Is the game appealing to the players?

As we found out in chapter two, we needed the game to be motivational in order for it to be appealing to the players. The key aspects we found were challenge, goal, feedback, curiosity and uncertainty. We believe that all these aspects are more or less present in the game we developed. The players are challenged through the questions in the game, and indirectly through the scoring system and their personal desire to do their best. These challenges were the major fun factor for most of the testers of our game:

I liked the quizzes at the 'University' pretty good :)

The goals we implemented in the game also added to the game appeal amongst the testers. Some of the testers even played the game longer and got a higher score than we developers did. As we look at the comments from the testers, we see that several complained that they had to spend too much time on gaining money and eating food. This ruined some of the fun for some of the players. This issue lies in the balancing of money, education and work within the game. From what we see now after the testing is done, we could probably have made the game much easier when it comes to obtaining money, and rather put more effort into making more educational questions. After all, the most entertaining and most encouraging for the gameplay were the challenges that went directly on the players knowledge of system development:

I probably would have played the game if it was more focused around the system development assignments, and not work/food/rest.

This show how the students' appeal towards educational computer games also comes through the potential gain of knowledge.

Another important aspect of educational games is feedback. As mentioned earlier, our questions did not have any other feedback then feedback on whether the player got the question right of wrong. As a result, some of the testers felt that they lacked the proper feedback. When for instance when faced with a multiple choice question, one of the students just redid the question until he got the answer right. He explained how he did not learn

anything while doing so. The question just became an obstacle he advanced past by answering the question at random without thinking about why or what he actually answered:

No, as the parts I hadn't learned yet through the course were easily skipped during my quick play-through by playing "Master Mind" with answers.

As a whole we feel that we failed a bit on giving proper feedback in our game, but we got the verification that good feedback is an important factor when it comes to educational computer games. The feedback we gave the player was in the form of "You answered the question correctly." or "You answered the question wrong." To improve on this we could have been better at giving text feedback if the player answered wrong. Another nice improvement that could be added is to make it possible to attach a solution-image to the questions.

We were satisfied with the way we implemented curiosity into the game. The testers told us that they really enjoyed the questions, and were encouraged to play more just to see what questions that came next. Further we noticed that several of the testers liked the fact that you had to switch jobs all the time, and that it was difficult to know which jobs to apply for. The fact that you have to apply to the new jobs and that the criteria for getting the job were partly based on numbers hidden to the player, resulted in anticipation and curiosity for the player. This illustrates how our findings are in line with Malone's Optimal level of information

complexity (Malone, 1980) and Gee's Information just in time. (Gee, 2005) Curiosity and

anticipation are important factors when making educational games.

When it comes to uncertainty we feel that the game is mediocre. The main uncertainty factor in our game is that it has a very high number of move options. This is also making the game more re-playable. The players can learn from their previous errors and replay the game with

another tactic. There are many ways the player can reach the different goals in the game. Since we made the game quite easy, we wanted the testers to advance far into the game, there were little uncertainty if the main goals were reached or not. The only thing that prevented the player from finishing the game was if you had too little money, or was unable to advance past a question. We added some uncertainty to the game by adding the chance of getting mugged or that the player's house was being robbed. This happened a little too often, and resulted in some testers complaining about it. Some of the testers also complained that they got the same questions over and over again if you failed. As the game is now it is possible to add several questions to the same assignment level, and make the question appear random from the given assignment level. As we have this only a few places in the game which the testers tested, few noticed it. This shows how it is important with uncertainty and make sure that the player is not bored with repetitive content while playing.

Overall we were quite satisfied that the testers in general liked the appeal of the game. We also noticed how the educational aspect of the game was the main motivating factor for the testers:

I would definitely have played this game if the group teachers updated it with content that is relevant to what we're doing right now. [...]

It would make it easier for me, as I have a job on the side and it'd motivate me more if I could just launch the game and have that weeks

questions loaded in and be displayed as practical and theoretical tasks (accompanied with the answers though)