Game Design Statement: Divided Attention

One of the hardest things to do is to get a large group of people interested in playing a game together. In any group, there will be some who are too impatient to learn rules, some who don’t like competition, some who suffer from performance anxiety, and some who simply aren’t interested in games. In creating Divided Attention, I wanted to make a game that would be easy to learn and compelling enough that everyone would want to play. At the same time, I wanted the game to address issues of a social division and self-categorization.

I chose the format of projecting the game in a theater or auditorium because it is an environment in which people expect to be entertained without active participation. The appearance of a game in a theater challenges the idea of passive spectatorship and comments on the invisible groupings that exist within a crowd that has come together for a unified purpose (i.e. a movie or lecture).

Divided Attention, created in PowerPoint, is self-contained; no previous knowledge or instructions are necessary to participate. Players do not need to move from their seats or interact with each other, except to glance around when they are asked to raise their hands. These were crucial design decisions. I wanted the images alone to control a player’s movement through the game and to sweep viewers into the action almost before they know what’s going on.
As viewer’s ideas, beliefs and opinions do not affect the outcome of a movie, one of my challenges was to make a fixed, repeatable game that had an unpredictable ending despite having the same set of images each time. The way I decided to approach this problem was to capitalize on the only variables in the scenario I was creating: the players’ opinions and whims. These factors, and a little luck, determine how players move through the game and with which players they are grouped.



Divided Attention begins with brief onscreen instructions. Players then are asked to divide themselves based on the month in which they were born. This is accomplished visually: the months are randomly grouped into four boxes, each of which is assigned a color: blue, red, green or yellow. Players are asked to keep track of their geographical location, as the colors shift during the game. What follows is a series of episodes in which players are asked to make decisions. Some of these decisions are based on opinion (such as choosing a preferred celebrity or activity); others are purely strategic (“migrations,” in which players can move directly from one color to another).

Decisions result in either the player staying the same color or changing to another color. I attempted to design the game so each color would gradually become associated with a personality type. For example, if a player repeatedly makes decisions that indicate they are outgoing and attracted to fame, he or she will move towards red. If a player demonstrates a preference for humanitarian concerns, he or she will move toward green. The game, however, is not intended to be a personality test. I wanted to create decisions that players could make without factual knowledge (unlike, say, Trivial Pursuit). It was also important that astute players could figure out the color associations by the end of the game and try to take control of the outcome.

The object of Divided Attention is to belong to the largest group at the end of the game. Throughout the game, “votes” are taken so players can see in which colors other players reside. I originally intended to invent a game in which players did not need to communicate with each other at all. I soon realized, however, that it would be impossible to create an interactive experience with fixed projected images. As Chris Crawford points out in “The Art of Interactive Design,” “Participation is not the same thing as interaction.” Crawford defines interaction as “a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think and speak.” In my game, the “actors” are the audience members and their means of speaking is my raising their hands during votes. The projected images comprise the game engine through which the players are engaged, but because they cannot change in response to players’ actions, it is not an actor.

The game remains a work-in-progress. While players enjoy playing it, the goal of the game does not seem to provide a satisfying payoff. I am in the process of rethinking this element. One of my ideas to make the game cooperative, with the goal being that all players must end the game in the same area/color for everybody to win. If even one player is separated from the group, everybody loses. I think I also need to work on making the game play more meaningful by giving players a stronger sense of control over their movements. This could be accomplished by changing the text in the game, but it’s more likely that a major thematic overhaul is needed.

Divided Attention was originally conceived as an art project. My overarching motivation for creating the game was to explore the arbitrariness and fluidity of social divisions. I was thinking a lot about sports, politics, communities, class, gender—any arena in which exist an “us” and a “them.” Thus, Divided Attention always begins with all players together, followed by a random splintering, the machinations of grouping and regrouping, joining and defecting, and, finally, the reuniting of the participants.