With particular reference to the readings you have undertaken this year what are the major design issues you have faced in developing a game for Key Stage 1 children
In this essay im going to discuss the main design issues that have been faced in the making of our groups KS1 game ‘Mr Cheesey’s Spelling Fun’.
Mr Cheesey’s spelling fun is a KS1 game with the aim of teaching children how to spell. To make the game fun and educational, it has two parts to it so to speak. The first part is a platform style game with the aim of working your way through the levels collecting the letters placed within; this is what I would consider the ‘fun’ aspect of the game. The second part is a drag and drop style game where the player uses the letters collected within the previous level and places them in the correct order to spell out a word using the hints, this is the most educational part of the game as the players has to use their own spelling skills with minimal help to move on to the next level. In the designing/development of the game we had to constantly keep in mind the target audience and the fact that the game had to teach.
We knew our target audience was children aged 5-7, but we needed to fully understand our target audience so we could make a successful game. Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber speak about the importance of a designer understanding the target audience so they can design a game that would be suitable. They also state that it is not a good idea to look at other games with the same target audience as a method of researching them. ‘even for the products that are successful, it is not always clear why they are successful and if you copy the wrong parts while missing that one subtle thing that makes those products work, your project is dead’. I disagree with this point. When researching our target audience, we researched and played other games that were aimed at KS1 children and had the objective of teaching a KS1 subject. This process actually taught us a lot about our target market. Whilst playing a variety of these games we could see the consistencies that were used in the colours, graphic style and the simplicity in the workings of the game. This taught us not only about what most appeals to our target market but also what is suitable for them i.e. simple controls and not over complicated reading. We were able to experience these types of teaching games as the player and evaluate weather they were fun or talk about how they could be improved. This gave us a list of the ‘dos and don’ts’ that we could apply to our game during the design process.
In Hunicke, Leblanc and Zuberk’s paper they discuss the Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics framework and how a designer’s perspective of a game would be different to that of the player. ‘it is helpful to consider both the designer and player perspectives’. To do this we had to look at the aesthetics of our game since this is what a player would focus on first. ‘thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design’ (Hunicke, Leblanc, Zuberk, 2004:2).
When talking about aesthetics in a game the language that can be used is limited, so Hunicke, Lablanc, Zuberk refer to a list of 8 words.
(Hunicke, Leblanc, Zuberk, 2004:2). When using these words and meanings to describe the aesthetics we want to achieve in Mr Cheesey’s spelling fun we hoped it would be Fantasy, Challenge, Expression and Submission. We had already achieved fantasy in the design of the characters being based on foods and with the story of Mr Cheesey. Submission was something we decided would be important to our game as we would want the KS1 children to want to play the game and to keep playing the game. To achieve this we had to not only design the game to stand out by using appealing bright colours and quirky characters, but also use a different style of play we had not seen in similar teaching games so we could keep our game interesting. This is what sparked the idea of having two elements to our game. Challenge and Expression are obvious aesthetic choices for our game because the goal of the game is that it has to teach and these are elements that come with that. Using the dynamics of the game we created challenge by incorporating a life system into the platform level as well as including two enemies that try to hinder the player in collecting the letters. Expression is something that is mostly seen in the spell screen of the game. The player uses there own skills to work out what they have to spell with only one hint and this will help develop there spelling skills. This creates the teaching process with in the game.
Although there was challenge within the game with the purpose of teaching, there was no real reward for it. Not one that can be considered as a ‘fun’ reward so that it would appeal to the target audience. Hunicke, Leblanc and Zurberk go on to talk about the aesthetic model in their article and state ‘if a player doesn’t see a clear winning condition or feels like they can’t possibly win, the game is suddenly a lot less interesting’. This is an element as designer we wanted to avoid. No one would want a game they were designing to become un-interesting or feel like a pointless effort, especially with a target market that is prone to become distracted easily. We came up with the idea of having a treasure chest and with each level completed the player is rewarded with a key. The player can then use the key to unlock the chest and reveal a printable certificate. This seemed to solve this problem and would appeal to our target market. We had to start thinking from a designer’s perspective now and consider how we could make these different parts work together and how to keep the repetitive parts of the game ‘fun’.
Marcos Venturelli in his case study for PopCap talks about the space of possibility in casual games. He states ‘taking the definition of ‘fun’ as being pleasure with surprises (Schell 2008), when there are no more surprises there is no more fun’. The certificate at the end of the game is really the only surprise for the player within our game, but we designed the characters and levels so that they would be quirky, complex and visually interesting so that they would also contain a ‘fun’ factor. He goes on to talk about the patterns within games and the way the players try and work them patterns out. ‘if all the patterns are figured out the game becomes un-interesting’. Patterns in a game directly affect the complexity of it. Our target market is aged 5-7 so a complex game could become frustrating to them so we had to find a way to keep the game as interesting as possible other then using lots of patterns to increase the complexity. Examples of other KS1 game used animations and visuals to do this so, we went about designing our game to be as visually interesting as possible. Venturelli also talks about another technique we used to keep the game interesting, Pacing. ‘to create relaxation,tenson and repetition the designer paces the game’. By pacing the game to create different player experiences we can keep it interesting and fun.
‘Pacing is a concept related to the overall rhythm of the game, the relevant speed at which the different moving parts of the system are put in motion’. (Venturelli, 2009: 2). Venturelli goes on to talk about the tempo in games. ‘Higher Tempo means that the player’s decision-making is slow, and he is either waiting for some change of state on the system, thinking about his movment, or simply confused. Lower tempo represents more frantic decision-making by the player’ (Venturelli, 2009: 3). The tempo of Mr Cheesey spelling fun changes when you move on from the platform game to the drag and drop task. The platform part of the game has a Low tempo as the player can be quite rash about moving around the level and not have to pause and think for more than a second or two about where to move. The life’s that the player is given at the beginning of the level provide a cushion for this rash thinking so that the player learns through mistakes made during game play rather than through thought. The drag and drop screen is the opposite of this. The spell screen has a high tempo as the goal is to spell out the word and this means that the player has to stop and think about there next move before making it. With the use of animations to smooth the transition between the two tempos, this change of tempo in Mr Cheesey’s spelling fun gives the player different experiences whilst playing. This takes the repetitive feeling away from the game thus keeping the attention of the target market.
In conclusion I feel that there were a few issues in developing a game for KS1 children but they were over come due to the fact we took the time to get to know are target market and designed the game around their wants. ‘thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design’ (Hunicke, Leblanc, Zuberk, 2004:2). This is the key way to over come design issues as you have to remember you’re designing a game for a specific audience, the designers views on what looks better are irrelevant. It’s all about what the market wants. Doug church sums up what the role of a designer is in his article ‘“As a designer, you still have to figure out what is fun, what your game is about, and what vision and goals you bring to it ” (Church, 1999:4). I think if you combine these two element as a designer you can make a successful game.
Bibliography
Church, D., Gamasutra - Features - Formal Abstract Design Tools. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal%20abstract%20design%20tools.php
LeBlanc, M., Zubek, R. & Hunicke, R., MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. Discovery, 83(3), p.01–04.
Marcos Venturelli, Space of possibility and pacing in casual games design a PopCap case study 2009
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