OpenBracket

My longest title to date I think….

So some of ya’s may know I have been working on a project here at work where we are building a game in flash. This game has given me some thoughts on design and I would like to comment on several thoughts (should only take a minute xD)  and share my experience.

I wasn’t included on the gameplay design meeting, but that’s understandable since I was still new to this company. I’m not bashing the game here, I am merely examining it and trying to see develop a better approach for this style of game so in the future I have some of my thoughts organized.

The game we made/still working on, is an educational game. We have to display large quantities of text and put the player in a role that is related to the content. In this game, you’re a scientist. So what type of gameplay do you present to the player? Do you have them play more of a sim, where they play a project manager, reading text and making decisions with these designs affecting their scores?  Or do you make it more of an RTS where the user can build and upgrade units, facilities, tests, labs, etc? Or is it an RPG where the more you come to understand of the project the more efficiently you can perform tasks affecting your score?

The challenge to keep in mind this isn’t a game you are designing for you. This is a game the client wants to deliver their content. And this makes it tricky, which makes it fun ^_^

The approach we took was the first of the ones I describe, similar to a sim. This method is a good way to deliver content, but the playability and fun to be had is limited in my opinion. What I could have done would have been more of a RTS where the user can upgrade their facilities, teach their workers new skills, and try to reach their goal before time or resources were depleted. This method would allow you to display a large amount of text during upgrade steps.

With our game you have 3 types of workers: Politicians, researchers and workers. To make this an RTS we could make the end goal reachable by several means, such as having your researchers discover 5 steps and the workers complete 2 and the politicians complete 1, or maybe basing completion on a overall score tally from steps completed, which would let the user play several ways. There are a number of ways an RTS could be shaped out of our needs which would have been more engaging I think.

Again, the important thing to remember is that we have to provide the info the client wants.

Looking at the RPG style, we could have each time the player interacts with a NPC to gain information (the content that the client wants displayed) your player gains experience. So the more people they gather info from, the players would increase their stats, allowing them higher percents in succeeding in the game.

And across all 3 styles you have your NPCs requesting you to make decisions for them. This would be the part that would make our player actually read their data instead of just running around to complete the game.

In the end, I would have gone towards more of a RTS style game, to present the data and engage the player. I feel that a sim, with meters and popups a little bland when you are trying to present a large amount of text. You want the player to be engaged enough that they don’t even realize they are learning.