Designing and Evaluating a Dramatic Game

Jarmo Laaksolahti

KTH/SICS

Drives

Invent/explore/design games... that have a dramatic structure in which social behaviour and emotions are part

of the game mechanics that appeal to other user groups than adolescent

males Wish to work on both the surface

representation and story content generation

Context

Research conducted over a long time in several projects Kaktus - Swedish MagiCster - EU HUMAINE – EU (ongoing NoE)

Methodology: User-centered design

Iterative and multi-tiered approach

Step 1: evaluate the component parts and iterate

Step2: evaluate the finished system

Design iterations

The scenario

The content

Based on anticipatory systems: Contains a predictive

model of itself and the environment

The behavior of the system depends on predictions about what will happen in addition to what already has

The system is executed faster than “real-time”

The surface representation

Extreme long-shot

Cinematography

Cinematography refers to how something is filmed in contrast to what

Three main factors Photographic aspects -emulsion,

filters,etc Framing – what is included Duration – how long a shot is

Examples of shots

Color and shape

Colors affect how we perceive things

Culturally dependant

Red/yellow is generally more positive than blue/green

Rounded shapes are more positive than jagged

Cameras with borders

How do we evaluate this?

We want to know whether we produced a good story and an emotional and social experience

What matters for users in the end is their subjective experience – users know when a story is good

Questions: What methods can be used to evaluate user experiences? Can different experiences (narrative, emotional, social) be

separated? Which experience should come first in the design

process?

The sensual method experiment

Non-verbal self report Intuitive to use Subjective measure (vague) Easy to calibrate for different groups Portable and durable More fun/engaging for the user!

The sensual object set

What can the sensual method do for us?

We don´t know yet… Most likely point to problematic areas,

but probably no details about what is right or wrong

Repertory Grids

Uses personally constructed dimensions to evaluate technology (Kelly, 1955)

Evaluates subjective experiences Step1: Construction of dimensions through

triangulation Step2: Evaluation of artefacts along the

constructed dimensions (Step3: Statistical analysis of the results)

What can RG do for us?

Allows us to understand how users perceive systems without putting words in their mouth

Create a common language for talking about systems

Find important dimensions that might otherwise have been overlooked because we didn’t ask the right question

May help us find more detailed answers to what is right or wrong with stories?

The KARMA projekt – Learning?