\u00a0the idea behind our game to Chuck E. Cheese, saying that\u00a0people are used to\u00a0paying money to play games with a chance at winning a prize, even if that prize isn’t nearly as valuable as the money they spent winning it. \u00a0Getting these perspectives from players is one of the most interesting and exciting parts of this project.<\/p>\n
On Monday, we met with our clients to discuss our playtests, as well as our feedback from Halves. \u00a0One point we raised was that the faculty still seemed to be unclear on what our project was really about, and we hoped to clarify with them once and for all what their goals were for this project. \u00a0They summed it up very nicely\u00a0by pointing us to\u00a0Jane McGonigal’s “Reality Is Broken”,\u00a0explaining that the original goal of the lottery is to leverage play to enhance the planet. \u00a0Their hope for our project is to look for ways for the lottery to “reorient” itself towards that goal, figuring out what types of play appeal to younger generations.<\/p>\n
This was very helpful feedback, however as we continued to make minor improvements to our core game, we\u00a0found that despite our newfound direction, we were still having trouble making our game fun. \u00a0To be honest, I think we were all growing increasingly frustrated, seeing the semester slipping by with no clear direction in site. \u00a0However, on Thursday, we had a very informative meeting with Jesse Schell. \u00a0He played our game for the first time, and helped us put into words the problem we were having: the game lacked “triangularity”. \u00a0The idea is that a game must give the player an option to either play it safe for a\u00a0small reward, or take a chance at a big one. \u00a0As it stood, there was really only one option: go out and explore, and no reason for the player to take a risk. \u00a0So, regrouping, we began to discuss what we could do to rectify this problem. \u00a0And, surprisingly, it all came together with one idea: adding points.<\/p>\n
At the most basic level, adding points gave players a way to compete and measure their success, something many of our playtesters asked for. \u00a0But, as we continued to discuss it, we found that this one change could have a wide range of ripple effects. \u00a0For example, Jesse had mentioned the game lacked a sense of danger, a sense of urgency, so we decided that\u00a0adding a timer would address that perfectly. \u00a0Players could play it safe,\u00a0exploring slowly and cautiously, but then they’d risk running out of time, or at the very least not maximizing their score. \u00a0 And, since time was now a factor, we decided that monsters could slow you down and affect your time rather than damaging you, something many of our\u00a0testers found confusing. \u00a0Similarly, we could tie our powerups into both\u00a0points and time, some potentially giving you a score multiplier, and others freezing time or helping you explore the level quicker.<\/p>\n
Once we had all these new ideas, it was only a matter of breaking them into tasks and assigning them to different members of our team. \u00a0We now have a good set of goals for the next week, and we hope to have a build ready to test on Wednesday. \u00a0Hopefully, with these new features implemented, we can begin asking testers if our game is meeting our clients’ goals, namely being something that\u00a0leverages play to enhance the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The biggest event of the past week was Playtest Day on Friday. \u00a0It was very helpful getting our game in front of a large number of non-ETC students, since one of our main goals is to make a game that’s fun and accessible to a wide range of people. \u00a0In general, people seemed to really
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dev-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}