Developing the game design: Results of closed test session 1

[owen]

Good point it helps that in the interface the names of the participants are displayed - but some sort of post game discussion thread could be a useful way to spin off the conversation after the event.

[alberto]

@matthias

we discovered after playing it that 5 points is the maximum score and the economy was still at 4.

This is not necessarily a mistake. Maybe you want certain features to be capped. In the case of the economy, this could reflect physical limits, no matter how you optimize. An example from classical econ is investment spending while at full employment/full capacity: it just results in inflation.

But of course you want to be aware of these limits.

@matthias

it’s like pulling levers with no labels and feeling bad for the damage it does

Not a bad descriptions of “heroic policy”, like COVID: “we need to test, track and trace!”, “no, that did not work, we got overwhelmed by the number of cases, let’s just do lockdowns!”, “oh, look lockdowns are backfiring on the economy, mental health, unrests etc. etc. Let’s vaccinate everyone!”, “now everyone is vaccinated, but meanwhile a new variant erased the vaccine’s advantage! Let’s go herd immunity”, etc.

Which means…

@ivan

This happened because we tried to give it a go without showing the effects the policy has on the district and rather letting the players imagine it in a discussion. The simple solution is to show immediately the effects of the policy. It helps the gameplay, kills the imagination a bit, but overall could be the easisest way to go.
I would like to hear what the rest of the crew thinks here.

Without having played, I imagine this discussion of “what will this do?” as a potentially generative one.

@matthias

“we play for five rounds to explore the politics and mechanics of this alternative economy; but if you don’t play well (or particularly bad crises happen to your world), you might be game over before that”.

I like this.

@matthias

Would be great to have a category “Environment” in addition to Economy, Infrastructure, Public Opinion.

+1

[nadia]

ok @iouxo @owen @ivan @bojanbobic I have put together choreography for the events, and the scripts for what we say at each phase from beginning to end. What is clear is that each one of us should probably really be familiar with how at least one distrikt functions and witness at large. So we can answer questions from participants. So I added some FAQs in there about the 3 distrikts and the evolution of witness. Please go through this document carefully! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qSEXvFdojNDGPGrmRg3g4f7afTk-QX5AobP969Ixhds/edit#heading=h.69jq7n9jr0jd

[nadia]

can everyone please confirm you have seen and read this document?

[owen]

There was an unfortunate (and unpredictable) bug this morning that prevented testing from going ahead. After 10 minutes of digging around, I found it came from there being a blank user entry in Notion created this morning.

I’m looking into how that was possible, but to make sure it doesn’t happen again, it’s a good idea to triple check before any test session that every player has a district, cards and an email associated with their name - this also rests on my shoulders, and I’m looking into making sure it’s not a problem in the future. So just to give you all a head’s up and some context.

In light of this, it would make sense (and under any scenario) to prepare a backup script for hosts and players without the interface. This bug was not hard to pin point and could be resolved without updating the application - but there can always be a much more complicated scenario (murphy’s law etc…) that will require the use of a plan B with an offline gameplay plan.

[nadia]

Ok - So after more rounds of testing, some design considerations

1. We need to have one distrikt aethnographer in each breakout room. We need at least one person in the room who has read and knows well the distrikt in focus. So facilitators need to study in detail one distrikt, including all the discussions in the witnesspedia threads where they were composed + the podcasts that europarama did. Or we reach out to someone who has and ask them to join that room. Ideally Both.

2. We need to Explain better the point of the game. The point of the game is to see how making society in different ways opens different options for how to cope with uncertainty/ crises.

   • Crises happen. We make decisions that we hope will work but we cannot know in advance. Often they don’t work out as intended.
   • Decide how to respond. We try to shoot in roughly the right direction, and then see what happens.
   • Map onto our real-world. What did we learn about how well equipped that society is for dealing with different crises, and how is that different from our current reality?
   • Limited Options for Decisions. In Witness like in real life there are constraints. When an event happens your options are limited by the rules and desires of the people around you. We have provided cards containing possible responses for that distrikt. Nothing is perfect but we choose one “that is the closest” to what we want.

3. Replace screen-share with player dashboard as default. It is difficult to read the cards right now. And we need to have all the cards visible. So we can:

   • Ask people to fill in the netlify before the event
   • Ask people to fill in the netlify during the event
   • Add all people in the room to the match

4. Player interface needs bigger text + All Policies cards demonstrated in a gallery (not horisontal scrolling).

5. For testing this evening: let us try with the player looking at their dashboard and live clicking on cards from it during the game play.

[ivan]

Test session 23 november AM - insights & comments

gameplay:

• a card MUST be selected at the end of a turn

visuals:

• REMOVE THE RIGHT SIDE ON THE DASHBOARD which shows the name of the match and the players participating - adds a ton of backend work to put everyone on the list and opens possible discussions/questions
• introduce the subtitles or a written text during the presentations
• the text on the policy cards is still too small for some participants: this requires a graphic solution because it is vital that all the players see the same deck while playing and the health points of the district at the same time (reduces confusion generated questions)
  • possible solutions:
    • reducing the number of cards to three
    • redesigning the cards with bigger font
    • share a preselected pdf
      Please, let me know what is technically doable

OBJECTIONS:
not knowing what the card does introduces a questionmark moment
solutions:
a) we show the effects of the policies
b) we don’t show them, but the moderator hints on their effects and asks the participants to discuss

[nadia]

So between now and end of thursday I think a good investment of effort for the facilitators and everyone who wants to help is to read and familiarise yourself with the distrikt of your choice, as well as with the history and current situation of Witness. I have compiled everything into one document, including what was said during the podcasts broken down into questions and answers under FAQs.

Who is focusing on which distrikt? Me: Hygge. @bojanbobic ? @iouxo? @ivan ? Perhaps others would like to readup too?
Witnesspedia_Compilation_FAQsIncluded.pdf (5.3 MB)

[iouxo]

Assembly I suppose, it was already in my test run game

[nadia]

Hi Owen, synthesis from today:

Default screen looks like this:

1. Readability of texts needs improvement. Can we:

   • limit number of cards visible above the fold at any given time to a row of three (with scroll down to see all the rest including the ones we did not select in our hand, so we are not stuck with same three cards all the time).
   • Shrink white wrapper box around the cards so that health indicators in the corner are directly (or at least closer to) the three visible cards
   • raise font size

2. Toolkit for displaying the cards. Can we have an instance of our toolkit in which all cards (events, and policies per distrikt) are on display? Reasoning:

   • People to view the cards on their own screens without any need to sign in anywhere
   • We have a backup should the hosting dashboard not work for any reason which at least offers some interactivity and data entry interface (as opposed to static pngs or pdf).
   • I am guessing this is not difficult as we already have code, and generating a new toolkit its a matter of downloading cards data from notion, and re-uploading to airtable?

3. Remove player names and emails display. Remove rightmost Section of dashboard displaying names and emails** of players. As we are screensharing the dashboard, this introduces privacy and coordination problems.

[FrankD]

I’ll take the Convenant, since Hygge is know territory

[owen]

@ivan

• REMOVE THE RIGHT SIDE ON THE DASHBOARD which shows the name of the match and the players participating - adds a ton of backend work to put everyone on the list and opens possible discussions/questions

Can you clarify this point @Ivan - I don’t really follow? We have to put players in matches regardless, so the right column requires no work at all, unless I’m missing something?

@ivan

the text on the policy cards is still too small for some participants: this requires a graphic solution because it is vital that all the players see the same deck while playing and the health points of the district at the same time (reduces confusion generated questions)

• possible solutions:
  • reducing the number of cards to three
  • redesigning the cards with bigger font
  • share a preselected pdf
    Please, let me know what is technically doable

The cards will be viewable in the player dashboard - I’m not sure if it solves the problem, but I can’t see a better solution.

@ivan

a) we show the effects of the policies
b) we don’t show them, but the moderator hints on their effects and asks the participants to discuss

This is a bit more of a subjective point, so I may be completely wrong - but dissimilating the gameplay effect of a card seems arbitrary, unnecessary and ultimately confusing. What do we gain exactly? How is a player expected to have an opinion on a card if they do not know what effect it has - just going by the image and a quote? Again, I could be completely off the ball - but I really have a hard time understanding why we would do this.

[owen]

@Ivan - I just saw the post below, which might be what you meant

@nadia

Remove player names and emails display . Remove rightmost Section of dashboard displaying names and emails** of players. As we are screensharing the dashboard, this introduces privacy and coordination problems.

I’m not trying to nitpick here - but the player will see the game events, score and policy cards in his/her dashboard, as well as the team’s cards - so is there a reason the host interface has to be screen shared or am I missing something?

Since we also agreed it’s not great readability wise, I’m failing to see why we would do this? On the other hand, it’s useful for the host to know which players are in the match they are hosting - so removing it seems completely counter intuitive to me.

@nadia

Toolkit for displaying the cards. Can we have an instance of our toolkit in which all cards (events, and policies per distrikt) are on display?

No problem.

@nadia

and generating a new toolkit its a matter of downloading cards data from notion, and re-uploading to airtable?

Why would we want to do this though? All of our card data is set up in notion… moving to airtable has no advantage whatsoever, and this late into development would be another huge time investment…

@nadia

• limit number of cards visible above the fold at any given time to a row of three (with scroll down to see all the rest including the ones we did not select in our hand, so we are not stuck with same three cards all the time).

Again I don’t understand this - we wanted a gallery view - to display all the cards - from an earlier post:

@nadia

• All Policies cards demonstrated in a gallery (not horisontal scrolling) .

Now we want three at a time like before? I’m all for it, but we really need to avoid walking back and forth on interface choices at this stage. If we’re going for the three at a time, I’ll do it - as long as we know it’s the version we want.

But I’ll re-iterate the previous point - if the player has all this information at their disposal in their dashboard, why will they be looking at it on a compressed zoom feed?

I’m (gently) pushing back on any idea that may seem counter intuitive or time consuming (or both) as there just isn’t much time. The priority is really quite simple at this stage: have the player dashboard display and synchronise the events from the host dashboard, and update the score on the player’s end. This is already enough work, given the number of players and matches.

In addition to this, we have agreed to have the player access all the cards available. I think this is more than enough, given the time constraint. I’m open to changes, as long as they all make sense.

[nadia]

@owen

Again I don’t understand this - we wanted a gallery view - to display all the cards - from an earlier post:

@nadia

• All Policies cards demonstrated in a gallery (not horisontal scrolling) .

I mean that you split cards into throws of three cards because then you have space to have bigger fonts?

[owen]

Ah I get it - so the cards take up more space themselves? Ok.

Re-reading myself I see there’s a bunch of questions in my posts and it’s not my intention to be obtuse at all - I think the basic point I’m trying to get at is this:

A) interface changes in the host dashboard at this stage, take time away from completing the player dashboard
B) many of these changes seem to be motivated by the assumption that the host will be screensharing the host interface, rather than the player reading all the relevant data in their own interface
C) this assumption to me feels very flawed, so I’m questioning quite hard the timing and urgency of the above changes

[nadia]

@owen

@nadia

and generating a new toolkit its a matter of downloading cards data from notion, and re-uploading to airtable?

Why would we want to do this though? All of our card data is set up in notion… moving to airtable has no advantage whatsoever, and this late into development would be another huge time investment…

oh I didnt realise they were, thought toolkit was picking up data from airtable - not notion.

@owen

@nadia

Remove player names and emails display . Remove rightmost Section of dashboard displaying names and emails** of players. As we are screensharing the dashboard, this introduces privacy and coordination problems.

I’m not trying to nitpick here - but the player will see the game events, score and policy cards in his/her dashboard, as well as the team’s cards - so is there a reason the host interface has to be screen shared or am I missing something?

Since we also agreed it’s not great readability wise, I’m failing to see why we would do this? On the other hand, it’s useful for the host to know which players are in the match they are hosting - so removing it seems completely counter intuitive to me.

So the reasoning is as follows:
We have 200+ people signed up for the event by now. I was all for requiring people to fill in the form beforehand (we send out the prompt on thursday, then again on monday). But, Ivan and Bojan pointed out that we should accomodate the fact that people might not don’t do this. Or they might and then get stuck trying to find the email. Or if their dashboard doesnt load or whatever?

Do we get stuck trying to get people on board? Or do we simply do a screenshare of host interface?

[owen]

@owen

Re-reading myself I see there’s a bunch of questions in my posts and it’s not my intention to be obtuse at all - I think the basic point I’m trying to get at is this:

A) interface changes in the host dashboard at this stage, take time away from completing the player dashboard
B) many of these changes seem to be motivated by the assumption that the host will be screensharing the host interface, rather than the player reading all the relevant data in their own interface
C) this assumption to me feels very flawed, so I’m questioning quite hard the timing and urgency of the above changes

My thoughts above.

I think basically, there is no problem with it if we have to go there. I can make the host dashboard as accommodating as possible for the viewer of the screencast - even though ultimately, reading an interface you can’t interact with through compressed video is not a great experience.

In an ideal scenario - and one I think no one disagrees on here - the player has the voice of the host (and video if they want to see the host’s face) + a dashboard view of cards, score and the event being played. If that breaks down, for whatever reason - then yes, screensharing may be necessary.

But since we have a whole interface for picking cards, displaying events etc it would seem a bit wasteful to not use it to each player’s advantage.

I think the priority now that the host has an adequate control panel to control the game - is making it work with the player dashboard. It is not a lot of work - but it is work that requires focus - and not making too many changes to a part we already spent a good deal of time on.

[owen]

@nadia

But, Ivan and Bojan pointed out that we should accomodate the fact that people might not don’t do this.

Why though (@bojanbobic, @Ivan) ? The process of selecting cards is fairly simple, it’s been done by a bunch of people with no issues - and it gives you access to a visual interface of the game. It doesn’t seem to be asking too much, if you’ve made it to the event and have some basic curiosity of the game.

People who don’t want to do this can I guess follow along as a non participant via the screencast, but this assumption really escapes me… Especially since the past month of work has been dedicated to creating an interface that aggregates players into matches whose choices directly result in the deck of policy cards presented. And yet almost all of the conversation above seems to be about people who will not engage in that process. If we were going for a more passive gameplay experience, why not just skip that entirely and have the policy cards pre-selected by the host?

[ivan]

HI Owen,

I do not want to add more burden on your work. What we experienced in the test sessions was that the graphic interface kept crashing/not loading/producing blank pages in addition to some difficulty in managing it if you try to take a step back. In fact, we have not concluded a single test session with the interface working. It is not on you, it is just that Netlify proved itself too unreliable for all the things we want it to do.

For that reason and to avoid a general confusion during the event, we agreed on skipping the part where we need to place all the players in the particular matches and to create pre-prepared matches in notion with only the hosts in them (as in a post in another thread).

All the players need to join the breakout rooms in Zoom according to the cards they have selected. There the host takes over with his own interface and leads them through.

The only technical problem here is that the cards need to be readable on the shared screen.

So, what needs to be in place on Monday is
on the backend:

• a host interface with the cards big enough to be read by everyone on the screen the host shares and with the visible hit points of economy, infrastructure and po
• pre-prepared matches in Notion with only the host in them

in the session:

• breakout rooms in zoom with already assigned host who have specialised in their district and have familiarised with the deck of cards we pre-prepared and with the events

[nadia]

@ivan

• pre-prepared matches in Notion with only the host in them

in the session:

• breakout rooms in zoom with already assigned host who have specialised in their district and have familiarised with the deck of cards we pre-prepared and with the events

this is not on Owen, only on hosts - Ie myself, bojan and you.