Deriving a Game Design from Questionnaire Items

Once the model of personality and associated questionnaire within that model were identified, the project moved to the task of generating game metrics and associated game mechanics from the aforementioned questionnaire (see Section 3.4). This task consisted of identifying promising behaviours to be measured (undertaken in consultation with subject matter experts), translating those behaviours to game metrics, and translating those metrics into mechanics to be implemented in the final game.

The following sub-sections will reflect on the process of selecting personality questions and deriving game mechanics.

5.1.3.1 Subject Matter Consultation and Initial Design

The first step in the process of deriving a game design from the personality questionnaire was the interpretation of items within the questionnaire (see Section 3.4.2). This ties back into answering SQ1 by first identifying the behaviours that the questionnaire measures with the goal of replicating it for the video game tool.

As this task relies on the interpretation of the questionnaire items, it is a relatively subjective task. In order to avoid misunderstandings, subject matter experts from the area of personality research were consulted: Professor Ken Kirkby, a professor of Psychiatry, and Dr. Allison Matthews from the division of Psychology within the School of Medicine and both from the University of Tasmania. The goal of this step was to identify the questionnaire items that could best be measured by in-game metrics. This would then form the basis of the answer to SQ1, charting out the opportunity space in designing a video game tool to measure personality and focusing specifically on the questionnaire and how that tool can be used in this context. This was done via a workshop that involved the subject matter experts from the fields of personality and video game design and relying on the experience of the experts to aid in the interpretation of the questionnaire items and translate them into behaviours to be observed (see Section 3.4.1).

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The result was a list of behaviours which could be measured in a digital game environment which were then distilled into metrics to be measured within the video game as described in Section 3.4.2 and elaborated upon in Sections 3.4.2.1 to 3.4.2.4. The workshop process with subject matter experts included the requirements for each metric to be measured – if a metric worked only in a social system, only in the first encounter by the player, only in repeat encounters, etc. The workshop process also extended to what metrics would be feasible to collect for the project at hand, concerning time, budget, and alternative methods for ideal but impractical metrics. The goal was keeping the list as broad as possible at this stage to allow for the examination of as many facets as possible. This resulted in both the anonymous gift system (see Section 5.2.6) which promise for presenting social situations in a single player game as well as the aesthetic system (see Section 5.2.5) which showed the least player interaction.

The anonymous gift system and the results in Sections 0, 0, and 0 show that although the video game tool was a purely single player experience, it was able to measure social responses as outlined in Sections 3.4.2.3.1, 3.4.2.3.2, and 3.4.2.3.3. Conversely, this broad list also led to the implementation of the aesthetic system which was implemented to fulfill requirements outlined in Sections 3.4.2.2.2, 3.4.2.2.3, and 3.4.2.2.4 but which was ultimately ignored by a large portion of the players. The reasons for the low participation numbers in the aesthetic system as well as possible ways to improve the system to increase interaction with players is discussed in Section 5.2.5.

Both of the aforementioned systems could have been dismissed at this stage of the process; the anonymous gift system due to it being an inherently social system for a single player game, and the aesthetic system for how little it affected the game experience. Ultimately, the project benefitted more from the inclusion of those systems and would have lost useful data points if they had been dismissed here.

In hindsight, this process was necessarily vague in its execution given that the task of identifying game behaviours that can inform personality profile construction is still a new field with little prior work in the area (see Section 3.4). As a consequence, there were no guidelines to follow for

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this undertaking, and any missteps taken during this project were necessary to the establishment of this process. In answering SQ1, this step has shown the value of subject matter expertise as well as the merit in keeping the possible design space broad at the onset of the project to facilitate more options later on.

5.1.3.2 Game Metrics to Game Mechanics

The next step was to derive the appropriate game mechanics that are required for the metrics identified and to combine them into a cohesive game design in order to answer SQ1. The goal here was to establish a game design that allowed for all of the needed metrics while still feeling like a sensible game design. This step continued to utilize the workshop format from before with the discussion focusing on which game mechanics would be needed in order to implement the game metrics previously identified while adhering to principles of good game design (Jesse Schell 2008; Despain et al. 2013; Salmond 2016) as described in Section 3.4.1.

The result of this step was the solidification of a game design as described in Sections 3.4.2.1 to 3.4.2.4. The process of arriving at that final game design was highly iterative and much of the mechanics that ultimately ended up in the video game were informed by the development and exploration of the video game itself. Extensive debates were held between subject matter experts during that process to determine how the game mechanics best fit together for a cohesive game while still allowing for the breadth of player behaviours to be measured in order to better understand the opportunities and challenges in the design process as described in SQ1.

However there still remained a number of FFM facets that were not operationalized into game mechanics. There are two main reasons why this remains the case even as the game was pushed to the experimentation phase. Firstly, certain facets were represented by highly subjective questionnaire items. Although design ideas for such items were theorized, most fell outside of the scope of the project either in time and/or budget. Secondly, the number of game mechanics currently implemented already pushed the game in many different directions. As the project stands at the time of writing of this document, the designed video game already tries to target as

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much of the FFM facets as possible considering the experience level of the researchers involved in designing, implementing, and maintaining the video game tool.

Since the list of game metrics to be used to measure player behaviour was kept as broad as possible, this portion of the design process was forced to be spread wide across multiple in-game systems. Even metrics and mechanics that didn't make it into the final design were subject to extensive discussion as to the feasibility of their addition. Time constraints ultimately meant that the end of the possible allotted time for this portion of the design phase still saw promising metrics and associated mechanics under consideration.

One possible system that may have suffered from this compressed time frame is the NPC system as described in Sections 3.4.2.4.1 and 3.4.2.4.2 showing a low interaction rate in Section 0 which made data analysis unreliable. The specific reasons as to why this might be and how to potentially address this are discussed further in Section 3.5.7, but the NPC system in particular was added very late in the development cycle of the video game tool. As a result, it is likely that the system did not get the same level of iteration and scrutiny as other systems.

Thus, in answering SQ1, this process benefitted from subject matter experts from both the field of personality psychology and game design working with game design principles to determine the design of the video game tool. However, time limitations forced some systems such as the NPC system to undergo fewer design iterations which may have ultimately affected the rate at which players interacted with that system.

In the future, it is possible that a more rigid and regimented approach to the finalization of design would avoid neglected systems as described above. Specifying a hard cutoff period where no additional systems should be added to the game and focusing on iteration and testing of existing mechanics to that point would help ensure that all systems receive at least some care to their place in the flow of the game.