Potion Game results

 At the end of the Potion Making PowerPoint game was a link to a survey so I could collect some feedback, both quantitative and qualitative.  Allowing the player to discuss the deployability of the game as well as what they thought of their choices and how they would like the game to be improved or expanded.

Even with the start of the feedback their were trends to be observed with most players enjoying the game and being satisfied with their results, something I believe is due to my commitment to themes within certain choices and the constant narrator validating their choices but also how many players went down a more conventional potion making path possibly due to them starting the game with knowing they were making a potion and a more fantasy style and format being incorporated into the design.

The players qualitative answers were also of interest with those that took part and had an illustrative or art background opting for more advances with visuals such as artwork of ingredients and potions contrasted by players with a game design background giving opinions how the mechanics of the game could be expanded if it became a 3D game or a passive mobile game. This demonstrates how there is a link between player background and expectations important to be aware of when looking to create a game that changes player behaviour.

Several lessons were also learned whilst producing the game such as;

- How rapidly the complexity of the game can become when doing split choices within it, possibly why dialogue trees in some games whilst having multiple directions to go in often remain short and don't have far reaching consequences for the player.

- The idea of reusing certain ingredients across the diagram to save time during the design process and also if artwork was produced the assets could be re-used or even recoloured to produce images for other choices similar to asset re-texturing in games or re-use of models and animations.

-The curiosity of players when making choices, the fact that so many players would want to play the game to see what other choices could craft means that they have an interest in the other outcomes and consequences of their actions - this is something I want to take forward into other games where if the player makes one choice what happens to the choice they didn't make, can this be utilised toward the delivery of a message rather than all choices culminating in the same ending such as "We Become What We Behold" 

Potion Making PowerPoint Game

 In response to researching the game "We Become What We Behold" and how choice can be utilised within a game to engage an audience and then promote a message and a change to behaviour I was tasked with creating a simplistic game that gave the player options towards creating something, such as adding ingredients to bake a cake, to observe the players interactions and discuss their outcomes with them as research towards later crafting a game with a more transformative element at a later date.

With my own interest in fantasy I went from a cake recipe towards asking players to partake in crafting a potion with various ingredients, each choice would lead them down a particular pathway until the finish product was created, with 28 viable options included.

Above you can see a diagram of all the pathways involved in the choice making, with a design choice of having themes of ingredients relate to one another for instance starting with water would lead to more normal human ingredients or less harmful sounding ones whereas choosing blood would lead to more stereotypical fantasy potion elements.  Hopefully this would engage the players by validating their previous choices with more similar choices ahead as well as a constant text base narrator that would comment on the choices previously made giving a sense of being heard or seen when making choices and the players values being accepted or validated.

As we can see above the narrator constantly refers to previous choices as well as the choices of animal anatomy leads to more animal options before culminating in Animal speech as a potion.

Researching We Become What we Behold (the consequences of choice)

Looking at examples of games that fit the genre of ProSocial or transformative where the aim is to create a change in the behaviour of the player in terms of their values towards a certain area of society, in this instance a more political and media based type with a view on the "horror of the viral nature of divisiveness and tribalism."

Starting simply enough with a group of individuals on the screen with the only difference between them being the shape of their heads (circles and squares) the player uses the cursor as a camera taking pictures of behaviours they observe headlines are then crafter upon the tv screen in the centre which influences and has a direct consequence on the characters present.  One example being if a photograph is taken of someone wearing a hat the headline "#hats are cool" appears and more characters begin wearing them to follow the trend. This is gradually elevated with more animosity being created between the circles and squares with the inevitable outcome being hatred and mass murder between the two types driven by fear perpetrated by the player and observed by the characters as media images showing the very deliberate connection with real life media images showing us images and text to create conventions for us to follow through virality and conformity to what we behold as truth.

Allowing for the player to be in control of the cursor gives them a sense of control over the situation and some sense of choice, they can photograph anything, yet only certain choices create progress and the static linear ending means that there will always be the same outcome.  This is in relation to the message the game developers wish to get across but choose to allow some sense of choice so that players become engaged with the game and reactance cannot occur, where players would feel like their freedom was being hindered and would reject the messages of the game. 

The 'Pop Matters' review article sums it up perfectly:

"It isn’t the differences that provoke viral hatred. It is the perception that such incidents wholly define the other group that blinds the citizens of We Become What We Behold to one another. Thus, the game fixates, not on how terrible people are to one another, but how the perception and assumption that people are terrible to one another can go viral by focusing on and capturing incidents that reflect little about these groups initially in reality — that is until that perception becomes reality."

What is most interesting to observe about this game is how false choice can still engage the audience as much as freedom of choice but have a better chance of having a very specific message come across increasing the likelihood of changed player behaviour or values.

I want to experiment with player choice in simple game mechanics to see how this can be achieved.