![\"File_000\"](\"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/File_000.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt was hard to gauge reactions during Softs itself, but it seemed like people were enjoying the game. \u00a0Most visitors\u00a0seemed engaged with the game, playing repeatedly until we told them to stop. \u00a0This was exactly the reaction we were hoping for, and that, combined with the positive feedback we received in our last playtest had us feeling confident that our game was hitting its goals in terms of engagement. \u00a0We definitely noticed some frustration with the controls, and it became clear that people weren’t discovering the lottery elements without our help, so we knew we\u00a0had some work to do before Finals. However,\u00a0overall, it seemed like we were on a good track.<\/p>\n
When grades came down, it was a different story. \u00a0Some of the complaints were things we expected. \u00a0For example, while\u00a0we\u00a0generally liked how controlling the leaf felt, we were aware of issues that arose when the leaf bounced against a wall. \u00a0We had gotten some complaints from previous playtesters about it,\u00a0but they still enjoyed the game despite the issue\u00a0so we figured it was something\u00a0that could wait until after Softs. \u00a0However, this ended up being one of the biggest complaints from faculty, and looking back there were a couple things that exacerbated the issue.<\/p>\n For one, the isometric game view makes it hard to tell exactly where you’re cleaning. \u00a0We added a shadow to the game to make it more obvious where the leaf was in 2D space, but most people didn’t notice the shadow and simply assumed the leaf would clean anything directly behind it. \u00a0This lead to\u00a0people having difficulty cleaning the exact tile they wanted, especially near the edges,\u00a0leading them to repeatedly bounce off the wall\u00a0and lose control. \u00a0This was an understandably annoying experience, and we plan on not only changing how the leaf responds when it hits the wall, but also how it cleans.<\/p>\n Adding to this was the fact that we made more powerful leaves an item that players could unlock by walking more. \u00a0Playing with the weakest leaf made the game quite difficult, while playing with the strongest made it easy to advance through levels. \u00a0While we wanted the game to have a good degree of challenge, in a short-term test setting like Softs “difficulty” can quickly turn into frustration. \u00a0The more powerful leaves cleaned larger areas, masking some of the frustration around trying to clean a spot you missed. \u00a0We found that people who played with the more powerful leaves had more fun than the people who played with the basic ones, and in future tests we will do more to ensure that people play with the more powerful leaf.<\/p>\n Another complaint we received was that our game felt like a “frankenstein” of different game elements, with no unifying theme tying it all together. \u00a0This might be more of an issue of messaging, rather than anything with the game itself. \u00a0The feature we saw the most confusion around was the step tracking element. \u00a0People either didn’t see how it connected to the environment, or why the game even needed it in the first place. \u00a0However, the step tracking was actually one of the features our client was most excited about, and was something that was a part of our design since\u00a0Week 3.<\/p>\n We’re actually working on a blog post dedicated entirely to the role of step tracking in our game, but it’s worth discussing it here briefly. \u00a0One of our clients’\u00a0biggest goals for this project was to have something in the game that would encourage players to make a change in the real world in addition to raising money and awareness. \u00a0We brainstormed many, many ways to do this, but it’s very hard to reliably measure real world activity. \u00a0We considered things like having them pick up trash, recycle more, or even plant trees themselves, however there would be no way for us to make sure they did it before rewarding them. \u00a0We settled on\u00a0step tracking because it’s something that’s easy to track with most modern smartphones, and is also difficult to cheat since it doesn’t require self-reporting. \u00a0The idea is that we want to encourage people to walk places instead of driving, and while measuring net walking isn’t necessarily directly tied to a reduction in driving, we figured that it’s a good thing to reward regardless.<\/p>\n However, judging by the confusion with which this feature was met, it’s clear we didn’t do a good enough job communicating this. \u00a0We’re planning on adding instructions that better explain this feature and its connection to the environment, as well as more environmental messaging overall to help tie the theme of this game together. \u00a0We also plan on simplifying the step entering process, both to streamline the game experience, as well as to make its purpose more clear.<\/p>\n Finally, while people seemed to enjoy the lottery elements, very few people discovered it on their own, and as a result it felt disconnected from the rest of the game. \u00a0We actually hadn’t anticipated this problem, but that was mainly due to the fact that we hadn’t tested the game with the lottery elements implemented before Softs. \u00a0Softs actually served as a playtest for us for the intuitiveness of our entire game experience, and it’s clear we still have a lot of work to do there. \u00a0We assumed people would be curious about the various features of our game and eventually find the lottery sections, but as it turns out they spent most of their time progressing through the levels without\u00a0pausing to see what else there was. \u00a0As a result, we’ve\u00a0added some new UI elements as well as some minimal instructions that will drive players to the lottery portions of our game. \u00a0We’ll also add some more polish to the lottery and prize sections as well to make them both more intuitive and more rewarding.<\/p>\n So most of our work this week and next will be to address these concerns. \u00a0We’re making the leaf move more smoothly and intuitively, we’re\u00a0adding more environmental messaging to tie all the features of the game together, and we’re adding more instructions to make the entire game experience flow better. \u00a0We strongly believe that with these changes, as well as some additional polish and juiciness, we should have a game that is fun and addicting,\u00a0and\u00a0is in line with our client’s goal of “leveraging play to enhance the planet.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had addressed the feedback we got from our playtesters. \u00a0We had designed a new set of easier to understand levels. \u00a0We had finally implemented our lottery element as well as the related prize system.\u00a0 While we knew there was still a good deal of polishing left to do,\u00a0we felt we were close to our<\/a><\/p>\n
+ 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-183","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\/183"}],"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=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/lotter-e\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}