Game Design

The final step of the specification phase was the specification of the game design of the skiing game. The game design of the skiing game was done based on the lenses of Schell [14]. Schell defines one hundred lenses, which all provide a different perspective through which a game can be viewed. Some of the lenses defined by Schell were accessed to make decisions for the final game design of the skiing game.

Two very essential lenses for this game are the Lens of Reward and the Lens of Punishment. Rewards are given for good behaviours, while punishments are given for bad behaviours. Essentially, this means that rewards and punishments can be seen as a form of feedback. In the skiing game, players get rewards for skiing through the gates and punishments for colliding with the obstacles. The rewards and punishments are given in the form of points, by respectively adding or subtracting points from the total number of earned points. It is decided that skiing through a gate will deliver the player as many points as colliding with an obstacle costs. An amount of one hundred points was chosen for this. This is done to make players of the skiing game aware that the mistakes they make in the game, by colliding with an obstacle, could lead to serious problems in case it would happen during actual skiing. However, it was decided that collisions with obstacles should not cost more points than the amount of points that can be earned by skiing through a gate, to prevent players from becoming demotivated.

Another important lens for the skiing game is the Lens of Essential Experience, which indicates what the essential experience of the game should be for the player. For the skiing game, the essential experience that the player should have is two-sided. On the one hand the skiing game is designed to support the ski-learning process, while on the other hand the skiing game should be fun to play and should make skiing on a revolving slope more fun. Essential to those experiences are a game that has a clear but challenging goal [3] and offers means or techniques to reach that goal [25]. That is why the goal of the game, earning as many points as possible, is so simple and requires the simple action of skiing at the right place on the slope to reach it. By having such a simple goal in the game, the game also complies with the Lens of Flow. The Lens of Flow states that the game should hold the

player’s focus, which is most likely to happen for games with a simple goal. Within this context,

“simple” means easy to understand and clear, it does not mean that it is easy to perform. Also, playing against a human opponent is seen as fun by most people, while it also helps them in their learning process since they want to increase their skills in order to be better than their opponent. That is why it will be attempted to make the skiing game a multiplayer game.

The next lens that is important for the skiing game is the Lens of Surprise. In the serious skiing game, the aim is to surprise players by the varying placement of the gates and obstacles. That is why the locations of gates and obstacles will be generated randomly in the game. This adds chance to the game, which makes the game also comply with the Lens of Chance. Additionally, this is also a reason why a multiplayer version of the game is desirable. If the game exists in a multiplayer version, players

47 will get the opportunity to surprise each other. This will be done by removing gates and obstacles that are hit by one player from the game, which prevents other players from colliding with these specific gates and obstacles as well. This way, a player can prevent his/her fellow players from, for example, skiing through a gate by skiing through the gate himself/herself just before the fellow players can perform this action.

Additionally, an interesting lens that has been included in the requirements analysis that was described in section 5.2 is the Lens of Fairness. It must be noted that a multiplayer game, which is an envisioned option for the skiing game, may not always be fair. One player could clearly be better skilled at skiing than another player, simply because they differ in skiing experience. The Lens of Fairness offers a possible solution for this problem, which is the implementation of an asymmetrical game. In symmetrical games every player gets equal resources and powers assigned, whereas in asymmetrical games players get different resources and powers [14]. In the skiing game this could be done by giving players that are far ahead of their opponents, which clearly indicates they are

performing better in the game, more points deduction for colliding with obstacles, and less points added to their score for successfully skiing through a gate. This way, players with different skill levels can still compete against each other.

Another lens that could be interesting for the skiing game is the Lens of Triangularity, which was also included in the requirements analysis in section 5.2. Triangularity is the situation where the player has to choose between a low risk/low reward option and a high risk/high reward option. Overall, triangularity makes games and the decisions made in games more interesting for the players. If time allows, triangularity could be added to the game by rewarding more points for gates that were difficult to reach, for example because they are placed very close to an obstacle. Obviously this means that gates that are easy to reach, because they are not near any obstacles, deliver less points. The final lens that is important for the skiing game is the Lens of the Elemental Tetrad. According to Schell [14], the elemental tetrad contains the four basic elements that form a game, which are mechanics, story, aesthetics, and technology. The game mechanics are the procedures and rules of the game, including the goal of the game and how it can be reached. The story of the game is the collection of events that happen in the game. Aesthetics are the look and feel of the game, including audio, feel, and taste. Technology are the materials and interactions that make the game possible to exist. According to Schell, all four elements of the elemental tetrad are equally important to the design of the game. Figure 5.4 gives a depiction of the elemental tetrad. As is shown in Figure 5.4, aesthetics are said to be the most visible to the players, technology the least visible, and mechanics and story are in between those two.

48 The elemental tetrad of the skiing game is not in perfect harmony. However, this is not seen as problematic. Three elements are clearly present in the game, which are aesthetics, mechanics, and technology. Aesthetics are attempted to be achieved by the three-dimensional modeling and colouring of the gates and obstacles, and the accompanying sounds that are played as a form of feedback when the player collides with either one of them. The mechanics of the game are present in its clear procedures, rules, and goal, which can be summarized as follows: try to gain as many points as possible by skiing through the blue gates and avoiding the red obstacles. The technology of the game, enabling the game to exist, is reached through the use of the Unity 3D Game Engine, which allows for augmented reality development. The element that is missing, however, is the story. The game does not contain a story. Nonetheless, this is not seen as a problem, since the lack of the story adds to the simplicity of the skiing game, which is expected to be desired by people who want to play a game for the sole purpose of skiing.

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