TIMELINE: 2023.09 ~ 2024.1 (4 Studio Courses in Parallel)
CONTEXT: Group Work | Game Survey and Evaluation | Junior Design
TEAMMATE: Ja Nice | JoJo
ROLE: Desk Research | Survey & Interview | Idea Generation
Embedded Files
In the course Game Survey and Evaluation, we were asked to pick one specific game genre, and apply heuristic evaluation to derive a suite of principles for the game by research, survey, interview, iteration, etc.
Research
Research
Background Research
In the last five years, Battle Royale games have spread like a virus globally, which are mainly about collecting resources, fighting with other teams, entering safe zones, and in the end, only one among dozens of teams stands!
However, at the same time, the market also appears some problems like homogenization and plagiarism.
So we decided to explore the factors that affect the game experience of Battle Royale games, and hope to conclude a set of principles of Battle Royale games, inspiring more designers to rethink about why Battle Royale games are so addictive and how to make more innovation in such a almost saturated market, and also players to evaluate the various of Battle Royale game.
Players' Comments
Not did we only collected a good deal of comments from different game platforms, but we also consulted some veteran players' detailed analyses, gaining much broader and deeper insights from players' perspective.
Pilot Test
Pilot Test
Preliminary Insights
Based on the info gathered, we came up with 9 principles, summarized according to the frequency players mentioned by their experiences(shown in the 1st figure: size represents the frequency).
Yellow refers to outside the game, and blue to inside the game(Dark blue to objective mechanism, and light blue to players’ experience).
Likert Questionnaire
With preliminary insights, we set a likert questionnaire to conduct our first pilot test, receiving feedback for both games and insights.
The radar chart is basically coherent with public appraisals of each game, with a little unexpected results, which, later on, we found that some descriptions may led to misunderstanding for respondents. But overall respondents were quite satisfied with how we divided the principles.
We also received other recommended factors to consider, but the sample size was relatively small, so we put these aside during the first iteration.
Iteration
Iteration
Principle
The front of the cards is the key point of the principles, while the back provides a general example meeting with public awareness.
According to the pilot test, we adjusted the way of describing. Instead of giving a specific indication, like "TTK should be as short as possible", we only offered the dimension for users to consider, and whether quick or slow, in TTK's case, should be determined by users under different contexts.
Users can grab the key points and meaning of principles as soon as they see these examples, and ideally, come up with more examples and understandings.
Interview
We conducted 7 30-minute-interviews with experienced APEX Legend players, who played for 200-1400 hours, to test the feasibility of our principles. The interview is separated into 2 parts.
In Part I, to avoid putting bias on interviewees by our principles, we asked several ordinary questions in advance to get their general impressions on APEX. To our surprise, every interviewee, who played more than 500 hours, quitted APEX largely because of ranking system.
In Part II, interviewees were asked to grade APEX through our principles. As a result, principles about "playfulness" received high scores, except "Safe Zone Mechanism", which has been accused by many players for a long time, and principles other than "playfulness" received relatively low scores, matching a comment saying that, "Except being fun, APEX is good for nothing". Also, the most experienced player also suggested us to take weapons into consideration.
Improvement
After the interview, we consulted several academic papers, confirming the practicality of 2 factors, "Ranking Mechanism" and "Weapons", and added it to our principles.
Based on the comments and references we collected, and iteration after pilot testing and interviews we conducted, 11 principles were finally proposed.
HIGHLIGHT: Constrained by the sample scales and accessible resources, these principles may not be as accurate as we expected. However, we believe that the method we applied is appropriate and inspiring in some degree, and also, keep iterating is of vital importance.
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