The ultimate goal of game designers is to create and to deliver powerful experiences to the players. When people play games, they experience various feelings, attain different goals by facing challenges, and find ways to overcome these challenges to solve the game. In our game, Subway Madness: Bar Crawl Edition, we wanted to effectively recreate key features of game design in order to maximize the impact of the experience. We've incorporated various design lenses of Jesse Schell in order to provide meaningful learning experiences for the users: surprise, fun, essential experience, curiosity, the elemental tetrad, and the holographic design.

The Experience

While playing the first iteration of our game prototype we realized we were missing something crucial - our game was dragging, there was no reason to keep playing at a certain point even if we knew the goal we were trying to achieve, we didn’t know why. To solve this problem we used a few of Schell’s lenses to redesign the experience we wanted our players to have. The first lens we tried out was the lens of surprise because our first iteration had none and that was made blatantly obvious after our first play. Schell entwines his lens of surprise with his lens of fun, saying you cannot have fun without surprise and in our case that was definitely true. As a result we went back to the drawing board and on our next few subway rides we made some observations - there are many surprises even in the same daily commute: delays, rerouted trains, etc… and we realized that this was what our game was missing. Schell’s lens of surprise emphasizes the importance of surprise in the narrative and in the interactions between players and we adapted a mechanic of a classic board game (Monopoly) to do just that. Chance cards that were drawn at unpredictable times mirrored the unpredictable nature of riding the subway and allowed us to incorporate a piece of the essential experience we wanted our players to have.


Where the Chance Cards add surprise and fun to the game, there are other elements that make the game new each time you play it. Every time you roll the die, your options for movement are different and you must strategize which bar you should go to next. If you roll a higher number, you might want to head for a further away bar rather than try to land exactly on the nearest one that is too close for your roll. If you get a chance card that tells you your trains has switched to express on your next turn, you should probably try to go to your furthest away bar next rather than what you were initially planning. Every new game you play, your Location Cards (bars) could be different each time, prompting a different strategy of game play. By adding these various levels of surprise and diversity of game play, we hoped to engage the players’ curiosity on multiple levels. The surprises provided by rolling the die each turn makes the player ask themselves:

  • Should I keep going to the nearer bar that I was originally planning to go to?
  • Should I try to go to the further one?
  • Will I be able to get to all of my bars before my friends do?
  • What is the fastest route to get to my next location?
  • If I am going express, which train is faster?

The surprises provided by the chance cards offer even more opportunities for the player to ask questions:

  • If I got an NYPD Card- when is the right time to use this card to slow someone down so that I have time to catch up and win?
  • If I get to switch cards with someone else, which bar is closer to my existing ones? Which one is on the same train line as me? Which is closest to Central Park, my ultimate destination?

Last but not least, even getting the option to pick your Location Cards (bars) at the start of the game prompts productive curiosity in the players. When they decide which bars they want on their bar crawl, they must ask themselves questions about locations of bars, locations of stations, relative locations of bars to each other and to connected trains. This initial card selection can be relatively arbitrary for novices or very strategic for players who are more knowledgeable about the NYC subway system. By capturing the fun (or sometimes lack thereof), surprise and essence of travelling in NYC by train, our game attempts to create a learning environment that is engaging enough to capture the curiosity of our players so that they can, in the guise of a bar crawl, begin to learn transferrable skills about navigating the NYC subway system.

The Game and The Elemental Tetrad

Aesthetics

Our game uses the actual NYC Subway map as the graphic of our gameboard. We chose to focus on Manhattan only to avoid players being scattered in the five boroughs, since it could harm the game flow. Playing with the five boroughs would have spread the bar locations in places too far away from each other, making it hard for the player to reach their destinations without getting bored of the game. That’s why in order to avoid any confusion, we decided to cut the subway lines and leave only the Manhattan area. We also chose to work with the real NYC Subway map because it resonates with our players’ experience which make it easy for them to connect to prior knowledge and transfer new skills.

The aesthetic is also connected to the story of the game, reinforcing the narrative of the “Bar Crawl” through different elements, such as the drinking flags. Additionally, the aesthetic is also coherent to the general theme of riding the subway, incorporating elements from the real world (such as the train icons) in the location cards and game board.

While playtesting our game we realized that the dimensions of the board where crucial for the experience. We started playing in a letter size map and it was very hard to find locations, making the game really slow. There was no flow at all. Another constraint we faced was that the first map was printed in black and white, which made it even harder to find the stations. Therefore, some considerations regarding the aesthetic of our game would involve a big colored board and the use of color signs to represent the trains on the location cards to facilitate the players’ search for their bar destinations.

Story

While not every game requires a story, our game would not have worked without one. The story, is the sequence of events that take place in the game; it happens through the course of the game from start to finish. Having a story makes the game far more exciting and easier to understand, further encouraging the players to immerse themselves within the game. The story of our game is based on a “Bar Crawl”, where recent college graduates who are new to New York City are looking to enjoy a single night of social debauchery. There’s a kick to this story: the players are competing to reach all designated bars that are spread across Manhattan. The only method of getting around is travelling by public transportation where along their mission, players will encounter situations that may be advantageous or disadvantageous to their commute. When designing this game, it was clear that conquering tracks or stations was not enough to satisfy our players. We asked ourselves, ‘How can we create a game that emphasizes the same values of real life features?’ We wanted to transfer the knowledge of using express trains, local stops, and multiple transfer stations in real life to the game under the narrative of a bar crawl.

Mechanics

Schell defines mechanics as “the procedures and rules of your game” (Schell, 2015, p. 51) and discusses 7 mechanics: space, time, object/attributes/states, actions, rules, skills and chances. In designing our game we considered allowing a more continuous space where players could build lines between any station in the city, allowing them to build their own, possibly more efficient, train routes around the city. However, because one of our learning goals was to teach players about the mechanics of NYC-specific subway travel, we ultimately decided to restrict their space to existing NYC subway lines. Schell’s lens of time is something we hope to use in our next iteration of this game by expanding the opportunities for players to have the ability to more directly affect the time of the game. As of now the game play time is fixed but the variability of play time and players’ control of it could add to the experience in a positive way.

Objects are characters, props, tokens, or anything that can be seen or manipulated within the game to help users advance in the game. These are the three in our game: Stations (local, express, transfer), Marker (location), and Bars (flagged or not, a destination or not).

Actions are how the player interacts with the objects. In our game, players perfect two kinds of actions: basic and strategic. Rolling the die, moving the markers to the number rolled, and placing a flag are all simple actions a player can do. The second kind of actions, strategic actions, can only be achieved when the player is no longer a novice in this semiotic domain. This type of action requires strategic, long-term and short-term thinking that demonstrates a greater understanding of the NYC subway system.

Rules are the most fundamental mechanic in a game. They “define the space, the timing, the objects, the actions, the consequences of the actions, the constraints on the actions, and the goals” (Schell, 2015, p. 174). We started off our game with simple operational and foundational rules, and we plan to further develop them as we continue to prototype. One thing we do need to keep in mind is to remember the one rule that is at the foundation of all of the others, which is the object of the game. The screenshot below are our rules: Skill and Chance, are the final two mechanics that Schell describes and unlike the other mechanics that must work together, skill and chance must find a happy balance. The presence and balance of these two mechanics allow players to remain in the flow and be both challenged and surprised by the game play. We have incorporated chance into our game through the use of a die and, unsurprisingly, Chance Cards that change the narrative and pace of the game. Skill comes in the form of strategy and mathematical calculations that govern movement around the board, balancing your plan against the movements of your opponents, and your knowledge and ability to problem solve on the fly to get to and from new locations in Manhattan.

Technology

This is a table-board game with future possibilities of becoming a software app.

Some of the elements that our current game have are:

  • Board (112 x 22 cm)
  • Location Cards
  • Chance Cards
  • Markers
  • Flags
  • 12-sided die

This game fits into the filter of “The Gaming Table”, a half private/half public venue, where players get to meet around a table to play. This game could be played in multiple settings, the only constraints is that a big table is required to set up the board.

The Process

The next lens we would like to discuss is the lens of holographic design. The underlying thought of this lens is that in order to create a successful design, one needs to keep in mind the bigger picture: how does everything tie in together to provide the experience for the players or learners? The greatest advantage of basing the game design around a single theme or narrative is that all of the elements of our game will reinforce one another, since they will all be working towards a common goal. As the game and the experience go hand in hand, we wanted to make sure to simultaneously see our game structure and the player experience. Schell suggests three questions to ask in order to make this conceptual hologram work: What elements of the game make the experience enjoyable? What elements of the game may detract from the experience? How can we change game elements to improve the experience? From our very first prototyping session to our current iteration, we’ve made drastic upgrades and changes to the game. We learned that there needed to be a balance between both experience and goal so that learners remain engaged and motivated to solve the challenges within the game. We also learned that the learning object should not deliver solely on the experience of the game. While the lens of fun and surprise are key components of the experience of the game, if the goals are unclear from the start (which we struggled with), there is no sense in using those features in the first place. Our players may enjoy the game but if there are no real goals and no learning involved, we have failed to create a powerful and resonant experience.