Thanks!

I've finished writing up my paper and portfolio of work now so it's ready for hand-in. It's been a fun project and I'm hoping to carry on and make the game I've came up with based on the heuristics! If it ever gets to the point of development I'll post a link here for a new blog series to share the development with you all!

Thanks for reading!

Using the heuristics

Now that I've posted the heuristics I've came up with my own game concept. I'm pretty happy with how they have turned out at the moment but academically I think they are lacking authenticity. I need to evaluate them with academic rigour but this is future work. 

I would like to share my idea with you but I actually want to go ahead and make a project out of it! Feel free to use the heuristics but just give me credit :) 

Cheers, 

Gavin

Creating the Heuristics

In order to create the heuristics I've adopted my modified MDA framework and tied it in with all of the research I've been doing. Here's some more post-it notes!

Using post-it notes!

I arranged the post-it notes in a way in which I could look at them along with the modified MDA framework to come up with the heuristics. I used play test heuristics to give my heuristics table a structure.

Here's the results:

Table 1: Empathy Games - Heuristics

	Heuristics and Description
Gameplay
1.	The purpose of the game draws inspiration from a personal or life experience.
2.	The game conveys emotions gathered from the experience.
3.	The game successfully communicates the intended message explicitly and directly to the player.
4.	There is use of metaphors to reinforce the meaning or intended emotions.
5.	The game has meaningful gameplay and purpose.
6.	The gameplay keeps the player motivated to play (Please see Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of ‘Flow’ which is used to help immerse the player).
Game Story
1.	They story takes the player on a journey which results in some form of transformation.
2.	The story employs a structure (e.g. 3 act structure) to keep the player engaged in the storyline and/or progression.
3.	The structure of the story flows like a wave helping to keep the player interested by introducing new elements, furthering the progression of the plot.
4.	The game/story gives some form of closure or revolution (Climax) at the end.
5.	The narrative adds to the meaningful experience through the use of narration/dialogue/imagery or sound.
6.	Clever use of level design, narrative and game flow has been used to strengthen the delivery of the story.
7.	The story is implied; rather than being too direct (e.g. Journey, Flower, Dear Esther etc).
Mechanics
1.	The mechanics help to strengthen and enforce the player to elicit the intended emotion.
2.	Mechanics are simple to allow for the player to discover a metaphor or purpose.
3.	The mechanics are used well to mix up the gameplay while helping to further the meaningful experience.
Aesthetics
1.	The art style compliments the feel of the game and adds to the proposed experience.
2.	The audio compliments the feel of the game and adds to the proposed experience.
3.	The game feels great and does not disturb the experience which is trying to be delivered.

Modifying the MDA framework

So in order to create my heuristics I'm using the MDA framwork but I've had to modify it for games driven by emotion. Check out my changes and tell me what you think.

Reminder - some context

Essentially I’m trying to come up with a set of heuristics which designers can use when designing ‘empathy games’. This is the general idea:

The original MDA framework:

MDA Framework (LeBlanc, 2005)

I modified it based on researching games with are emotionally driven. From the design process, it seems that when designing for emotionally driven games it’s often backwards from the traditional way of game development. However, it can be argued that mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics are flexible… they can be moved around between the input - ‘emotion’ and the produced ‘feeling’ output. 

Modified MDA framework

I'm not going to be using this to help me create my heuristics. It gives me a lot of structure to work with when analysing empathy games and research. I'm using post-it notes to get my thoughts out on paper while I move them around. Here have a look:

Post-it notes!

Empathy Games

Sorry it's been a good while since I posted! I'm pretty shocked with myself... two post without any images! Commence the pretty images...

Nah but on a serious note - Empathy Games. What's an empathy game?

"A game which allows the player to understand and share the feelings of another"

Creating empathy games often designed backwards and it makes for inefficient game design but these games are pushing new frontiers with the medium which is exciting. 

Here are some games which I've been looking at!

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - Starbreeze Studios (2013)

Dear Esther - The Chinese Room (2012)

Gone Home - The Fullbright Company (2013)

Journey - thatgamecompany (2012)

Papa & Yo - Minority Media (2012)

That Dragon, Cancer - Ryan & Amy Green (TBA)

Post Project Proposal

So I submitted my project proposal earlier this week. I stuck with what I said I was going to do. Now it's just up to me to get on with it during semester 2. I've got a bunch of research to continue doing if my project is going to work out. It's just a research paper, there's no experiments or evaluations so I'm pretty happy with that. Essentially I didn't want to do another miniature honours project so I've gone with something I'll be happy working on and it will help my own professional development too. It's ambitious but I'm hoping to come out with a game concept which I'll be able to take on and develop with a small team of people. 

Project Proposal

Now that I've been doing a bunch of research on emotion, emotion and video games and online relationships I'm about to dive in and start writing my project proposal. The idea is that I want to create heuristics so that I can help other game designers in coming up with game design which is driven by emotion. I've been checking out Jenova Chen interviews on YouTube to rake in any information I can about his design process.

I probably won't post again till January sometime. Wish me luck!

Cheers, 

Gavin