Chapter 8 Testing
8.2 Revision of the game
In the second round of testing we tested the game on a larger user-group. We made some changes to the game from our preliminary testing, and added a tutorial that explained the most basic parts of our game. The tutorial can be viewed in appendix A. The biggest changes we did was reworking the career ladder, making the assignment structure more advanced and adding tons of textual feedback messages.
The career ladder was redone in order for the flow of the game to be more natural. In our first implementation the connection between job title, salary and requirements were inconsistent. By balancing this it became easier for the players to understand what jobs they could apply for. We also added better information on what needed to be improved in order to get certain jobs. This was mainly done by creating a dynamic feedback feature to the job application process and informing the players when certain stats had increased sufficiently to be suitable for new jobs. The dynamic feedback feature gives the players an indication of what stats they need to improve and how close they are to getting the job. We did not want to present these values directly as we wanted to maintain informational complexity and uncertainty in the game.
Illustration 25: Feedback on job application
The assignment structure was also redone. We wanted more flexibility in the way we could present assignments to the players. The new structure gave us complete flexibility in the number of assignments per level, if it should be treated as an exam or not and made the assignments more consistent. Reworking the structure also made it easier to edit and add assignments. This helped us a lot when we made new assignments for the final test round. The gameplay was made a lot more intuitive by providing the player with more information. The log was changed to give detailed information on every action the player takes. In addition to this we made pop-up windows with all the important notices that the players need to know in order to plan their turn. A part of this change was remodelling the weekend reports that come at the end of each turn. The weekend report now formats and presents a detailed description of every event that is scheduled to happen during the next turn. This includes when the rent is due and when the player needs to purchase new clothing.
We also wanted to make the goals a more integral part of the game. The version of the game used during the first test round did not have any clear way of completing the game. We
wanted to see how the gameplay functioned for people who did not know the game mechanics before we choose the goals. We decided that the game needed concise goals, and different
Illustration 26: Example of an informational pop up window
goals that the players could strive to achieve depending on their skill. We decided to add a story related goal of getting the best job in the game, as well as additional goals for managing the four main player statistics in the game (Work experience, happiness, money and
education).
We implemented a score keeping system that tracked player progress, time spent and
commodities gathered. The primary influence of the end score is how fast the player is able to increase the main statistics. We linked several different goals to these statistics. The easiest goal to strive for is just improving one's best score. The player can end the game at any time, or the game ends because the player failed. At this time a score is presented to the players based on their performance. Additionally there is an end goal consisting of getting all the four statistics to within a certain percentage of their max value. Achieving this presents the players with a congratulatory screen and an indication of their success on the main screen. The last and hardest goal the players can strive for is to get perfect scores in the shortest amount of time.
We also changed all the names of the different places in the game. The original game were made with humour in mind and as a reference to the original Jones in the Fast Lane. For instance the clothing store was called Clothes'R'us, a play on the American toy store company "Toys'R'us". Even though the testers found the names to be humorous, they also caused some confusion. For the sake of simplicity we decided to change all the names to descriptive names that clearly indicate the purpose of the location to the player.
The general game balance was also redone. We saw that the game was too hard for players who were unaware of the game mechanics. Our experience of the gameplay was completely different than what our testers experienced. We made it easier to climb the career ladder, we gave the players more time each turn, a lot of actions now cost less time points to perform and we made it easier for the players to get enough money to pay for rent and other expenses. Some additional functionality was introduced to improve the gameplay, like rent income from money deposited at the bank and lottery where the player can win money.
The user interface was changed to accommodate all the above mentioned changes and also based on the feedback from the first test round. Time management was viewed as such an important part of the game that we wanted a large graphical representation of the time left
each turn. This was done by adding a large clock in the bottom left corner of the screen. We also made it easier for the players to track their progress by adding four bars that track the four main player statistics. The four bars have icons related to them that light up when the player has achieved a sufficient amount within the certain stat. This was done to give additional indications of progress to the player.
All of these changes were done based on the feedback and our experience with the initial testing we did. These changes were vital to ensure that we got the results we wanted from the main test round.