P LAN DE I MPLEMENTACIÓN Y G ESTIÓN

From the earliest play testing sessions with Goombagrams through each iteration of Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! ’s player experience studies, “pace osmosis” has been a persistent design challenge. Here, I employ the chemical concept of “osmosis” (wherein molecules travel between two regions of differing concentration through a selectively permeable membrane) as a conceptual metaphor to help elucidate how the paces of asymmetric roles tend to seep into each other, often to the chagrin of players and designers alike.

In chemistry, the relative concentrations of the chemicals involved and the nature of the membrane separating them determine whether, how, and with what speed the particles transition between the regions and attempt to come to equilibrium. In my experience designing and studying asymmetric cooperative games, the degree to which the pace of asymmetric roles “osmose” into each other appears similarly dependent on how distinct each role’s pace is designed to be and how necessary the interdependence between those roles is.

Throughout the development of both the Goombagrams and Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! prototypes, it was not uncommon for some players in both roles (i.e., Megaman & Wiley, Kirk & Scotty, respectively) to express feelings of frustration. Less skilled Scotty players, for example, would feel “rushed” or overwhelmed about being unable to deploy the necessary array of special abilities quickly enough to keep on top of their Kirk partner’s rapidly evolving dangers. Conversely, more skilled Megaman players often felt “bogged down” and impatient by their slower partner’s failure to “spell on demand” and catch up with their more action-oriented gameplay. Were these frustrations due to flaws in the game’s interface designs? Were the recharge rates or energy costs of certain Scotty abilities miscalibrated? In retrospect, it is now easier to recognize these frustration for what they were and un- derstand why they were notably more severe in Goombagrams than in Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! . In both games, the pairs of player roles were designed to be heavily dependent on each other in service of my specific research questions exploring the influence of inter- dependence on players’ perceptions of social connectedness. However, with each required interaction, each directional dependency, and each moment of synchronicity, the aesthetic membrane separating players would be penetrated and the pace of each asymmetric role would “osmose” into the other.

With Goombagrams, the personas guiding the design of the Wiley and Megaman roles were based on “Scrabble grandmothers” and “2D platformer youths” respectively; two vastly different target demographics. In Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! , the Kirk and Scotty roles were instead designed around “3D action adventure gamers” and “real-time strategy gamers” respectively; two much more similar game genres and target demographics.

To complete the metaphor then, it can be said that the pace gradients of each prototype game were trying to come to an equilibrium and the relatively distant gap between Goom- bagrams’ target personas naturally resulted in more frequent and more severe frustration than the relatively similar target personas guiding the design of Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! . While this was ultimately not a significant problem for Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! players (and thus my player experience studies), “pace osmosis” may prove a critical challenge in future efforts to design and study asymmetric games that appeal to strongly contrasting play types. Indeed, the more evident “pace osmosis” frustration exhibited by Wiley and Megaman play testers is one of the primary reasons that Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! was chosen to advance as the primary experimental prototype over Goombagrams in the early stages of my thesis work.

It is not clear whether “pace osmosis” is simply an inherent and unavoidable charac- teristic of asymmetric cooperative games featuring tight interdependence between player roles. With more extensive study of a wider variety of games and a deliberate focus on

the complexities of “pace osmosis”, it may eventually be possible to better understand this subtle but pervasive phenomenon and design asymmetric games which effectively en- gage sharply contrasting player types. I propose one such avenue of future research in subsubsection 9.3.1.

8.2.1

Wicked & Unforeseen Consequences

Throughout the many iterations of Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! , one of the most significant mechanical changes made to the prototype’s gameplay mechanics was the shift from a single, shared screen to separate screens and distinct in-game perspectives for Kirk and Scotty players. This change was originally prompted by frustrations from Scotty players trying to deploy their special abilities into the game world while having to counteract the unpredictable shifts in the shared perspective that only the Kirk player could control. Separating the players’ views solved this seemingly minor usability problem and brought with it a pleasant additional benefit: the game could now present Kirk players with their own unique information independent of Scotty and vice versa.

Kirk could see objects much closer up and from a side-on perspective whereas Scotty could now only look at the world orthogonally to Kirk; straight down and from a detached, almost satellite perspective. An asymmetry of information could now flow both ways with Scotty having a broader overview and Kirk a narrower but more detailed perspective of the immediate area. Through play testing however, it became apparent that Kirk’s perspective had another, somewhat unanticipated consequence: By having Kirk looking forward there was now the possibility for in-game elements to appear behind Kirk.

Indeed, the “Drawbridge Ambush” (first described in subsection 5.3.7) originally had one player lowering a drawbridge while the other fended off an ambushing swarm of angry wasps. In BMRS1 , with its shared, isometric perspective, which player ended up handling which task came largely down to the individual personalities of the two participants and an exciting moment of quick decision making between them. In attempting to adapt this scenario to BMRS2 however, it became apparent that the original scenario had become largely incompatible with Kirk’s new perspective. Whereas previously the ambushing wasps appeared nearby but within sight of both Kirk and Scotty players, in BMRS2 the wasps appeared directly behind Kirk but offscreen. Whereas BMRS1 players had found this ambush exciting, BMRS 2 playtesters found this moment exceedingly frustrating and unfair (Figure 8.2).

Thus, in an attempt to improve the usability of Scotty’s targeting mechanics, a chain of seemingly distinct mechanical changes led to a frustrating failure in level design for Kirk

Figure 8.2: A vignette depicting the “Drawbridge Ambush” scenario. Well received by participants in BMRS1 , the shift in Kirk’s perspective from isometric to over-the-shoulder resulted in unforeseen frustration as it was now possible for wasps to appear “behind” Kirk, off camera.

players. Many other such chains of unforeseen design consequences were encountered over the course of Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! ’s iterations including challenges when implementing Super Kirk’s targeting abilities and Scotty’s networked tablet simulation in BMRS2 , as well as when implementing the many tight, medium, and loose coupling variations of Scotty’s abilities in BMRS3 .

Reflecting on game design as the “wicked problem” ((Rittel and Webber, 1973), chap- ter 4) that it is, these multifaceted design complexities within Beam Me ’Round, Scotty! and the unforeseen consequences that come with each mechanical manipulation are not actually unexpected or particularly notable.

What is important to note however, is how this same wicked complexity applies to manipulating research goals: how seemingly minor shifts in conceptual dimensions of a study can result in tremendous shifts in mechanical/design dimensions. As an example, the seemingly innocuous research question of “What would the effect be if we made BMRS1

less asymmetric?” necessitated substantial hardware, software, and game design changes in order to uncover answers via study 2.

The proposed avenues of future work described in section 9.3 are presented in a similarly conceptual light but implementing the necessary designs and mounting the requisite player studies will likely require surprising amounts of time and effort. Unlike chemistry for example, where the question “What happens if we add more chlorine to this solution?” might result in a few more drops of liquid, the practical distances between seemingly proximal conceptual ideas in GUR are vast and challenging.