Week 6 saw work split between prepping for our Halves presentation, adding features to the digital build, and making iterations based on paper playtests.
With regards to halves, the team organized our presentation primarily around our transformational and design goals. Following feedback from our faculty instructors we verbalized our transformational goals as follows:
- Knowledge: Players will learn new information about “different perspectives on nuclear testing”
- Belief: Players will realize that “narratives they’ve heard don’t tell the whole story” about nuclear testing.
- Attitude: Players will believe that “previously ignored perspectives are important to me”
Our design section touched on our initial time breakdown as well as core mechanics (i.e. examine artifacts, assume a role, discuss artifacts with other players). Likely the greatest hurdles left to tackle with the time remaining in the semester would be creating the digital build to support our intended experience as well as scaling up the experience to accommodate for 40+ players.
To better illustrate these points, programming added basic functionality to the web build. Key features included a placeholder 3D environment, displaying 2D images after clicking on placeholder models, as well as a rudimentary inventory system. Arguably the only things missing to execute a full digital playtest would be narrative-specific materials and non-placeholder art assets (2D & 3D).
5 paper playtests were also executed over the course of the week. Playtests were conducted with 1 player at a time. Players would fill out background information about their “character,” examine pdfs of digital artifacts, and then fill out a reflection sheet piecing together the meaning of these artifacts. All Playtesters definitely felt differently about the issue after reading the artifacts and really enjoyed examining the artifacts; however, playtesters felt that the roleplaying sheets did not satisfyingly conclude the experience. One suggestion from Brenda was to consider forcing players to allocate money as a result of their research, i.e. quantify the importance of different perspectives based on the perspectives.
Art also created an initial gold spike model of a book encapsulating the visual tone/look and feel described by our mood boards.
Next week’s goals include the halves presentation, interpreting feedback from halves, and planning the work necessary for a digital MVP playtest.