The Role of Design in Effective Game Development
On the 9th of May despite the nationwide blackout since 5 am in Kenya and Uganda, Africa Game Developers were not budged. The 10 O’clock scheduled meeting with guest speaker Michihito Mizutani from Finland continued smoothly. He spoke extensively on the role of design in software development.
As human beings, since childhood, we’ve always been attracted to shiny and visually appealing objects. That is why as adults when we create — software, games, you name it, we tend to gravitate towards creating beautiful things. However, during this online meetup with Michihito, we were challenged to focus on the experience more than the appearance of the games we develop.
He gave an example of a game his friend made that encouraged users to collaborate on different drawings. One person would draw the head of a lion and another would come in and draw the body of the lion. The application would then show the end result.
Although the end result might not necessarily be the loveliest art piece they had seen in their lives, the experience of drawing with friends made them want to do it again and again. It was a seductive experience that made them happy and eager to play more and more.
The starting point when you think about design should be to ensure that the product gives desirable experiences. It is therefore important to speak about experiences in the very first stages of game development.
The cost of developing is easier to discuss than the value that will be derived from the development. This is because most times people have different values.
It is good to have a team with different values so that questions such as:
How do people like it? asked by the Designers representing desirability are followed by
How can we make it? asked by the Techies who will tell the Designers whether or not the desirable project can be made. And then finally the question
How can we monetize it? asked by the Business people and Marketers who will tell the team if it is fiscally feasible.
A multidisciplinary team is excellent because everyone focuses on their areas of passion and expertise. In many cases, the business side is usually the main focus followed by the technology and finally, the design. However, in order for there to be a form of balance, the focus should be distributed equally among these 3 teams. Each team should also adopt the habit of appreciating each other.
Michihito emphasized the importance of differentiating assumptions from facts by prototyping after every 2 weeks. We usually tend to start with assumptions by thinking about the ideal situation but after prototyping, we get facts so that the following cases do not occur:
i) Programmers saying “We thought we could make it but it took more than we thought.”
ii) Business people saying “We thought we had a great idea but we could not monetize it after 1 year of investing time and money.”
iii) Designers saying “We thought people would enjoy this game but after the launch people complained.”
It is therefore important to eliminate assumptions and bring facts in decision making. He encouraged us to make the game tangible and playable in 2 weeks; let people try it out and based on that you can decide on whether to stop or continue. If you stop you can always work on a new game idea. In short, prototyping accelerates decision making and the user can give you new and interesting ideas for you to use moving forward.
Users may say they like one thing and not the other and that should be recorded through the use of tools like Figma and Pop. Ideally, we should craft questions to receive in-depth feedback. It is important to ask a few questions at most 4 questions to many people for optimum analysis. The question: What do you think about this game? can be asked before play. During the gameplay, you can ask the following 2 questions: What do you like in the game? and What do you dislike in the game? Then finally after play, you can ask What did you miss?
Michihito encouraged us to show appreciation to the participants. He suggested giving them some bitcoins. Local ways of rewarding people can be implemented for instance: in Kenya that could be in the way of Bonga points or some candy when feedback can be collected in person post-COVID-19. Appreciation goes a long way because they will be more willing to help making it easier to approach them again after 2 weeks.
From the 4 questions asked, we are supposed to make either one of the following 3 decisions:
i) You can decide to STOP because you have realized that there is little evidence that your design is relevant to the target users.
ii) You can decide to PIVOT. You realize that it was the wrong design but when you change it a bit while keeping the same goal, you can test it again.
iii) You can decide to PROCEED. You realize that from the feedback it seems like a good idea, so you continue the development with the same design.
Here are some questions the game developers asked during the online meetup:
Question 1: There seems to be an interconnectedness between liking, building, and monetizing in a fast-paced setting. How do you balance these?
Michihito used monetizing to simplify the answer. He said, “Today in the social network world, values cannot be monetized but social values exist. Therefore, if social values increase it is rather easy to monetize. One can launch their game after two weeks for free and see how people like it by observing the areas of the game they comment most about. So once you get to make the changes, you can leave some areas free so that people continue playing then charge some areas — and the people who really like the experience will be willing to pay in order to access other levels in the game.”
Question 2: What sort of things have accelerated in the game industry because of COVID 19?
The number of downloads on the app store is hitting new records all over the world almost on a daily basis because people are bored at home and they want to be entertained. The gaming industry is one of the winners in the crisis.
Artists are finding that the only way to perform is now online and we have seen big events in places like Fortnite. They have a fantastic game and now it has become a place where artists perform and hang out.
It’s interesting that some of these games are becoming places and destinations and maybe we will see more of that going forward. It’s the new way of socializing because parents used to be worried that their kids are just playing games all day and isolating themselves from the world. And if you look at what the kids are playing, they are playing games like Fortnite together with their friends which is actually a social experience.
Out of necessity because of this crisis, we will see these trends accelerate. Every crisis has an opportunity; there will be good things coming out of the crisis.
Question 3: How can we use games in improving health outcomes, especially mental health?
We can learn a lot from games and how games engage people. Designing games is a lot about psychology because Game Designers are good at building addiction. In itself, addiction may not be a good thing but if it is aligned with good, say addiction to learning ways of maintaining mental health, then that would be a good thing.
We were also introduced to a lady working on gamified approaches called Jane McGonigal who has a lot of insight in her book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. We were thanked for attending and encouraged to register for the oncoming Ambitious Africa talk titled Future of Gaming and Media Consumption. The national blackout then ended the sessions as our devices breathed their last.
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LudiqueWorks is a video game publishing and video game development company based out of Africa. With a network of 150+ studios in 30 countries across Africa.
LudiqueWorks invests in nascent video game development studios on the continent through training and funding, as well as building a growing video gaming community through the Africa Game Developers network.
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