Week 13 - Usability

This week was interesting as we began designing and constructing our board games. We also learned about decision making and usability in game design. One video we watched was about an exercise created by a man named Jason Schklar which assesses a game’s usability. Most importantly however, my group decided on what game to create and began playing around with different objects to brainstorm what to use, among other game design decisions.

            Before delving into our game though let me explain what I learned from Jason Schklar. Now the video he was in was not necessarily long, but the main focus was regarding the exercise he created to test the “usability” of a game. Mr. Schklar’s exercise was just giving different groups of people different games but without the game manuals or explaining the game to them at all. The purpose of this was to see if people could figure out how to play the game on its own. Rather it was to test the transparency of the game and see how well it could be played or figured out without any other prior knowledge other than the game pieces.

            Now this is important because this is exactly what was done in class this week. After being place in groups Dr. S challenged us to consider a web page covered with different game art and pick two that we liked. After picking the two we had to brainstorm what type of game could be created based on the art work depicted. At first my group simply scrolled the page looking at all of the art with each of us selecting differing favorites and relating the artworks to other games or shows or movies we know of. Of course since we were on a timer we had to narrow our decision down to two different designs to consider. The two we chose were Color Guard and Yoink!. We liked Color Guard as it felt adventurous as different flags adorned the artwork with a background that included plains and open sky. To us that reminded us of Role-Playing Games or strategy based games we all enjoy. Meanwhile Yoink! looked fun as it had a more retro style of art design. On the cover art were also two raccoon looking characters that wore outfits similar to a thief. For this design we thought of making a sort of collect and steal type of game. However, in the end we chose Color Guard as there was greater potential to play around with. Considering this potential, we decided to try out a few different objects to try as game pieces, things such as cards, blocks, and even miniature handmade flags.

             Needless to say there is still much we need to work on and playtest. However slowly we are figuring it out.