Designing a History Game

Assignment 1: Prototyping & Playtesting

Purpose

The goal of this was to apply the concepts of game design we have learned so far and practice ideating, prototyping, and playtesting our own educational games. The domain of the game was History, and we had to incorporate one of the second-order concepts presented in an report by the National Research Council, “How Students Learn”. Second-order concepts of history include the following: Time, Change, Empathy, Cause, Evidence, and Accounts. The point of these concepts is to ensure that the student actually learning, not simply memorizing historical facts.

Educational Goal

Empathy was the concept that I decided to focus on incorporating in my games. I personally believe that it is really important to understand the ideas, beliefs, and values of people to get a better sense of what they experienced. The main way I approached this was to simulate what people experienced in a specific time period by recreating the situations that they lived through, and feel the emotions they felt. During the initial ideation stage, I did explore different second-order concepts such as accounts and cause, but decided to only refine games that were based on empathy.

Brainstorming

A list of 10 ideas for possible history games!

To get some inspiration before brainstorming, I did a brief search of what historical games are currently in the market — of the ones I saw, I really enjoyed the Mission US series, which had three different editions: “A Cheyenne Odyssey”, “Flight to Freedom”, and “For Crown or Colony?”. I liked that these games emphasized empathy and gave the player the opportunity to make their own choices, to really simulate what decisions people in those eras had to make, and truly step into their shoes. Although making a story game would be extremely challenging to implement as a physical game, I was inspired by this series which motivated to move forward with a game that is based on empathy. To ideate, I thought about historical events that were impactful to society — therefore, a lot of my ideas are about the war (because it was a national effort; people who weren’t drafted were still impacted) unfair circumstances in the past such as lack of legal representation(prior to sixth amendment, defendants didn’t have the right to an attorney — if they couldn’t afford one, they had to defend themselves), colonization of third world countries, and of course, racial and socioeconomic discrimination. Because most of my games focus on empathy, most of them involved roleplaying.

Prototype 1: Enigmattleship

Description

One of the ideas I made into a prototype was ENIGMA Decoding Game. This would simulate the rivalry between Britain and Nazi Germany during World War 2. Instead of one player representing Britain and the other Nazi Germany, each player took turns roleplaying both nations. This was so that they would be able to understand how both parties felt during the war — how vulnerable Nazis were whenever sending a message, and how frustrated the British felt when they couldn’t understand the encrypted messages.

The main purpose of this game is to sink all of the opponent’s ships. At the start of the game, each player would place 2 ships of length 5 and 2 ships of length 4 and 2 ships of length 3 on their board either vertically or horizontally. Each row would be labeled as a number whereas each column with a letter, to compose a 15x11 grid of cells, with each cell named with the respective letter and number — for example, E2. Then, a player would give away one of their ship’s location by encoding it with one of the four methods of encoding: move 1 right and 1 down, move 2 left and 1 down, and move 2 right and 3 up. The other player would have to guess which method they used to encode the ship’s location, and state the decoded cell. If the player correctly located the opponent’s ship, the opponent would have to give away another encoded location of the same ship. From that, the player would have to guess whether the ship was oriented vertically or horizontally in order to sink the ship completely.

Playtest

1. I recruited the testers by asking two peers to test the game during class.
2. The play-testers were students in this course, and they knew that I was hoping to teach empathy for both Britain and Nazi Germany during World War 2.
3. Through this play test, I wanted to figure out the specific mechanics of the game. For example, I tested out how many encoding methods were needed to make the game a good difficulty level. I also wanted to figure out how many pieces each player should have, and of which lengths. To set up the prototype, I set up a laptop between the players and provided each player with a board and six boats. I did not participate in the game.
4. This session was really helpful in also determining the dynamics of the game. For instance, when a player got the location of a ship correct, I had to figure out whether or not that player would get another turn, and what they would need to do in order to sink the complete ship. I tested out different rules to determine what would make the game last the longest without losing the players’ interest. An aspect of the game the players were confused by was how the encoding aspect of the game would be incorporated. They were already familiar with the game of Battleship and had trouble understanding how the rules were different. In the original game of Battleship, a player has the freedom to guess the location of any of their opponent’s ships. However, in my game, the opponent chooses to give away an encoded location of a specific ship which restricts the player. Regarding encoding and decoding, I was also surprised how long it took for people to understand how to correctly encode and decode a location. Even if they selected the correct method, they would make mistakes in decoding the location which made the beginning of the game pretty slow.
5. During the play test, one of the mechanics I modified was changing the number of encoding methods from four to three. I observed that having four encoding methods made the game too slow because it reduced the chances of the player guessing the correct method. Therefore, to ensure the optimal difficulty of the game, I decided that only three encoding methods would be necessary. I also decided that six ships was a reasonable number to keep the players engaged for the duration of the game. A dynamic I tested out was regarding what would happen if a player got to location of a ship correctly. I originally thought that a player would have to guess the start and end of each ship at each turn in order to sink that ship. However, during the play test, I found that this is too tedious because unlike the original game of Battleship, the players in this game do not have the freedom to guess any cell, so the opponent has complete control over which ships get sinked. Therefore, I modified the rules so that in this situation, the player would get another turn in which the opponent gives away another encoded location of the same ship. To sink a ship, a player must correctly guess two cells of a particular ship in two consecutive turns and state the orientation of the ship. If they fail to correctly decode the second location, they would lose the chance to sink that ship. However, this process was too easy so I decided to explore this dynamic further in the next iteration. It was also suggested to me that each player be dealt a method to encode their messages to make this game more historically accurate. I thought this would would fit better with the theme of the game, and provide a more accurate representation of what the British and Nazis experienced. Therefore, I incorporated this change in the next iteration.

Prototype 2: The Game of Discriminated LIFE

Description

The second idea I made into a prototype was teaching about institutionalized racism. This would demonstrate the discrimination that people of color face (in the past and still to this day). I chose four different characters with varied race and ages to show that even with similar goals and events, the rules of life changes based on an individual’s demographics.

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In this game, each player would be randomly assigned to one of four characters: an African American fireman, a Caucasian fireman, an African American high school student or Caucasian high school student. Each player starts the game with $10 and 10 social points. A player’s turn requires them to spin a wheel on the board which indicates how many spaces they should move forward. The space they land on is marked with one of three symbols: a heart (major life events), a dollar sign (financial events) or a plus sign (health events). The player picks up the top card in the category corresponding to the symbol. The card will describe an event (for example, having a baby) and tell the player how this event affects their character financially and socially (earning/losing money and earning/losing social points). A player loses the game if either their monetary or social points reach zero. The player who reaches the end of the game board first or the last person to lose all of their money/social points wins the game.

Playtest

1. I asked four friends in different disciplines to play test the game.
2. The play testers were juniors studying Chemical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering or Statistics and Machine Learning. They knew that the goal of the game was to teach empathy and understand how people in different communities experience institutionalized discrimination.
3. Through the play test, I wanted to test whether the point system I created for each character would convey the intended message of how institutionalized racism is deeply imbedded into our society. I also wanted to observe whether or not the players would get invested in their character, and personally feel the unfairness of the system by playing this game. To set up the prototype, I gave each player an index card to keep track of their monetary and social points and laid out the 3 different categories of events players would experience. Finally, each player randomly chose a character, and used a random number generator as the “spinner”. I did not participate in the game.
4. The session went really well — I was pleasantly surprised that the order of character deaths conveyed the message of I wanted to teach to the players and demonstrated how prominent institutionalized racism is in our society. First, the African American high school student lost both monetary and social points, then the Caucasian high school student, then the African American fire fighter ran out of only monetary points and lastly, the Caucasian fire fighter ran out of only social point but had enough monetary points. I was really glad to have found that the point system worked out, but for the future would want the game to last longer each person had only around 4 turns. Another thing I would try to improve on is explaining the reasoning for specific points. A lot of of players were confused how the points were assigned for an event — I verbally explained my reasonings behind how an event affects a character, but in the next iteration, I would want to have it written down on the event card. This will help the players understand how different characters get certain advantages or disadvantages, and what real-world examples corresponded to each card. Overall, people really liked the game and were invested in their character’s outcomes even though they didn’t have much control in the game.
5. One thing I learned is that the players wanted more historical background for the point system than I expected. For example, one of the financial events cards said that the character earned money because they started selling drugs. For this card, players thought it would be helpful to create a more detailed backstory explaining why the character would be in a situation in which they felt it was necessary to sell drugs (e.g. a person in a lower income community who could not afford their rent one month might feel that their only option is to sell drugs). In addition, the players expressed that they wanted to be able to have more control of their life events (e.g. choose if they have a baby) and have different paths on the board for it. However, not everyone has the privilege to choose whether or not they want to keep the baby, so I decided to keep the rule the way it was.

Iteration of Enigmattleship

Changes

In the new iteration, I introduced a new concept of rounds which would comprise of 10 turns. At the start of each round, players were asked to draw a card which would indicate the encoding pattern for that round, instead of selecting one of three encoding methods for each turn like the previous iteration. This change made the game more similar to the way Nazis encoded their messages, since each day, they would have a new method of encoding. This also gave the player a chance to pretend like they didn’t know the opponent’s encoding pattern even if they did. Doing so gave the opponent a false sense of security, and made the game more fun and filled with suspense just how the the British were able to pick their battles to keep the Nazis on their toes. Another change I made in this iteration was regarding when a player correctly decrypted the opponent’s message and located a ship. After the second turn, instead of guessing the orientation of the ship, the player would have to guess the length of the ship.

Playtest

1. I asked two friends in different disciplines to play test the game.
2. The play testers were juniors studying Electrical and Computer Engineering or Cognitive Science, and they knew that I wanted to teach empathy by emulating the rivalry between Britain and Nazi Germany during World War 2.
3. Through this play test, I wanted to observe if the changes I made in the iteration made the game more challenging and fun, while still keeping the pace of the game reasonable.
4. This session went really well; the players seemed to really enjoy this game! At first, the concept of rounds was confusing for the players (and even hard to keep track of) but the suggestion to have each player use a specific encryption method was beneficial for not only creating a more historically accurate experience, but also having the players more invested in the game.
5. From the play test, I learned that strategical thinking makes the player invested in the game, because they put in so much thought while playing. Unlike the first iteration where players would simply guess which of three methods were used, this version required more calculative planning which motivated the players more to do better. However, I did observe that 10 turns was a long round and by the end of the round, all of the ships were getting sunk in one go, so I would experiment more with that number and perhaps reduce it down to 6.

Reflection

This process was extremely fun — it was definitely a talking point whenever I ran into a friend or called my family! I loved how we were able to take a few ideas and turn it into a physical game, by fleshing out all the rules and game pieces. Being able to choose any history topic we wanted also motivated me more, because I was able to explore a space I was personally invested in.

One thing I would do differently is overall be less scared about this process in general. In the beginning, I was overwhelmed with all the ideas, rules, and tiny details we had to come up with from scratch. Especially while preparing for play testing, I tried to come up with different scenarios that would arise while playing out the game, and attempted to create a rule for reach little case. However, I found out that it’s totally okay to not know the exact mechanics of every single scenario in the game, because the whole point of play testing is to test out ideas to see how it would play out, and determine whether it’s the best outcome of the context. I also learned that actually playing the game and verbalizing your thought process makes it easier to decide those small details, because you’re seeing it play out physically, not just theorizing all day. This reminded me of the reading we did for lecture 3, Less Talk, More Rock by the Superbrothers. It was through this process that I finally understood why the brothers really value physically creating their idea, right out of the lightbulb.

It was surprisingly hard to create concrete rules of the game. Even though in my mind I knew how the game would play out, when I was explaining the game to someone else, I would realize a gap in my logic or an aspect of the game I completely forgot to consider. However, play testing itself was pretty easy and simply playing the game allowed me to see the whole game clearly — it didn’t take too long or much brain power to come up with different ideas for mechanics.

If I were to continue with Enigmattleship, I would first figure out how many turns should compose a round. This would take into consideration the average number of turns it takes for a player to figure out the opponent’s encryption method, and the number of turns the player should get to reap the benefits of knowing the decryption pattern before the opponent gets too upset or the game ends too quickly. Then I would make the actual board and pieces World War 2 themed — the current design looks more like Connect4, and it’s hard to simulate the emotions that were felt while cracking the ENIGMA code while looking at bright colored construction paper.