Week 13 proved to be rather tiring for the team. Following the playtest on the Saturday of Week 12, the team rushed straight into Softs on Monday of Week 13. Shortly thereafter, the team planned out the work necessary for the final playtest (scheduled Tuesday of Week 14). Rather than testing any specific hypothesis, the final playtest serves as a deadline by which to complete work on the experience as well as document the experience with videos.
Feedback from the Hopin playtest was mixed, but highly directive and actionable. Dave and Brenda recommended that we seriously weigh any planned changes to the experience against the very limited time remaining in the semester (i.e. 3 days after the Final Playtest on Tuesday Week 14). Softs feedback echoed much of what we observed in the playtest and is included below.
Planned Changes based on feedback are broadly as follows:
- The open discussion felt extremely realistic. In that it was boring and non-participatory. Future versions of the game should make the Senate floor should assign players slides to present or questions to ask of oher teams
- The results of the vote were not communicated dramatically enough. E.g. Failing to fund the CDC results in x people unable to seek treatment for radiation exposure.
- Using Averages to calculate results from voting can result in strange situations. E.g., 4 players may vote to give the DoE $40 million, but if 1 player votes to give the DoE $0, then the DoE will still fail to meet its goal.
- Hopin posed unique challenges to our Zoom-native players.
- Stage managers need a way to tell Actors when they’re running behind schedule. 1-way communication through a muted Discord call could meet these needs.
- Optimize the build by Pre-baking the lighting. Alternatively, screen participants before the event itself or provide a non-WebGL way to view artifacts.
- Players did not understand what the summary button was for since the icon (a placeholder cartoon of members of the team) did not communicate its ability to summarize information.
The team implemented several of these changes by Friday, leaving time to rehearse the new experience on Monday in advance of the Tuesday Playtest. The team also asked the client Raul to publicize the playtest in order to guarantee an attendance of ~20+ Playtesters. While each team would be less than 10, this would be as close to a final experience as can be executed with the time remaining in the semester. Following the playtest, work for Week 14 will focus on the final presentation for Wednesday of Week 15.