Correll argues that stereotypes influence a person’s self-assessments in two ways:

• Negative stereotypes lead to decreased task performance
• Negative stereotypes lead individuals to judge their performance by a harsher standard.

If you tell a person that they are bad at something, they will eventually start to doubt themselves and lose aspiration for that career. Studies show how women exposed to a stereotype on spatial ability have a 14% drop in accuracy compared to women who are exposed to a positive stereotype regarding the same task (Wraga, Helt, Jacobs and Sullivan, 2006). If gender bias is capable of having such severe effects on career aspirations, is it possible that society is instilling these beliefs in young girls that are just starting their educational career?

Research suggest that gender bias begins at infancy where newborns are exposed to what it means to be male or female by their parents (Lauer & Lauer, 1994; Santrock, 1994; Kaplan, 1991). Parents unconsciously treat their children differently based on their gender. This includes the types of toys, behavioral expectations, and preference in colors for toys, furniture, clothing, etc (Thorne, 1993). According to the American Association of University Women (1995), “Children start to define their gender identities in their preschool years”. In most preschools, you may find girls partaking in dramatic play, while boy’s play with building blocks. Parents and teachers, unknowingly promote these activities, “girls are praised when they play with dolls while boys are likely to be ignored when displaying nurturing behavior.”. As a result, children are capable of denying their own reality when it does not conform to their gender expectations. An example of such a denial was found with a child whose mother is a doctor, yet stated that “only” men are doctors (Sheldon, 1990).

Studies show that a parent’s perception of a child’s academic potential is more influential then the child’s actual grades (Frome, Eccles 1998). Eccles (1983) believes that these influences could lead to occupational choices later in life. If parental influence is so potent during these formative years, then how could this be used positively to influence change?

Much of this change will need to come from the foundational experiences that parents expose their young girls to in early childhood. During these years, much of these experiences take the form of play. Play helps in engaging a child’s imagination, socialization, cognition, emotion (Nicolopoulou, 1993), and allows for “memories of awakening to the existence of some potential, aroused by early experiences of self and world“ (Cobb 1977 pg. 3).

Interactions should not be guided color coding schemes such as pink and lavender alternatives (Thorne, 1993) to STEM based toys, or by the placement of Dora’s face on the box to make it socially acceptable for a girl to play with. They should be guided by allowing young girls the opportunity to experience these topics in ways that are meaningful.

Communal Preference
Taking another perspective on bias, there are studies that indicate how various differences in male and female preference may be to blame for female’s lack of interest in STEM occupations. An example of this is brought up in a study (Diekman., Clark, Johnston, Brown., & Steinberg 2011) which found women to prefer communal goals more then men. This same study showed that STEM based careers are portrayed as individualistic, for example a programmer and his computer, or chemist and his test tube. A simple switch in description, which highlighted collaborative aspects of the career (e.g. “Mentor new members of my statistics group in doing data analysis.”), females showed a measurable increase to STEM based activities compared to males. This indicates that, outside of gender stereotypes, there are also STEM misconceptions that would need to be ratified.

Lack of Role Models
An unfortunate by-product of having a lack of women in STEM occupations, is a lack of female role models. In higher education, it was found that the more female graduate students in STEM programs increased the popularity of STEM course selection for female undergraduate students (Griffith 2010). Female faculty in introductory STEM based classes showed increased grades in female college students (Carl, Page & West 2009), and same-sex mentorship of graduate students has shown to increase productivity in both male and female participants, compared to cross-sex mentorship (Goldstein, 1979). A separate study of middle school students showed that periodically bringing in female role models from around the community had a positive effect on attitudes towards women in STEM field for both girls and boys (Smith 1996).
With a skewed ratio between women and males in STEM based occupations, it is suffice to say that the female voice may unintentionally get drowned out, by their male counterparts based on sheer quantity of males. Increasing the amount female led mentorships, will take time with that caveat that more women pursue STEM careers. Till then, we need to offer women a megaphone and a soapbox slightly higher then males to reach the minds of the young girls they are trying to help. Their has been attempts at this, most notably Ada Lovelace Day, named after the first female computer scientist in history. During this day, female STEM professionals are asked to write female empowering messages on their personal blogs. Females from around the world have joined the mission, which could be found

In Search of Meaning
Evidence shows that children find some STEM subjects ‘dull’, ‘boring’, ‘cold’ and ‘impersonal’. This leads to a poor affective dimension in STEM education (Alsop and Watts 2000). Campbell states that, “conventional science education does us all a disservice, misrepresenting the nature of science and at the same time alienating learners. There is a great need to reestablish the human-ness [sic] of science.”(Campbell 1999, pg. 4) This may be due to formal learning environments, such as traditional classroom instruction, attempting to present new content in settings that are not representative of how the knowledge is used in everyday life. Unfortunately real world problems are typically not as well defined as those found in a text book (Choi & Hannafin, pg. 56). Looking at problems in such an unauthentic way can ultimately result in unsuccessful transfer of the knowledge to real world applications (Choi & Hannafin, pg. 53).

Summary
All of the arguments above, bring to focus the importance to creating authentic experiences, offering female mentorships, opportunities for cooperative interaction and eliminating both gender and occupational stereotypes. Each have shown that on their own, they result in negative consequences towards the retention of young women pursuing STEM based occupations. Instead, we should focus on their identity, self-esteem and confidence to foster both their personal and professional classroom identity (Day and Leitch 2001). Avoiding the topic by promoting special exception, will only bring about new gender expectation to society which feed into the biases that we are attempting to diminish (i.e. construction blocks are okay for young girls if they are pink and lavender).

Schank (2000) would describe the expectations that occur as “scripts”, which people use to predict outcomes. The script of a young girl not being able to pursue STEM activities is an example of a culturally common story, much like how he describes an insurance sales man being boring before they even says a word. In order to “flip this script”, we need to offer an opportunity for young girls and their families to consume, create and share new stories with the world.

When thinking about the distribution of a message, George Eliot believes that “…art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fello-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. (1856/1963, pg. 270) This quote brings to questions, “could art or other media be enough to ignite social change?” According to Harriet Bleech Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852/1994), which has been said to have a major influence on changing public opinion about slavery – yes.

More recently Macmillan Children’s Book Publishing and Animal Asia have teamed up to promote Moon Bear, a children’s book that has been used to address the address the thousands of moon bears that are cruelly “milked” on a daily basis for their bile, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Al Gore is also betting on media, as a way to help

Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is described as “a computer- generated display that allows or compels the user (or users) to have a sense of being present in an environment other than the one they are actually in, and to interact with that environment” (Schroeder, 1996, pg. 25). This allows for the ‘user’ to experience a immersive sense of ‘being there’ (Taylor, 2002) and having ability to interact with each other as well as with computer-controlled non-player characters (NPCs) by assuming different personae, better known as their ‘avatar’.

Avatars

An avatar is a self-imposed representation of a participant interacting within a virtual environment, and is far more then an object manipulated by a participant. It is a method in which users could embody themselves into these virtual environments (Taylor, 2002). As T.L Taylor (2002) points out, avatars are

“… the material out of which relationships and interactions are embodied: much as in offline life with its corporeal bodies, digital bodies are used in a variety of ways – to greet, to play, to signal group affiliation, to convey opinions or feelings, and to create closeness.”

This graphical representation combined with actions, communicational and social affordances brought about through a virtual world, help in developing a sense of being ‘there’ from the player (Taylor, 2002). This immersion results in avatar behaviors that mimic the social constructs of ‘real life’. An example of this is shown by how participants feel a sense of ‘personal space’ from within a virtual environment. Similar to ‘real life’, physical proximity between avatars can be used to signal friendship and aggression towards another player (Taylor, 2002).

In this paper, we will discuss how we could influence emotional engagement in children by understanding their needs, developmental abilities and experiential goals, while increasing their sense of presence in the system. These influences could then be used as a guideline for both aesthetic and mechanical design choices that may have an impact on a child’s virtual world experience.

Growth of Children Participating in Virtual Worlds

Computers have become much more accessible for children around the world, with 71% of households in developing countries owning a computer and 65.6% having internet access (International Telecommunications Union, 2010). With the increase of working households, many parents use media as “a chance to get their chores done, quiet their kids down, or just have some ‘me’ time, knowing that their kids are ‘safe’ — not playing outside, and less likely to be making trouble around the house” (Rideout & Hamel, 2006, p. 32). As a result, the popularity of virtual world registered accounts has dramatically increased for this demographic. KZero reports (2011) that the 6-10 year old demographic has grown from 77 million, to 272 million in only 2 years.

Before being able to successfully design a virtual world for this audience it is important to understand the developmental and social differences amongst the group, when compared to adults. Bellow is a brief overview of relevant literature depicting aspects of developmental and social milestones that could influence the methods in which children interacts with virtual worlds.

Aesthetics: Avatars and Non-Playing Characters

Individuals instinctually formulate quick and lasting judgments of people they meet for the first time, based primarily on nonbehavioral cues (McArthur, 1982). This is what formulates our ‘first impression’, and bases how we formulate our initial interactions with each another (Isbister, 2006). Katherine Isbister (2006) argues that people are also influenced by game character in the same way. Understanding how people react to the “social surface” can be beneficial to when designing a game character.

Babyface Effect

Research has shown that adults with facial features that share similarities to a baby’s face are associated with babyish traits (Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998). It describes a tendency to see people with baby-faced features as more naive, less accountable for their actions and more honest (Masip, Garrido, & Herrero, 2004), when compared to more mature features.

The physical features for this bias resemble the features of an infant. They consist of large eyes and pupils, small chin, high eyebrows and forehead, small nose, and full lips and cheeks (Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998). In the context of in-game character design for this demographic, where a designer is looking to achieve a sense of trustworthiness and friendliness, they may opt for using this bias to favor their emotional intent (Isbister, 2006).

Physical Attractiveness

Physical attractiveness has a definite influence on social judgments (Masip, Garrido, & Herrero, 2004). Attractive people are seen as warmer, kinder, stronger, more sensitive, more outgoing, more socially persuasive and dominant, and even smarter than others. (Zebrowitz, Voinescu, & Collins ,1996; Isbister, 2006). This finding is consistent with the attractiveness-halo effect (Berscheid & Walster, 1974), where an attractive person is judged as having a more desirable personality and more skills than an average looking person.

It is important in this game that the player identifies with his player character. Designing them to be attractive, based on the conversions of the players culture, gender, etc, improves the odds of this happening for the player (Isbister, 2008). It comes to no surprise that most heroes and heroines in videogames, movies and comics are attractive.

Creating Friendly Game Characters For Young Children

Isbister (2006) notes that, social psychologist have also determined that the first two questions that a person asks himself or herself when initially meeting someone new are:

• “Is this person friendly?” or Agreeableness: a cue that the person is friendly and safe to interact with.
• “How powerful are they?” or dominance: a cue that the person we are interacting with feels that they are or could be superior then us.

Studies show that visual appearance, communicative style, and pedagogical roles of agents impact their acceptance and trust, and change the way people interact with them (Haake, 2009). Friendliness could be portrayed with attributes such as a smiling, with steady but not overly intense eye contact. Their postures would be open and relaxed, and have a warm and energetic voice (Isbister, 2006).

A study that measured children’s preferences of user agent design found that young participants, when asked to select an avatar for a learning companion in subjective tasks, showed a preference for a more simplified and cartoonish style. Children tended to feel “judged” by the more formal instructor avatars representations (Haake, 2009).

Identity & Developmental Characteristics

Social Development

Looking at virtual worlds from a socio-constructivist lens, knowledge is a social activity (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978) and there is great value in the collaborative aspects. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), believed that social interaction plays a fundamental role in a child’s cognitive development. His belief contrasted the views of Jean Piaget’s stages of development (Piaget,1971). Instead of development preceding learning, Vygotsky (1978) felt that social learning precedes development. He states that, “every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).” (Vygotsky,1978).

Vygotsky (1933) also shares his ideas about children and play, stating how role-play allows for children to differ immediate gratification though self-regulation. He argues that development comes in two levels, the child’s independent level and their assisted level. The distance between both levels is what Vygotsky (1933) calls their Zone of Proximal Development. By interacting in group-based play activities, such as those found in virtual worlds, a child is able to exercise self-regulation and play in the confounds of the various roles and narrative set forth by the play scenario.

Erik Erikson (1963), viewed this developmental stage as a time where children develop a ‘sense of industry’, learning the skills necessary for cooperation with both peers and adults. This age also brings about new social norms, such as formal schooling and increased involvement in organized activities. This exposure to a variety of social settings and circumstances, is what enables a child to master the skills required in these situations, and acquire a broadened view of themselves and the world around them (Eccles, 1999).

During this time, children’s behavior balances on what is expected by their parents and their peer groups (Erikson, 1963), better known as peer pressure. The child’s role in his or her peer group, classroom, and extracurricular programs are tied directly to the child’s achievements and personal qualities (Eccles, 1999).

Play Pattern Development

As children cognitive and social development matures, so do their play patterns. Role-playing reaches its peak between the ages of 5 and 8 (Fein, 1981), as they start developing more elaborated forms of socio-dramatic play. Smilansky’s (1968) description of socio-dramatic play characteristics consists of the following elements:

• Imitative role-play: the child performs a make-believe role and acts it out through imaginary kinesthetically actions and/or speech.
• Make-believe with regard to objects: play behaviors and/or speech dialogues and/or materials or toys that are not replicas of the object itself are substituted for real objects (ie. using a banana as a phone).
• Verbal make-believe with regard to actions and situations: verbal dialogue takes the place of body movements.
• Persistence in role-play: the pretend play sessions increase in duration, and lasts at least 10 minutes.
• Interaction: more than one person participates in pretend play session.
• Verbal communication: verbal dialogue is exchanged between the players.

During this age, children become increasingly concerned with peer-acceptance, and start to analyze what would be considered “cool” and “uncool” (Acuff, 1997; Erikson. 1963). It is common for a child in this age group to firmly demonstrate their repulsion to programs designed for younger audiences (Mielke, 1983), even if they where a fan themselves. Children at this age start leaning towards realistic character and animals, and keep their distance from the more childish characters.

Self-Expression in Virtual Worlds

Children in this age demographic have relied on adults and older siblings to guide most of their interactions. They rarely have been given the opportunity to exercise power or control, either physically or socially (Bee,1995). Virtual worlds offer a child the unique opportunity of making choices. The choices they make could range from the physical design of their avatar, the clothing that they wear, the items that they buy (Bailey, 2009) and how they choose to interact with the other participants of the community (Bartle, 2003).

Virtual Assets

Virtual assets are comprised of intangible items that only exist in the virtual world, in which the user is participating. Elements can range for objects that improve the appearance or capabilities of an “avatar”, to virtual currencies. An avatar’s competence in a virtual world is judged by the artifacts and wealth that the avatar possesses (Manninen & Kujanpää, 2007, p. 26). This coincides with the developmental changes that this demographic is experiencing regarding peer-acceptance, resulting in their identity crises (Erikson, 1963, 1959).

Research on the effect that customizable avatars have on emotional engagement for children, aged 8-12, proposes “customization of game avatars can affect both subjective feelings of presence and physiological indicators of emotion during game play” (Bailey 2009). It is believed that, due to the decreased frontal lobe activity, there is a higher reported levels of presence amongst children (Baumgartner, 2006 ). This suggest that designing games that allow for more customizability could make the experience more arousing, which may in influence the amount of emotional valence experienced (Bailey 2009).

“The findings of this study indicate that offering more customization options in terms of avatars may make games more enjoyable with higher highs and lower lows. It is likely that making these games more physiologically arousing will keep players coming back to play and playing longer, which gives sponsors of advergames with customization options several advantages, mainly a willing audience who will spend more time with their brands. (Bailey 2009, pg. 5)”

Customization of virtual worlds, and the avatars that live in them, has become a major source of income in the US. According to the Inside Virtual Goods report (2010), the US virtual goods market will reach $2.1 billion overall in 2011 and estimated that sales from social games made up more than half the total U.S. virtual goods revenues in 2010.

Player Types

Choice in a virtual world, not only included virtual assets and appearance, but also the decisions a player makes in how they would like to play the game. Bartle (2003) argues that players typically fall into four player types:

1. Achievement within the game context: This type of player assigns themselves various game-related goals, and puts effort in achieving them.
2. Exploration of the game: This is the player that tries to learn as much as possible about the virtual world. Initially this includes exploring the various maps and their topology and finding hidden places. Later this shift to experimenting with other game elements, such as the physics. This type of player loves to uncover glitches and “easter eggs” in the game.
3. Socializing with others: These players choose to play the game for its socialization features, rather then game play.
4. Imposition upon others: Players use the tools provided by the game to cause distress to other players.

Bartle (2003) adds that, “these areas cross over, and players will often drift between all four, depending on their mood or current playing style. However, my experience having observed players in the light of this research suggests that many (if not most) players do have a primary style, and will only switch to other styles as a (deliberate or subconscious) means to advance their main interest.”

Conclusion

By understanding the various design principles, social and play development, and the types of choices a child is able to make, we are able to make explicit design decisions that affect a participants experience with the game. Studies that demonstrate how offering customization features have positive effects on emotion (Bailey, 2009), show how important it is to understand the developmental maturity of your audience. It also illustrates how closely an individual’s pursuit of identity correlates from the real world (Erikson, 1963) to the virtual world (Bailey, 2009).

When developing materials for avatar creation and designing non-playing characters, we should be able to identify how the character translates in terms of friendliness and approachability, and what cues we have to convey this message (Isbister, 2006). These design decision cannot open for interpretation be team members, hence need to be documented and properly communicated with all who work on game development (Isbister, 2008). Animators, voice-overs and programmers need to understand the exact emotional target that the game designer is aiming for. Inconsistencies in emotional cues could be misinterpreted as the avatar or NPC lying (Isbister, 2008).

Reference

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Bailey R.,Wise, K., Bolls, P. (2009). How Avatar Customizability Affects Children’s Arousal and Subjective Presence During Junk Food–Sponsored Online Video Games. Cyber Psychology & Behavior. 12(X).

Bartle, R. (2003). Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs. Available at http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

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Berry, D. S., & McArthur, L. Z. (1985). Some components and consequences of a babyface. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 312-323.

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Durkin, K. (1997). Developmental social psychology: from infancy to old age. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Eccles, J. S. (1999) The Development of Children Ages 6 to 14 . The Future of Children, 9(2), 30-44

Erikson, E.H. (1963) Childhood and society. New York: Norton, 1963.

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Smilansky, Sara. (1968). The effects of sociodramatic play on disadvantaged preschool children. New York: Wiley.

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Advance material could range from a variety of mediums, such as videos, multimedia, simulations and printed material. Since the students have low-prior knowledge, you should design the learning material with consideration for cognitive load (Sweller, 1994) and the various multimedia learning design principles presented by Richard Mayer (2005) should be taken into consideration.

Pre-class assessments allow you to get a baseline for a student’s understanding of the content prior to class time. Similar to the pre-class material, assessment could take a variety of forms, such a multiple choice questions, matching activities and essays. You should select your assessment type based on it’s affordance towards the content and any logistical obstacle, such as time

Theoretical Background
Low-prior knowledge students are presented with a challenge when faced with complex vocabulary for subject matters. Furthermore, many of the terms in these subjects, such as math and science, consist of low-frequency words that do not appear outside of the context of the subject. This lack of exposure makes it difficult to “internalize word meanings and develop word ownership” (Harmon, 2005 pg. 263).

According to schema theory (Driscoll, 2005), prior knowledge plays a crucial role in effecting what a learner will take away when new knowledge is introduced. Looking through a constructivist lens, Bruner (1977) suggests that learning experience should not only “take us somewhere”, but it should allow the learner to build future knowledge easier. He saw learning as a “continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in-terms of basic and general ideas” (Bruner, 1997 pg. 17). In the context of an introductory classroom, allowing low-prior knowledge student access to key concepts and vocabulary prior to a lecture could enable them to create the foundation for interrelationships and elaborations on their schemata to occur during class. Through the meaningful use and repetition of vocabulary, which should occur in both the pre-class material and the in-class lecture or activity, the student would have the opportunity to practice with the content, eventually leading to automaticity (Palmeri, 1999).

Assessment of pre-class material serves multiple purposes. According to student self-reports, when in a course with predictable testing intervals, students are prone to procrastinate, and wait till the last minute (Connor-Greene, 2000). This could be interpreted as students being more motivated by test dates then by their everyday learning tasks. Integrating assessments in the pre-class material allows for a level of assurance that students will be prepared to actively engage in class discussions.

Assessments also give the instructor a glimpse at the student grasp of the concept. Either objective multiple choice questions or subjective essays could be created to emphasize the understanding of broad principles of the subject matter (Bruner, 1977). Understanding where student stands on content knowledge, allows an instructor to identify any issues, and make any actively make adjustments for class-time discussion.

Limitation
A limitation of pre-training is that an instructor would need the ability to assess how well the content was learned by the student, and if there are any misconceptions that need to be addressed during class time. There have been various approaches to incorporating assessments in the beginning of classes (Kilonsky, 2001; Conner-Greene, 2000), but the logistical issues make it difficult to accomplish due to time constraints. Instead, digitally embedding the assessments into the multimedia learning material, and making those results accessible to the instructor, makes for a more seamless experience for both instructor and student (Guertin, 2007).

Resources
Bruner, J. S. (1977). Process of Education. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. 27th printing.

Connor-Greene, Patricia A.(2000) ‘Assessing and Promoting Student Learning: Blurring the Line Between Teaching and Testing’, Teaching of Psychology, 27: 2, 84 — 88

Guertin, L.A. , Zappe, S.E. , and Kim, H. (2007) Journal of Science Education and Technology v. 16, p. 507-514.

Harmon, Janis M. , Hedrick, Wanda B. and Wood, Karen D.(2005) ‘Research on Vocabulary Instruction in the Content Areas: Implications for Struggling Readers’, Reading & Writing Quarterly, 21: 3, 261 — 280

Kilonsky DJ (2001) Constructing knowledge in the lecture hall. J Coll Sci Teach 31:246–251

Palmeri, T. J. (1999). Theories of automaticity and the power law of practice. Journal of Ex- perimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 543–551.

Sweller, J. (1994). Cognitive load theory, learning difficulty, and instructional design. Learning and Instruction, 4, 295-312.

One of the most difficult tasks that most novice game designers are faced with is patience. The excitement of developing a game, and the eagerness to make a great product sometimes backfires when the creative process is overlooked. This also results in more serious issues down the road, when user research uncovers problems in the game’s core mechanics that are difficult to solve once they have gone deep into production. Many of these issues could have been resolved by creating a prototype of the interaction, and use that as a testing environment to experiment with a game’s fundamental mechanics.

Why is a prototype important?

A written explanation of how a game works, such as a design document, works well in may aspects. However, creating a tangible working model of your idea takes away some of the abstraction in the document. A prototype’s role is to help you iron out your ideas, and test what work and what doesn’t.

Creating prototypes help a designer and their team to avoid getting emotionally attached with anything being tested. All aspects of the prototype should be in a raw form and shouldn’t be considered final by any extent. In the article, “The ideal window of time to start and finish a prototype(including design, implementation, testing, and iteration) is two days to two weeks. Anything longer than that sets off alarm bells.”

The Physical Prototype
Physical prototypes, sometimes called “analog prototypes” or “paper prototypes”, are very crafty in nature. They are created using everyday materials like cardboard, paper, glue, and sometimes reusing pieces for other games. This is a great method of giving the designer the opportunity to focus on the mechanics and not the aesthetics and technology. Many times, once code starts to be written and artwork starts being created, developers start to get attached and making design iteration become challenging right away. By taking the complexity out of the process, user feedback could be responded to in real-time, which allows more iterations. This also allows non-technical peers to work in assist in the design of the game at a greater capacity.

In this article, the author takes us through the the development of a few paper prototypes. The first is Battle Ship, where the designer is able to get a prototype up and running extremely quickly. The second is based on a game called “Up the River”. The author challenges the reader to make their own version of the game. Later, the author takes us through the development of a more complex prototype of a 3D First Person Shooter (FPS), using plastic army men, hexagon graphing paper, and some cardboard. The choice of hexagon is because it allows users to move diagonally, which lends itself well to this type of prototype. Lastly, the author help the ready deconstruct two real-time strategy games, to help up pull out the core features and base our own version from what we find.

Once the paper prototype starts to get created, rules start to be added. In the example of the FPS, the author wanted to keep as much of the typical FPS game mechanics, so rules emerged like:

• bullets can’t pierce through walls
• defined spawning area, where killed units re-materialize
• unit shots in the direction it is pointing

Some of these rules might bring up questions like, “how many spawning points does the game need?” The answer to that question is, “The only way to know is to play it!” No mater what you decide in this early phase, it will probably change later so the author suggest that “your best guess is good enough”.

As you play with your prototype, you should take notes of any questions that come up, and describe any problems that you notice along the way. You will quickly start to compile a list of new features that might help the game be more compelling. Some of the features that came out of the author’s example where:

• Adding a scoring system
• Include a hit percentage
• Provide hit points
• Provide first aid
• Add in ammo
• More weapons

Bellow is an explanation on the steps that you should take to create your own prototype.

Steps to building a prototype

Visualizing Core Game Play

• identify a much of the core game mechanics before you build out
• use a diagram to see which features are not integrate into the mechanics
• Don’t try to build your entire game at once. Plan your focus around the main aspects of the game. Aspects that need to be there in order to make it playable.

An example of core game mechanics might look like:

World of Warcraft: “Players build and move units on a map in real time with the intent of opposing units in combat and destroying them”

Steps for building a prototype

Foundation

• design the basic game object (setting, units, resources) and the repetitive actions that keep the game in motion
• Simplify feature to their most basic level
• Work economically: Don’t do too much at once, and invest wisely. Always keep focus on what the purpose of the prototype is.
• Test the game at this raw state and see what works.

Structure

• build the framework that will support a rich and varied feature set
• prioritize what is most essential
• keep all the distinction between a rule and feature present in all you decisions. Features make the game richer, while rules change how the game functions.
• Focus on structuring rules first, then move onto features

Formal Details

• Add any necessary rules and procedures that help make the game functional.
• Try not to add too much. pair features down to small sets
• Back your decision with both judgment and input from playtesters
• Tip: If you could continue to build your game without a specific rule, then leave it out. You could add it later.

Refinement

• At this point the game will have flow.
• Questions shift from fundamentals of game to small details.
• Add in all those awesome ideas you had in the initial stages! Just not all at once.
• Make sure you isolate individual aspects of the game to get a better sense of how each feature positively or negatively effects game play.
• once you have analyzed the feature rank it by necessity.
• Write an analysis, and make sure to incorporate playtester reactions

Feature Design: Listening to Metacritics

Metacritics is a site that rates games and has been used as an industry standard benchmark by many development studios.This type of data helps to run relational analysis to find elements that either help or hinder success for games. It is important to note that this analysis technique should be pursued with caution and should only be used as a guideline not a standard. Taking these scores and analysis too literal could cause your design to lose some of it’s novelty and uniqueness and not being undifferentiated from the the competition, which is the point of the analysis.

Some examples of positive similarities are

1. Large in scope with 20+ hours of content
2. Lots of player choice activities
3. Highly replayable
4. Advance audio/visuals
5. Responsive

Some examples of negative similarities are

1. Too similar to other titles
2. Poor production value
3. Player unsure of what to do
4. Game Mechanics and Storyline unbalanced
5. Too linear

Feature Design: Morphological Analysis

By using Morphological Analysis you allow for rapid generation of ideas, and provides an analytical approach to creativity. Bellow are two approaches that have been used by game designers.

This technique is inspired by the book ThinkerToys, which i immediately bought after reading this article:

• Define parameters being brainstormed
• List as many element per category as you can
• Start making connection to help spawn new ideas

Similar to the above technique, you could take a slightly different approach and deconstruct a topic to find something interesting. This idea of deconstructing reminded me of something that Will Wright mentioned at a talk at NYU. In his talk he mention that when concepts are not taken from such a rigid straight forward approach and deconstructed, areas of playfulness emerge. This falls in line with the steps that David Perry proposes:

1. Choose what topic you want to innovate
2. Deconstruct topic to a granular level, and always keep this list updated.
3. Refer to list and make connection whenever you want on innovate.

Mechanism Design: Types of Emotion

According to research from Niccole Lazzaro, any game that includes 3 or more of the following emotional elements, have better sales. According to Niccole, this is due to the player having various emotional options in a game.

Some example of each of Niccole’s classified emotions are:

• Fiero: evokes mastery, goals, challenges, obstacles, strategy, power-ups, puzzles, etc
• Curiosity: imagination, surprise, wonder through experiences such as exploration, experimentation, fantasy and role-play
• Amusement: 1-on-1 competition, cooperation, personalization
• Relaxation or Excitement: repetition, rhythm, mediation, collection and working out

Level Design: Using Heat Maps

Level Design: Measuring “Time Spent”

Level Design: Biosensors

Control Design: Controller Complexity

Steps to measuring Control Dimensionality:

Bellow is a practical example which will help you calculate your game controllers Control Dimensionality.

What is your games basic movement patter?

• One dimensional (left-right) = +1
• Two dimensional (left-right & up-down) = +2
• Three dimensional (left-right, up-down & in-out) = +3

Increase your Complexity Data for additional complexity. Some example may include:

• Each additional movement (strafe, run/walk, etc/) = +1
• Embedded actions (jump, attack, etc.) = +.5

Experience Design: Play Testing

Reference:
Isbister, K (2008) Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience [Kindle]

Expert evaluations, unlike heuristic evaluation require an experience evaluator. Typically these evaluations are administered by a group of 2-3 evaluators, who bring their individual points of view into the evaluation to uncover the as many user experience issues as possible. Issues could range from user interface problems, game play issues, or specific area concerning the platform (ex. mobile phones).

Evaluations, like quality assurance, should be tightly integrated into an iterative development process. This process should be started as early as possible via design document or paper prototyping. These techniques could expose some obvious issues regarding the over all game mechanics, and user interface that could be handled before any code is written.

Another option is to identify novel features of the game, for example a non-standard control, and create a prototype to evaluate that specific interaction. By doing this early, you save yourself, and the developers, heart ache later in the development process when those aspects are tightly integrated into the game.

Although the best scenario in the evaluator’s perspective is to evaluate game as close to completion as possible, allowing them to experience the subtle interactions that may not be available earlier in the development cycle, ultimately it is best to get rid of as many frustration points in the game as early as possible. This is especially important when you plan on having user-centered playtesting. When your targeted users are interacting with the game, you should make sure that as many areas of frustration, and playability issues are handled as possible. This will insure that their play experience is not interrupted by an issue unrelated to the intended game mechanic.

The Double Expert

A Double Expert, is an evaluator with experience in both usability and gaming. This is the ideal person to evaluate games since they are more adept to understanding the game designer intent from their gaming experience, and could also easily identify usability issues that the average person might not realize is a source of frustration. Most importantly, this double threat of game evaluation could make valuable suggestions to the designers to help in rectifying the issue.

If the company can’t get three double experts, then could use single experts. In this scenario it is recommended that they have at least a double expert compile the final report.

Steps to Expert Evaluation

Planning

• Evaluators are introduced to game being evaluated
• Receive background information on the game (uniqueness, target market)
• Agree on issues being evaluated and focus
• Informed about missing features and bugs
• introduced to organizational chart in case they need help with an issue

Review

• Evaluators review games independently is suggested
• Evaluators go through each part of the game that was agreed upon
• The goal is to find usability and game play problems that would negatively effect player experience
• Evaluators refer to heuristics, design knowledge, and individual experience
• Time varies, but should be enough for all evaluators to thoroughly experience all the aspects of the game relevant to their evaluation plan
• Providing shortcuts for evaluators could save time. Note: this could backfire, and not allow evaluators to fully experience the game missing key issues (repetitive task, boring)

Discussion

• Evaluators discuss their findings
• Compile list of issues
• Agree on the severity of each issue
• Brainstorm possible recommendations for issues

Report

• Agree on reporting medium: Document or Presentation
• Presentation takes less time, and good for internal use.
• If the document will circulate then a document, with methods and results is suggested
• Issues should include: the problem, description, severity rating, any recommendation, and screen shots (if applicable). Note: Evaluators give recommendations, designers come up with a solution that may or may not follow the recommendation.
• Average number of issues ranges from 20-50
• It is recommended to include the 3 most important areas to improve and a summary of the key strengths of the game so developers know not to change those aspects of game.

Action

• Brainstorm solutions with developers in a Results Workshop.
• Critical bugs should take precedence, minor could be handled if there is time.
• Not getting to some non-critical issues is okay. They could be addressed later via a patch or next release.

Evaluation Strategies

Heuristics

• Usability Heuristics
• Game Play
• Platform Specific and Game Type

Experience and Knowing Good Design Practice

Experience is beneficial in finding non-obvious problems, and problems that may have not been indicated in the heuristic list. Some experience in the following list is recommended:

• Game play
• Game design
• Game evaluations

• It did not require an experimenter.
• It improved reliability by reducing experimenter interaction with the animal.
• It could accurately record behavior over a long period of time

Solutions such as Skinner’s where rather simple, however with the combination of larger amounts of data, and more complex systems there has been a growing need to come up with a method of dealing with the massive quantities of data and displaying it in a manner that is interpretable.

TRUE is expands on all the strengths of UIEs while integrating existing User Centered Design methodologies such as usability testing, ethnographic studies, and surveys.

TRUE’s traits:

• User interacts with the systems that automatically record user events into log files and uploads them to a server.
• TRUE looks at streams of data through the use meta information such as the timestamp of each event.  Understanding the sequence of events could lead to better recommendations.
• Event Sets which are comprised of key information describing various contextual information is packaged with each event.
• Attitudinal data is also included in each event set which alone consist of behavioral data. This is collected from a short survey that is presented to the gamer after each session.  By understanding the participants attitude, an event that reads “Player Failed”, could look more like “Player Failed, but had fun”.  Information like this in valuable, since failing does not necessarily mean the user is having a bad user experience.
• Data visualization is where the power of TRUE really shines.  By presenting data  in an interpretable method and allowing transformation, the root cause of problems are easier to identify.
  • Create series of graphs
  • Use a meaningful hierarchical scheme: (possibly the game genre, then specific game, then UIEs)
  • Supports drilling down the data
  • Supports cross-linking
• Ethnographic video is synchronized to timestamps of event stream

As you could see TRUE is an instrumentation system that combines a large variety of methodologies that enable Microsoft to:

1. detect issues and understand root causes in the same way usability testing does
2. to support design iteration
3. to incorporate attitudinal behavior in the manner of surveys
4. to understand the naturalistic use of our products as is found with ethnographic methods.
5. enable unobtrusive naturalistic observations of usage over time
6. see things such as extended usage patterns, data from large numbers of participants, and data that is difficult to observe but impacts user experience

Reference
Kim, J. H., Gunn, D., Schuh, B, Phillips, B, Pagulayan, R. and Wixon, D. Tracking Real-Time User Experience (TRUE): A comprehensive instrumentation solution for complex systems. In Proc. CHI 2008, 443-451.

Microsoft has been in the business of applying usability strategies to their production software, for over 25 years. They have since adjusted these methods to fit with their XBox gaming initiatives. Games bring a unique set of challenges, which include:

• Purchase and use of games is discretionary, unlike production software that used out of necessity to fulfill a task.
• Games is a tough market where almost 80% lose money.
• There are many game studios and publishers. This is different to production software where there is usually a few leaders in the field.
• Games are complex and can involve artificial intelligence and other higher level programming.
• Games are popular.
• Games are big business. In 2006, game revenue hit 7.4 billion, not including hardware.
• Wide range of application which include entertainment, education and others.
• Game attempt to create novel, unique experience for users, unlike production software that simply automates existing tasks.
• Games have a development cycles that is very conducive to user testing. It consist of on iterative environment that allows for fine tuning user experience, before it goes out on the market. Production software, sometimes take the “Google”, and let their application loose to wild once there is a usable build.
• Game developers are dedicated to create positive great user experiences.
• Gamers demand novelty. Unlike productivity software users that aren’t as welcoming to major shifts is user interface since it will present learning curves.
• Game experience is based on game mechanics. This is what influences a users pattern of behavior, also known as the game’s dynamics.

Usability Testing vs Play Testing

User testing allows researcher to uncover patterns of user behavior that aren’t part of the game designer’s intent. This could include how long a task took to complete, or the frequency and nature of an error. (section 4.3.1, para. 1) Play testing is a bit different in focus. It is concerned with a player’s opinions and attitudes for a game. It is important to include play testing in the mix of product development, because behavioral data alone can not adequately answer questions like “is the game fun?”

Play Testing

According to Microsoft, “A playtest is a large sample, survey based methodology we developed to measure and quantify user perception, attitudes and opinions about a game”. This is important because it allows for:

• A degree of confidence in results
• Run metrics to across multiple test to see effect from specific changes.
• Allows for scoring play test with other games, which helps in making market predictions.

A day in at a Microsoft playtest involves:

1. Game testers are greeted by a moderator. The moderator insures that everything is run ethically, and there are no sources of bias that could influence the players.
2. Participants sign non disclosures agreements to protect any intellectual property that they will be presented with.
3. Participants play a game for about an hour, and then answer a series of question electronically.
4. Participants are thanked and receive gratuity for their contribution in the test.

After years of fine tuning their approach, Microsoft shares three important things to remember when running any user testing:

• Standardization: This is what allows for validity of the data. For example, not standardizing the questions, and rewording them on each test may compromise the reliability of their responses.
• Reference Data: You need to measure your data against something to gain a better understanding. For a example, if X Game did well on the market, and scored a 75, and the new Y Game scored about the same, then you know you are on track.
• Focused Questions: Having focused questions ready allows you to…
  • ask the right questions and avoid unnecessary ones.
  • make sure all the questions answer all the research questions.
  • know when you are done analyzing your data.
  • give better recommendations based on results of analysis.

Social Party Games: Testing in Groups

Games like Guitar Hero and Scene it, add an additional level of complexity to play testing. These games are typically played in groups of friends. They not only involve the player, but also the observer in the same physical space. Most importantly, it has been found in karaoke games that players of these game do not like to play alone, and typically play in groups of about six. Additionally, there are various user behaviors that are specific to social games, for example dancing and cheering. There are also strategies, such as “pump fakes” and yelling out incorrect answers that come up in various social games.

In response to this Microsoft has begun to recruit groups of people who know each other. This helps in creating a more comfortable and relaxed environment where players and observers could demonstrate some of the behaviors mentioned above. In addition, Microsoft has opted to remove all “think-a-loud” instructions since it would be to difficult to manage with groups of people. Also one persons response may influence other players. Instead, they just let the group act naturally, which includes yelling out exactly what they think about the game to each other with out any instruction to do so.

The play test also includes time for free play in the beginning of the session to allow the group to get comfortable, and a ending the test with a discussion to make sure they got all the data they need from the participants.

Beta Testing

Allowing users to test “playable” versions of the game with a much larger user group. One caveat is that the game has to be much more stable then in house testing, since there much less control over the testing environment. There also should be a minimal about of bugs that could frustrate players, and must be fun to play. These prerequisites are why beta testing happens very late in the development cycle.

Another drawback to allowing remote testing is loosing valuable context to the data that is collected. This makes gathering qualitative data which is typically noted through observation in in-house testing is difficult to collect. There also is no control of whether or not a player even plays the game, and for how long. This could also be scene as a benefit, because a participant is not tied down to the typical 1-hour limit of in-house testing. This can allow for measuring long term trends in behavior over time.

Chapter three of Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience contains an interesting interview between Tobi Saulnier, founder and CEO of 1st Playable Productions and Kathrine Ibister, User Researcher and author of the aforementioned book.

The result of the dialog surfaces some very interesting and practical reasons for the implementation of user research. To start, Tobi Saulnier, take the perspective of the small game development agency. 1st Playable Productions specialized in kids games, and has integrated play testing into all phases of development.

Tobi Saulnier, makes it pretty clear that, “to me it is such a waste of one’s time to make something your intended audience doesn’t enjoy, or can’t use.” (Isbister, 2008, Chapter 3, para. 4) Although developers may base many of their design decision on intuition, they still need to put their games in front of players to understand what they really want. The data collect in these play tests, could be leveraged to make more informed decisions going forward.

1st Playable Productions uses several approaches to usability.

• Logging user game behavior to anticipate what a player needs and develop heuristics.
• Doing usability testing with other similar games, when theirs is not ready.
• One player testing and one designer in an observation (not coaching role).
• Take play testing video that a designer could refer to later.

Tobi mentions how usability testing always effects the design of a game. The results could range from simple user interface changes, to completely starting from scratch. She mentioned to examples during her interview. First when play testing a gesture based game mechanic on a hand held working with 4-year old’s it was made pretty clear that it is difficult to explain to them what they should or shouldn’t do in a game. 4 year old’s opted to free-play and make sparkles everywhere, totally ignoring the gestures. Another one of her studies showed how challenging situations that gamers found motivating frustrated non-gaming females 27 and over. This type of information is invaluable, and could lead to the success or failure of any game.

As a smaller shop, Tobi Saulnier and 1st Playable Productions tend to stay away from large scale statistical studies that measures percentages of user testing for various aspects of a game. The reason for avoiding this is because, it is expensive and is only effective if done right.

Another type of user research that she does not use is focus groups, because it is subject to many biases. “You get a wildly different result based on the interplay of personalities.”