Designing and Coding a Game Project

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OVERVIEW AND THE GOAL:

GOAL:

Concept Description: A game for a minimum of 2 to 4 players called ‘Real Fake Gaming News’. It has three levels of rounds- easy, medium, and hard. He or she uses fake coins to determine if the news on each news card is real or fake. Loses coins on the incorrect answer and retains them if the answer is correct.

A player accesses the companion website where he sees news cards with: a headline, a short story or description, and the source.

Theme:

I went on to design a game based on ‘Fake News’ theme.

Genre of Game

Journalism

Type of Game

Quiz and strategy

MY ROLE IN THE TEAM:

This project was managed individually. So, I played a role of UX researcher, designer, and coder.

Process:

This time I chose a Non-Linear Design process. It was a valuable experience for me while I was designing, iterating, testing, and coding.

1. Empathise:

I always believed in backing concept development, prototype designing with research. Used the research papers from Medietilsynet to know the user-personas.

This research-paper says that the Norwegian teenagers prefer to play games in English to learn the language. They want to socialise and like to have a learning experience. In their daily lives, they are troubled by fake news. So, often look for sources where they can differentiate between real and fake news and keep themselves informed.

Here are the points I added in the game from the research-paper:

1. Main language of 'Real-Fake Gaming News' is English
2. Are free to debate about the questions they see on companion site
3. The debate gives them an opportunity to socialise and interact
4. Game of 2 to 4 players- a tool to socialise
5. Get tips, access to fact check sources or sites to check the news credibility

DEFINING THE USER-PERSONAS

2. Define and Ideate:

In this phase, I underwent a brainstorming session to define the possible solutions of the game.

Many sketches and ideations on miro-board and as simple as on pen and paper went into the defining of the game.

3. Design and Test:

User-Flow of the Companion Website

Building Blocks of the Game

I learnt to use UX Pyramid model while iterating throughout the process. The video-game designers often use this model while incorporating interactive elements at every step of the game. This approach became useful while I was trying to bring out the meaningfulness.

Mid-Fi Wireframes

User-Testing and Iterations

What I learnt with user-testing:

1. They liked the current news quiz
2. Got an understanding of what’s real and unreal news
3. They could experience relevance of the game
4. Found fun element in coin system
5. Users felt intrigued while they were waiting for the results
6. Were more open-mind towards reading news in English language

4. Iterations and Coding:

Iterations and Learnings:

1. The back side of the card has tips to identify the fake news
2. Removed the time-frame of answering within 60 seconds
3. The discussion and debate triggers cohesiveness and social interaction
4. Score system is simple- to gain as many coins to win

Enjoy Gaming Here!

Check out the github code here!