Transformative Fun Game

1 Title

Under the War

2 Razor

Teamwork to collect all the medical supplies to save the family.

3 Slogan

Surviving! For the family!

4 Vision Statement & Top level summary of your game idea

It's a survival, crisis management game in a warzone in which players are struggling and trying to collect all the necessary life resources to survive and save their families. All players have to work together as a team to find at least 6 medical resources to save their families. However, in this process, players will encounter different surprises along the way, some can help, but some are lethal.

5 Player experience goal(s) + atmosphere users should experience

Items from Lazarro’s 4 Keys 2 Fun (2014):

Hard Fun”: mastery, achievement, “fiero”):

not at all |------X----------------0-------------------------| highly so

Easy Fun: Exploring, Imagination, Curiosity, Absorption

not at all |-----------------------------------0------X------| highly so

Altered States (Purposeful/Serious Fun): Values & Meaning

not at all |-----------------------------------------X0------| highly so

People Fun: Relationships, social bonding etc.

not at all |----------------------------X-------0------------| highly so

Items from Yee’s Player Motivation taxonomy (2006):

Achievement component

Advancement — The desire to gain power, progress rapidly, accumulate in-game symbols of wealth or status

not at all |---------------X------------------0--------------| highly so

Mechanics —analyzing the underlying rules and system in order to optimize character performance

not at all |------------------------X0-----------------------| highly so

Competition — The desire to challenge and compete with others

not at all |-----X-------------------------0-----------------| highly so

Social component

Socializing — Having an interest in helping and chatting with other players

not at all |----------------------------0---------X----------| highly so

Relationship — The desire to form long-term meaningful relationships with others

not at all |------------------------------------X0-----------| highly so

Teamwork — Deriving satisfaction from being part of a group effort.

not at all |-------------------------------------------X0----| highly so

Immersion component

Discovery — Finding and knowing things that most other players don’t know about

not at all |-------------------------------------------X0----| highly so

Role-Playing — Creating a persona with a background story and interacting with other players to create an improvised story

not at all |--------------------------------------------X0---| highly so

Customization — Having an interest in customizing the appearance of their character

not at all |-----------------------------------0----------X--| highly so

Escapism — Using the online environment to avoid thinking about real life problems

not at all |-----------------------------------------X0------| highly so

8 items from Hunicke et al’s taxonomy of “fun”:

1. Sensation: Game as sense-pleasure

not at all |------------------------0--X---------------------| highly so

2. Fantasy: Game as make-believe

not at all |--0X---------------------------------------------| highly so

3. Narrative: Game as drama

not at all |----------------------0----X---------------------| highly so

4. Challenge: Game as obstacle course

not at all |---------------------------------------X0--------| highly so

5. Fellowship: Game as social framework

not at all |------------------------------------X0-----------| highly so

6. Discovery: Game as uncharted territory

not at all |------------------------------X0-----------------| highly so

7. Expression: Game as self-discovery

not at all |-----------------------------0----------X--------| highly so

8. Submission: Game as pastime/go-to leisure activity

not at all |-----------------------------------------X--0----| highly so

Summary

Under the War is a roll and move, strategy and survival game inspired by “This war of mine”. Players need to be prepared for natural and man-made disasters that come at any time while searching for resources to survive and find medical supplies to save the parents. Random events will ruthlessly take away the player's resources. Players need to help each other to better collect material and survive. In addition, We hope that users can get a sense of immersion, which depends on the players' perception of the game and the interaction process with the game. Players' perception of the game is composed of game-play and atmosphere, which can also produce a sense of immersion.

Role-Playing & Discovery: Players are citizens in the game, and they will also encounter random events that match the situation. Players can empathize with the characters in the game.
Friendship, social and teamwork: players need to help each other in the game and have achieved common goals.

6 How does it address the design challenge of a Transformative Game?

The underlying problem/challenge that our game tries to aim for is original people who did not experience war oftentimes have empathy for the citizens who live in the war-zone, but no further progress. Because the life of the citizens seems more like a number instead of actual life to them. Or because war is too far away from them so they can't share the same feeling of how suffered the citizens could be.

Therefore, we want the participants to grow an in-depth sympathy or some similar kind of emotional feeling toward the citizens who live in a war-zone and encourage them to stand for anti-war and help prevent any potential local war (Ukraine & Russia, the Kashmir region, and India and Pakistan...etc.)

The real-world situation tends to be tense, the direct conflicts and contradictions between countries have intensified, and the direct disputes between regions and borders have exploded due to the COVID-19 epidemic. So we hope to use this game to let players experience the difficulties, pains and struggles of being a citizen, thereby enhancing people's anti-war awareness (For places such as Ukraine, Iraq, other Middle-East countries, or even between India and China).

Background research on underlying problem/challenge that your game aims to tackle

Background research:

(example - Syrian Children )In the midst of a bitter winter, Salim, age 2, tries to stay warm at a refugee camp near the Syrian border. With temperatures nearing sub-zero, Salim will face this brutal winter in a snow-covered tent with only the clothes on his back to keep warm.

The cold days are long, but the nights are always longer for Salim. When the sun goes down, the temperature drops, and he can feel the freezing air against his cheeks. He shivers to keep his body warm but with no blanket, he has nothing to protect him from the cold air breezing through the tent. He is one of many children fighting to survive the winter in a refugee camp, and as the conditions turn treacherous, he is in desperate need of warm clothes, blankets and food.

Reference:

Arab Spring. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring.

Tadros. A. (2020). "For the world's 80 million displaced people, memories fade, but not hope." CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/refugee-day-world-refugee-day-80-million-displaced-1-percent-population-memories-fade-not-hope/.

TRT World. (2021). "Syrian refugees and IDPs reflect on decade-long conflict." Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8kKPyq07A.

Syrian Refugee Children Stories: Life as Refugee. Retrieved from https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-we-do/emergency-response/refugee-children-crisis/refugee-stories

University of the People. (2018). "UoPeople CNN Syrian Refugee Interview." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33Hnq2BMWs.

USA for UNHCR. Retrieved from https://www.unrefugees.org/news/.

The example of refugee children in Syria is a better way to arouse people's sympathy. So in our game settings, we can try to add some stories or characters about children, as well as related features. This will help us to better demonstrate our themes through these roles.

c) Team motivation

Recently, American president Joe Biden restarted the war in Syria by launching airstrikes in eastern Syria. It raises the concern of how and when the war will be stopped.

d)Why would a game be a suitable approach to tackling this challenge/problem?

Compared with movies and novels, the process of making war games, apart from reflecting on war and condemning violence, there is also a key and difficult point, that is, players' immersion in the protagonist of the game. In short, the game is a medium for future human beings to express themselves and create meaning. It is the foundation of the next generation of human civilization. The premise of the game is probably a strategy and Survival game. We will modify it based on an existing story as our narrative story, and then set different game rules and mechanisms through different storylines.

e)Desired “transformation” and impact of game on players

It can help to realize the change of player's emotions/thoughts/behavior that we want to experience through behavior change. “Ultimate goal of understanding how to design the transformative experiences is to create a carrying society where an individual will find it unnatural to have in a way that is designed or designed” (Stepanova, Quesnel, and Riecke 2018, p2). We can evaluate it by observing the prosocial behavior of the participants. For example, our game can make players aware of the ruthlessness and cruelty of war, and let them feel the same feeling of "this is my war” through a series of behaviors. We will set up a deductive Mode. This mode can make the players more empathic. For example, the use of family affection can make the players more empathetic and oppressive.

How would you assess the game’s impact?

Our "indicators of success" are hoping to let players experience the difficulties, pains and struggles of becoming citizens through this game, thereby enhancing people’s anti-war awareness. Let players experience the difficulty of searching, competing with other people for resources, and find out ways to cure the parents. Through the storyline, players can empathize with the characters in the game, so as to achieve the "indicators of success" of the game.

7 Inspiration Analysis

1. This War of Mine:

This War of Mine pays more attention to the experience of civilians in war rather than the battles on the front lines of the war. At the same time, as I mentioned above, This War of Mine shows the authenticity of war from the perspective of civilians. We try to better express how precious life and family are.

2. Valiant Hearts: The Great War:

Valiant Hearts: The Great War also tells the war from the perspective of civilians. I think we can learn from its story in this game. Valiant Hearts: The Great War has many touching storylines. Adding a storyline to the game can help Players bring a good sense of substitution, they can also understand the situation of the game in the role.

8 Why Your Project is Innovative?

(a) Our game has a new storyline, characters and players can trigger more events

(b)The theme of our game is also about war. We provide a clear goal and related storyline, hoping that players can realize the value of life.

9 Introduction

Premise: Players are the survivors in this team-based competition card game. Players have to arrange their resource-cards carefully and try the best to gather as many medical supplies as possible to heal the injured parents. The game starts when all players start choosing the characters.

Setting: It's a team-based game of cards with a background in the Syrian war.

Objective: Use resource cards and medical cards to survive, and save the lives of family members successfully.

Core Gameplay: When the game starts, players need to use resources reasonably and try their best to survive. At the same time, players can help their teammates when necessary.

10 Narrative/Story

The story takes place in the war zone of Syria. The Hassan family lives in a dilapidated small house. Their food and water are almost running out. Hassan's parents were injured when they went out looking for food, so the children had to go out looking for medical supplies to save their parents. In this way, the children took the limited food and water embarked on the unknown journey…

11 Game mechanics

Our game's key mechanic is players have to find resources to remain alive and bring medical components back home to cure the family member who is injured by war. The second mechanic of our game is that players will encounter different events, and each event comes with its own consequence. Therefore, players have to be really careful and thoughtful about their choices.
The suggested number of players is 4, which players will each represent one family member of the family.
Our game’s target audiences are the players who enjoy playing war-based games. Our game's goal is to put those players into the family situation who live under the threat of war to alert those players war isn’t as fun/triggering as they thought.
The basic rules for our game are players need to find enough medical supplies within certain given game turns in order to save the parents.

12 Play matrix

Under the war is based on luck/chance, but it also requires players to use strategy and wisdom to defeat opponents and gain profits for their game performance. This game doesn’t need good psychological quality and skills.

13 Rule Sheet

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lYdG8Tx3YndRtoWY8XlP-arsx0IOXUq55nis6q-f2vE/edit?usp=sharing.

14 Playtesting script including testing goals, questions, and assumptions/ hypotheses

Our goal for the up-coming playtesting section is that we want to know the following areas of our game:

Find out any loopholes or bugs that we may not notice.
Force harder on the balance between the “surviving” element and the “finding medical supply” element.
Find out how the overall game experience of the playtesters (too easy, too hard?).

In-game observation:

We will mostly focus on how the playtesters react to each of the events that correlate to its area. We want to have a general expectation of how the playtesters might choose.
We will also focus on how fast the game ends (either the playtesters win or lose). We want to know the timing of our game because the game turn is also one important element in our game.
We will also focus on which event and what type of events that the playtesters spend the most time on. It allows us to make our game more profound or even simply help us find the playtesters' events not reasonable.

Post-game questions:

Which part of the game do you enjoy the most?
Which part of the game did you found difficult to understand?
Which part of the game or elements that you think is preventing you from doing what you should have done?
Do you have difficulty choosing the game path? As a team or as an individual?
Are there any things you are confused about the rules？
Did the game somehow change your feeling about war? Which part do you think that touches you?
Any parts of our game you can validate as transformative?

Revision Questions:

The rules (we want to see if any part of our rules still needs to be refined.
The overall transformative game experience, is that clear for the players?

15 Insights and results from playtesting: Test for foundation/fun and structure, then later for functionality, completeness, loopholes, balance, and dominant strategies

Playtesting Direct Feedback:

Game Version 1.0

Playtest 1: Playing Team 1- 4 - Jenny Situ, Sinead Cheong, Jiayi Sheng

What did you enjoy most about the game? Why?
- Jiayi Sheng
  - I think the entire game mechanism and game content are rich, and players will always have fun while playing.
- Sinead Cheong
  - I can tell that the team worked hard on designing different events and consequences that would be triggered. The team made good use of the features of Table Simulator (i.e. use the timer to indicate the turns and health points). The layout of the game board is creative and clear so that the players know where to start from and which way to go. I like the game mechanic that the players get the resources by chance, it fits the topic/atmosphere of refugees finding random resources on the street. Also, I appreciate that the team designed choices not only for surviving, but also designed moral choices for the players to think of how to survive.
- Jenny Situ
  - I appreciate that all the mechanisms and components tie back to the storyline and that really helps to establish a role-play element that makes the game more immersive. Overall, the outline of the rules was easy to follow.
What were the major issues with the game? Why? Any suggestions on how the game could be improved?
- Jiayi Sheng
  - The event card seems to be lost. The player does not know what to do when the event card is used, and where to get the event, which can be confusing.
- Sinead Cheong
  - Due to the restriction of the table size in Table Simulator, the cards have to be small enough to fit on the table. Although the layout is clear, it’s hard to read the words on the cards, especially the words on the cards in the adventure rooms (we tried to zoom in). Because of that, we didn’t know what to do when we entered the adventure rooms and didn’t know how to find components. Are the clues on the cards? I would suggest that make the words on the cards bigger, add more space between the characters, and change the font to another font that has a clean outline.
  - As the game is about the refugees during wartime, I think the events or accidents could be more impactful and should provide more details for the players (especially for the events that need players to make moral choices). I can tell the accidents are related to the situation during a war but it misses something impactful to evoke my emotions. For example, I would suggest that providing more backgrounds for the poor little girl, so that it gives reasons to the players to save her and can affect players’ emotions; providing more details of the aircraft bombing accident, such as which part(s) of my body hurt, how other players are affected by this, etc.
  - I understand that the game design is still in progress, so I’m going to provide feedback based on what I experienced during the gameplay. For the rules, I found some steps missing so I would suggest that go through the gametesting on your own first, change your wording to avoid confusion, find logical problems in the current version of the rules, then add more details to clarify each step. I would also suggest that not to forget mentioning the details such as: should I show the resources cards to others or not, how to trigger the events, what are the resources cards for/what do the players need to do with them (can the players use them to help themselves or just for saving others during encounter the events?), which player should I trade the cards with (the one who steps on the same grid or anyone is fine?)...etc.
- Jenny Situ
  - I’m curious to know the purpose of the inner circle and outer circle and how that relates to the premise or storyline. Maybe including a short introduction can help players understand the goal/story of the game.
  - There were some confusions in the rule (understandable since its first iteration) that made it hard to understand what actions to take
    - The events were also missing. The card was blank on the other side when we flipped it over.
    - How do we find the three components? We flipped over the card inside the adventure room which showed blocks of squares, we assumed that was the map but not sure what to do with it.
    - “After the second turn, at the start of each turn, players can decide whatever trade their resource-cards with other players or not (when they are within the same grid). “ this rule was a bit unclear, who do we trade with?

Game Version 2.0

Playtest 2: Bill Gao, Cameron Elless, Maple Sukontasukkul, Noah, Kim Van (observed the game)

What did you enjoy most about the game? Why?
- Bill
  - I think the board layout and events are interesting and drive the game forward
- Cameron
  - I think you guys have a good start for a game premise and I enjoyed the map layout.
  - The concept is great and I can see this being a game which works really well after revisions.
- Maple
  - I enjoyed the aspect of chance that the event cards and accident cards provided. The map was quite well done. I came to understand how the different mechanics played into the overall premise.
What were major issues with the game? Why? Any suggestions on how the game could be improved?
- Bill
  - a lot of rule clarification issues, ambiguity in different situations
  - balance issues for events that don’t have much impact, resources feeling like they just sit in your hand, no way of recovering hp, lots of turns of not being able to do anything
  - wording issues on event cards and the rule sheet
  - unclear objective or premise/story that drives the gameplay; doesn’t feel like it gives much of a transformative experience
- Cameron
  - Things need to be made much clearer in terms of your rule sheet and the grammar improved (eg. arrows, event cards, girl event)
  - The girl feels way too punishing right now for taking her. If only the dice of the player who triggered the card was changed it probably would feel better.
  - Medical supplies need to be able to heal you or you die way too fast.
  - Some event cards are not worded correctly in terms of the yes / no responses on the other side
  - The market room needs to be more clearly defined when compared to the background board color.
  - I’m worried the transformative nature of the game will end up being lost on players unless the NPC is more heavily worked into the premise (eg. They’re your dad or something)
  - You also should be able to give resource cards to other players without having to trade one for one because otherwise 1 player will be stuck with all the resources and not able to help the other players if they don’t have any resource cards.
  - See video for more detailed feedback and other things we forgot to mention here. (+ Noah's Feedback)
- Maple
  - Although the premise tackles the issue of war and surviving it, there could be aspects that could be refined to be more engaging to the theme. Such as who is the NPC and what roles are the players playing or what our relationship to each other are. It was not as clear from the beginning that this was a cooperative game.
  - The resources that could be collected felt like they had little to no effect on the game. I could not give another player resources to help them or use my own resources to heal myself even though I had so many.

16 Analyze your game in terms of decision types, dilemmas, rewards, surprise, and endings

(a) Decision Types

Analyze for hollow, obvious, or uninformed decisions

In our game, we don’t have any hollow decisions, because those decisions, including movement/decision/help the teammate or not/which path to go, are decisions with their own consequences.
Yet, at some points, our game does have an uninformed decision for the players, which is they will not know the consequence of their choice ahead of time. But we can’t really fix or improve it because most of our events are two-sided, either helping others or stealing from others. Therefore, we can’t provide the consequence ahead of time. If we do so, players will also try to make the ‘correct decision, which then our game loses its meaning.

Analyze for desirable decisions

There are some informed decisions in our game. The most obvious one is the path that players choose to go. Because we have intersections in our map where players can choose one of the two directions, but we already provide what they will be encountering in both paths by showing the resources/events/accidents directly on the map.
The dramatic decision is also in our game, and it plays one of the key roles in transforming players’ emotional changes by seeing how they respond to different events. Players may feel regret or guilt after they see the consequence of their decisions.
The weighted decision is also adapted in our game. For example, in our game, players will lose health by encountering some accident. And their goal is to gather medical supplies in order to save the parents. Yet, one of the medical supply functions is that players can use it to heal themselves. This gives the players a choice of valuing the consequences of using/not using the medical supply by balancing on both sides.
Our game's immediate decision is that when the players are experiencing the accidents, they will have to quilly decide whether they will choose to lose one health or use the corresponding resource card to cover the health loss.
One long-term decision in our game is the little girl event. The player who triggered the little-girl events will face a long-term drag-back (losing movement per turn). Therefore, the player will have to think carefully about the gain and loss for that event.

(b) Dilemmas

There are three types of choices the players can make in our game.
1. The choice of choosing the path direction when they encounter the two-sided arrow symbol.
2. The choice of helping the other players or not.
3. The choice of making decisions on different events.

The path decision and the event-decision is one of the core gameplay of our game.

There are many dilemmas in our game because players will be facing and making choices on different events. One sample dilemma in our game is the “little girl” event.. [One of the event systems.]

- If the players say yes, then that player’s movement will decrease by two remaining the rest of the game (players roll dice to move); for exchange, they will be rewarded with extra resources/medical supplies by the little girl’s father.

- If the players say no, for that moment, it seems they only lose some sanity, but the hidden fact is that they might miss the chance to finish the game earlier.

So if the players didn't choose to save the little girl, most likely they will be dead because of running out of resources or too late in game turns, then the parents die (we also have turn-based disasters that decrease players' resources).

The event system is part of our core gameplay. We want to allow the players to think by providing them chances of making decisions.

Our game objective for the players is to try the best to keep themselves alive and collect enough medical supplies to heal the parents (to win). Therefore, the other game mechanic that we will be introduced in our game is the "sanity system." This system is close-related to our events system, and it allows players to see what they gain, what they will lose by making different decisions during the events. These two systems support the game objective. They are meaningful because the players will know the consequence of their decision-making and how those consequences will affect their survival. So, in general, the game object is that players need to survive during the game. Beyond that, they will encounter different events that will help them live better or get worse, so the players do have to be careful of their decision.

(c) Rewards

The rewards in “Under the war” are useful rewards. Whenever players help others or feed stray animals, they will harvest the corresponding resources and sanity. When the health value of all opponents drops to 0, they will die, however, if players get extra rewards, they can live longer. This gives rewards in the settlement of each round, which proves that the player used the correct strategy, and also will encourage the players to continue to choose the correct strategy in the next offensive round until the players finally successfully achieve the goal.

(d) Surprise

The first surprise is what random event cards could do. In other words, players can make different choices with events, which allows us to create a variety of game experiences for players. Therefore, for each choice players choose (what they can get or lose from it), make players exceed their expectations.

The second surprise in our game is the value of luck. Because this is a poker-based card game, therefore the cards that players draw in each turn are random. Under the condition of having the same draw-card chance, if the players are lucky enough, they can collect all the medical resources quickly and take them home.

(e) Endings

We are satisfied with the ending of the game. In the game, the players collected medical resources and saved their own lives and their families' lives

18 Team Communication and Processes

For the JiTT 9 responses of team communication and process:

1. The first improvement that we adapted to our team to help to build our team culture is conducting meetings. Even though our team has had meetings throughout the course, the quality of our meetings could be improved. As we learn from the reading, we can set up an overall agenda for our meeting and make sure everyone comes prepared. What is lacking right now in our team is that our team always spends too much time generating ideas together; usually, we are analyzing our ideas during the meeting and talking/discussing them rather than having something pre-prepared before the meeting.

2. Another improvement we adapted is the Agile development. As the reading mentioned, "short iteration and review forces strong communication and builds bonds with team members." Therefore, in order to enhance our communication ability, we can start using the modular "scrum-meeting" framework. By this, we are referring to breaking our team into smaller teams and applying daily goals/requirements to the team and have daily short meetings with the teams to check the progress. By doing so, our team can have a clearer goal of how each one/ each team is doing, and the other person can build ideas upon the team in order to have an iterating perspective of our game design.

3. The last improvement we learn from the reading is to set up your project plan precisely. Because our team is not working under contract, but we do have a similar constraint by the grading and the assignment requirements. Therefore, we have to come out with a project plan of when and what our daily goals are corresponding to the weekly requirements. And the manager/leader in our team should be clear of who is going to do what, and make sure the daily progress has been accomplished.

4. One sample of how we are using tools to build team communication is that our team uses Figma as the brain-storming tool as well as the idea generating tool. We also used Figma for organizing all our map-design ideas together.

Appendix A: Ideation/Conceptualization Activity Report

All Cards Design: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OKSMhjCQLi5nauKif0EdrUfvJ9SH1tMz?usp=sharing