Activity 1: Player Experience Goals

Target Audience: SAM

• Age: 12
  • Gaming Background:
  – First game – Wii sports and Mario Carts
  – Is a long time fan of Minecraft
  – Loves to make his own games using simple tools
  – All G/PG games (no others are allowed in the house)
  – Spent a lot of time catching Pokémon in the park with his parents
  • Gameplay experience
  – His parents are early adopters of technology (e.g., the first to buy a
  Wii, and are now into VR headsets)
  – Has been playing games since he can remember
  – Plays approximately 30 minutes per day, but always gets a bit more
  time on weekends

Initial Player Experience Goals based on Sam & Side Scroller Design Brief

Above is a persona profile for a twelve year old boy called Sam. Our first task was to develop PX goals based on what we think would best suit Sam. Brainstorming these goals involved analysing this persona. Particularly; the games which Sam plays, age appropriateness and time available to play. Here is what we came up with:

Providing a Cooperative Experience:
Sam enjoys playing the Wii and has parents which are involved with his gaming habits. For these reasons we thought it would be appropriate to create a game which Sam can play with his parents and/ or friends.

Allowing Player Creation in Game:
Based on the fact that Sam is a big fan of Minecraft it seems highly likely that he would enjoy playing a game with player creation mechanics.

Incorporating Exploration into Design:
Again, Minecraft is a great exploration game so it is likely Sam enjoys gameplay which allows the player to travel further than they should/ need to.

Initial Game Ideas:

Cooperative Game

• Multi-character cooperation controlled by one or many players (like Zelda Triforce Heroes). Use multiple characters to complete game objectives/puzzles
  • Cooperation similar to Minecraft
  • Simple puzzles and objectives – suits short 30 minute play sessions
  • Could play with his parents
  • Sense of achievement out of creating his own solutions to puzzles
• Player with AI Buddy. Helps each other through levels
• Ambiguous cooperative play (room to betray/ prank each other).

Exploration Game

• Dark side scroller, uses torch to explore dark environment
  • Likes exploring, similar to minecraft
  • Likes entrigue in exploring, like people like when exploring minecraft worlds (finding villages, etc.)

Collector Game

• Dungeon explorer, where goal is to collect all the treasure/ equipment. Could also collect more tools to help gather treasure in dungeon. Get all treasure, better gear, unlock new characters.
  • Likes collecting (as evident with pokemon Go)
  • Likes dungeon raiding (as dungeon raiding is in Minecraft)
• Kids stuck in an department store.

Final Game Concept

The final concept we decided on combined components of all of our initial game ideas. We decided to create:

A puzzle oriented, cooperative dungeon explorer game. Player (or players) must control the two heroes with their unique abilities to traverse their way through a dungeon to riches and glory.

Final PX Goals

These final PX goals were decided based on Sam’s persona and appropriateness to our game concept. Each of these goals taps into a PX contruct, displayed in italics:

Providing a Cooperative Experience:
This social attribute gives the player the opportunity to play with friends or on their own as two heroes. Each hero is distinct. This allows both to make a meaningful contribution to the gameplay. This kind of gameplay works especially well with puzzle solving.

Puzzle Solving Gameplay:
Each of the game’s heroes have unique abilities. To complete the game they need each other to complete puzzles throughout the dungeon. Multi-dimension puzzle solving through cooperative gameplay is a great way to engage cognitive skills.

Incorporating Exploration into Design:
A dungeon wouldn’t be a proper dungeon without exploration! The side scroller brief along with Sam’s enjoyment of exploration gameplay make this a perfect goal to have for our game as it gives players the option to be creative with how they reach the end of the level.