Project Post: Response to Playtesting and Feedback

Hello all. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback in person and via blog and email. I was very excited by the positive response to Divided Attention and have made a lot of changes based on some of your suggestions. Probably the biggest change is in the content of the game. In the prototype that I showed last week, I think I pretty much got the format worked out. I initially thought of PowerPoint as just a means of putting the game together quickly, but now I think that it works fine as the medium. Who needs to learn Flash or Director? But I realized that I needed to give the game more thematic cohesiveness. I reworked all of the game's events in an attempt to make the decisions more meaningful. Now, I hope, when players consistently make the same kinds of choices, they will gravitate to certain colors and areas on the screen.

Jane and others also said that I needed to make the objective clearer and to provide some kind of payoff. I'm still working out this part of the game, but I think Jane's suggestion of displaying some kind of metrical information (statistics) will help bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I'm still hoping that players will get into the alliances and oppositions that the game creates, and that some kind of team spirit will emerge.

I'm happy that the temporary music track I selected (by Philip Glass) worked so well with the game. I really wanted to compose my own music and hopefully eventually will, but I probably won't have time to do it before the end of the semester.

The length of the game is something that I'm still mulling over. The piece of music is about 9 minutes long, which is too short for a complete game (maybe) but too long to double. I was hoping for a game that lasts 10 to 15 minutes. The dangers are that I will make a game that is repetitive or too exhausting. I was surprised that some people described the game as intense. If it goes on and on, players might lose their place, get bored or become confused. On the other hand, I don't want players to become disappointed if it ends right when they are getting into it or starting to understand the logic behind it.

My intention in designing the game in part was to have the game's inner workings (the relationships between and definitions of the colors, for example) to gradually reveal themselves to the point at which players might be able to take control of where they are going. This is why I need to give them a clear place to go, i.e. an objective. I'm not sure I'll be able to completely resolve this problem because if the objective is too obvious, then players won't have the freedom to make spontaneous choices or simply take pleasure in exploring the game. Jane points out participants in Divided Attention can make a choice to play "strategically" or to make decisions meaningful to themselves. In other words, you can make choices trying to move toward a color you think may be popular (to fulfill the goal of being in the largest group at the end), or you can answer the questions to form a personal profile of youself and see where you end up. I like the idea of keeping both possibilities open.

Jane proposed the idea of having some players instructed to close their eyes during certain events. I'm intrigued by this idea and may incorporate it in a later game, but I think I want ths game to be an eyes-open experience. I don't want players to feel like something is happening to others that they don't know about. The concept of Divided Attention is that we can be with other people, experiencing the exact same thing, but unknowingly be separated from them by belief, religion, values, whatever. Then there's the practical problem of figuring out how to let people know when they can open their eyes again. I want to stay away from spoken commands or any kind of interaction between players beyond the voting events.

I'll be showing an updated version at 7 p.m. in the lecture hall on the Third Street graduate campus. I'm hoping it will be complete in terms of length and that it will have an ending.