Dev Log 9: Playtesting and Production II

Introduction

The team and I have been hard at work analyzing our game's actual design and have found it to be utterly lacking--that's on top of the last dev log that I posted. Most of those changes were superfluous in the grand scheme of the actual design, so these last few weeks have been spent digging out the infertile bits of information, and replacing it with more thought and creative design thinking. We've definitely seen improvements in almost all facets. It's really relieving to be in a good state with functioning systems and playtest builds so we can analyze, breakdown, and improve upon Game Hacks. This dev log is mainly going to be our analyzed issues and then how we wound up changing them for the better.

Crumbling Pillars

We managed to pinpoint a lot of pain points that left game's design foundation wobbly at best. What I'm talking about in particular is our pillars. I discussed last time that we went ahead and added a new pillar that would prove to help improve our game's design moving forward--and while it did do that in spades--it just wasn't enough. The other two pillars were utterly lacking at this point. The two pillars I'm talking about are Clarity and Fairness. Thanks to our mentor, we've realized that these just aren't good selling points, nor are they fundamental aspects to our game to maintain fun., and Fun has become more of the focus of our design work overall. He posed this question:

"Who wants to make a game that's unclear or unfair?"

And while some ideas can immediately pop into mind to refute that, they don't contradict the point. Of course we want people to understand the game and feel like they have a chance to win. This shouldn't be a pillar, but much rather a core precept of designing.

So, understanding this, we were now short two pillars. We went from two, to three, and now to one. It's just Cybersecurity now. While this does hold up some of the elements of fun in gameplay, we still have other areas of the game that our playtesters enjoy. The next steps are to analyze them and fully flesh them out to capitalize on fun.

Rebuilding

It took some lengthy meetings and usage of some of the older design methods we had used earlier in this program, but we eventually came to settle upon two new pillars, while also renaming Cybersecurity.

We now have the Triple-S fundamental pillars of our games design:

Security is an emphasis on the core material we're teaching players about and hosts narrative of the events and interactions players experience. It's crucial to build up ones security to prevent cyberattacks attacks. This leaves a satisfying sensation when a player manages to overcome an attack through high security, or through overcoming another player's security.

Sustain, or sustainment, is the tier that players get to when they gain enough Public Perception and Security where they are considered the most secure from attacks and sabotage attempts. This ties back into security by being the level in which security is at its most effective.

Sabotage is the player-vs-player aspect of our gameplay, where players can try to take out each other's security or level of sustainment by bombarding them with cyberattacks in various thematically appropriate forms. Sufficient sustain can stave off sabotage attempts, but not if players work together against one another.

The player to player interaction and attempts at maintaining sustainment, overcome or build security, and sabotage each other has led the highest perceived levels of fun during playtests. Thus, they've become our pillars of gameplay.

Observations of Fun

With a new set of rules, newly implemented cards, and a more balanced resource management system, we've been able to run some new playtests with great results. We found more 'fun' problems. There's a fun deficit in sections of gameplay. During the initial stages of the game, there's a lack of engagement for the player. The early section is focused on just getting away from the starting square and no one is given a means of interacting with one another. Observed enjoyment for players in the first 5 rounds averages at 4.9~ out of 10 with a high of 6 for players who were able to avoid attack tiles at the start, and a low of 4.2 for players who hit them more often. This result was gathered through several playtests with different players. This is quite clearly a problem that we must address.

According to player feedback, the following came up as issues:

• The rules took too long to read and were not enjoyable.
• Too many players landed on the attack tiles immediately
• Players didn't like figuring out how long it took to figure out the order of play.

These are all issues that commonly disappear once the game gets going. This explains why there's a large fun deficit during the beginning stages. Furthermore, there's no sabotage cards in the initial stages which cuts down on player engagement, and contradicts the sabotage pillar.

Moving forward

We have a good understanding of where we're losing fun now thanks to the most recently playtest. As we move along and improve Game Hacks, it's important for us to refer back to our design material and documentation to refine this crucial stage of gameplay. If players are not having a good time when they first try the board game, they'll have no reason to continue or play again. Our next few group meetings will be discussing this and other issues we've noticed in gameplay. The plan is to brainstorm and try new ideas through various design methodologies.

Conclusion

Overall, our improvements are going quite well but there's still a lot to do in order to fix and find the fun. We're on the right track, but there's no telling how far we can take the enjoyment. Playtesting has been consistent and very effective so far. I'm excited to see the end result of our effort in the future.