The future

Well, that’s about it for the game, really. It’s as finished as I can get it, released it into the wild and people play it and hopefully enjoy it. But what’s next?

I know this is “just a dissertation project”, but too many people have told me over the past months that this is a really good idea, both as a game and as an OpenStreetMap awareness project that I don’t really want to leave it hanging in the wind. I will continue to iterate it over the summer and see where I can get with it. Adding more minigames, balancing the points you get and how you get them, maybe a multiplayer cooperative mode, all these are things that I would like to play with in the future, considering the feedback that I got.

But the change that I want to do the most is make a map of Bucharest for my Bucharest-ian players to play on. Till now I’ve only played on the Ipswich map because that’s the map that I iterated on and constructed from the beginning, and the 6 types of amenities that are shown on it are typical for Ipswich. If I were to just go to Bucharest and use the same settings it wouldn’t be as good. I will do this, sometime in the future.

Speaking of locations, Bucharest is only one location. It could work for any town or city, or even parts of towns or cities. People could explore and find out a lot more about New York or Paris or Tokio by playing this game. It took me about 30 hours in total to get the board in the state that it’s in at the moment, and these all seem like good ideas, but it would be quite a lot of work, and I won’t be able to put 30 hours of work for every request for a town that I get. But wait a bit. OSM is open, and ITO have been known to release some of their maps to the public. I could create a set of settings so that people could make their own maps. ITO could export the PoI map, and then people could download the Hex grid and card templates and make their own map! It’s in the spirit of OSM and it’s definitely something that would further the game a lot in the future, so that’s something else that I would like to do in the future.

Lastly, and I think this would be quite far from coming true, it would be amazing to get the game or variants of it (iterated in time) themed for various fictional universes. Would you like to play the game in Azeroth? What about at Hogwarts? All these could be possible if maps of those locations, with the PoIs in place, would exist. And I think they do, so I think it’s completely do-able in time.

That’s about it. I hope you enjoyed the trip we took together through gamification and board-game design, and you, just as me, learned something.

Chris F.

P.S.: It would also be nice to turn this game into something digital, where I would be able to apply all the theoretical concepts I’ve used in the board game, so if anyone who’s reading this wants to collaborate, send a Tweet or an email my way.

Numbers

I thought it would be nice to share some numbers with you, now at the end, about this project.

Blog-wise:
51 blog posts, with the first one posted on the 3rd of October 2013.
36 weeks since I started blogging, leading up to an average of 1.41 blog posts per week.
599 unique visitors on this blog since October, averaging to almost 3 per day.
30 comments in total on the blog
289 views from the UK
87 views from Romania
78 views from the US
16 views from Russia
1 view from Sri Lanka
Search queries that people have used to get to this blog:
“dave pimm games blizzard”
“examples of macroeconomics crowding in”
“crowding out effect examples fo 2013”
“what to see around ipswich area map”

Game-wise:
38 different maps/boards saved on my machine, with 9 major versions found on this blog
17 comma-separated value (CSV) files with the data used to create the cards
99 amenities in total on the map from 233 total amenities exported, as follows:
9 banks
7 fast food amenities
23 places of worship
18 post boxes
23 pubs
19 bicycle parking amenities
753 commas used in the CSV that I used to create the cards

Chris F.

To conclude…

I started this last October, thinking I could make a boardgame to illustrate a concept which would teach people about OpenStreetMap and encourage them to explore and use OSM because it’s awesome to be a cartographer.

8 months later, I believe I have something that’s good. A game that makes people be intrigued about where the data from their maps comes from. A game that they play and have fun. A game that helps them understand the place around them better and maybe allows them to make some discoveries.

I’ve added to my game design knowledge, taking some techniques from the field of gamification which I’ve used in the game, gamification techniques such as missions and dividing information into manageable chunks (taking out the PoI tags one at a time), as well as to a degree points and badges (most PoIs overall, most PoIs in ORANGE region etc.). What I hope to have done with this game is created a fun game, a game that gives players meaningful choices to make, as well as keeping a bit of randomness and mistery in it.

It’s been an amazing journey, and I think I’ve learned a lot. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my tutors, especially Rob who had to go through playtests with me, Maria, who had to listen to me complain about not having enough time while she also didn’t have time for her dissertation, the wonderful people at ITO who helped me by giving me the software and support needed to produce the board, all my playtesters and the people at Creative Board Gaming who didn’t complain about playing an unfinished game and have given me tons of good ideas, my parents who didn’t complain that the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did before I went to sleep was work on my dissertation over the past week, and the amazing OpenStreetMap community without whom any of this would not be possible.

Thank you all.

Chris F.

Minigame inspiration

I started with three challenges suggested by Rob, then I added 4 more, took one of Rob’s out and in the end added another one. Where did all these minigame ideas come from?

Here are the 7 challenges (minigames) that are currently available in the game:

HID: Hide a token/die in one of your hands behind your back. Show your fists (with the token/die in one of them) to a player of your choice. If they don’t guess which fist the token/die is in, you unlock the tag.

ROL: Roll a die. If the result is an even number, you unlock the tag.

NUM: All players think of a number between 1 and the number of players (for 2 players see WOR in Variations). They each take an amount of tokens equal to the number of players in their right hand and without the other players seeing you, move tokens to the left hand until you have the number you thought of in your right hand. All players place the right hand, formed in a fist, over the table. At a signal, all players turn their hands palm-up and open their fists to reveal the tokens. If your number of tokens is the highest unique number (nobody had the same number in their hand), you unlock the tag.

CAT: Catapult a die or token on the game board. You do this by putting the die/token (whichever you prefer) in the palm of your hand, then you bang your hand on the underside of the table, so that the momentum will catapult the die/token. If it lands on the board, you unlock the tag.

THR:  All the players throw a token on the board at the same time. If your token is the closest to the amenity that you’re trying to scout at the time, you unlock the tag.

RPS: Play rock-paper-scissors against another player. If you win, you unlock the tag.

WOR – Word chain. In this challenge, the player needs to choose a word and say it. Then they choose another player to play with. That player needs to continue the word chain by saying a word that starts with the last two letters of the first word (for example, education would be a valid reply to the word red). If 11 words are chained together or the scouting player manages to „lock out” the other player, then the tag is unlocked. A player is „locked out” when they can’t come up with a reply to a word (for example, „blue” is a word that locks the other player out – there are no English words that start with „ue”). Generally, proper nouns such as person names are not accepted as valid reply.

Well, Rob suggested three challenges that he thought would be really fast to play and would show a result really fast: throwing a die, flipping a coin, playing Rock Paper Scissors. Other than Rock Paper Scissors, the rest are games of luck with a ratio of winning of 1 out of 2. Really fast, really nice. But playing just the three of them for about 45-60 minutes isn’t too fun, so I looked for other minigames. That’s when the guys at Creative Board Gaming came to help.

First, I’ve been told about the NUM and CAT challenges from a game called COPA, a really awesome game with 18 cups and 80 beans (yes, REAL beans).

The NUM and CAT challenges are derived from two of the four challenges of COPA.

Then, the THR challenge is inspired by a very old betting game that I used to play with my classmates in primary school, where you needed to flick a coin at the wall, and the person who got closest to the wall would get all the coins. I’ve adapted that and included it in the game.

The fourth challenge, HID, is a simple game that we used a long time ago when deciding who would go first at picking a team when we played football in the schoolyard.

Finally, the WOR challenge came to be by discussing the possibility of having verbal components in the minigames and deciding it would be really nice to have a verbal challenge. Since Fazan (the Romanian for Chain of Words game) is a very popular game and it’s easy to play, I decided to go for that. Also, it’s 11 words (6 words and 5 replies) because it can sometimes go very far and I decided that each challenge should take under a minute to decide if you won or not.

I’ve been asked to add even more challenges, but I think for the time being, these 7 (took out flipping a coin due to it being redundant) challenges will do nicely.

Chris F.

Fun game for different target audiences

One of the final results of my dissertation was a game that had different rules based on two different target audiences. In my dissertation proposal, I stated:

I want to be marked on my ability to create a game and how fun it is. Fun, being a vast concept, cannot be rated easily, so I would like to focus on engaging diverse target audiences and create one game which appeals to a minimum of two different target audiences. My dissertation will focus on implementing a simple set of mechanics and then creating different incentive systems for different target audiences. As such, I would like to be marked on the engagement ability of the game for my chosen audiences.

I believe that the game and challenges (or minigames, call them what you will) that I have added to the game fit well with most target audiences and most player types, according to Bartle’s types. The Killers will find pleasure in stalking players as they are juuust about to finish a PoI and claim it from beneath their noses, the Achievers will go for getting as many points as possible and carefully scrutinizing the rulesheet to see how to best maximize their points from all the different combinations of tags and PoIs that can be found in their mission card. The Socializers will laugh as they try the challenges and will prefer to go for the social ones such as NUM, RPS and THR, maybe even HID, and then they will make a jest when they lose or win at one of those, while the Explorers will be happy to explore as much of the town as they can, sometimes even without claiming PoIs, simply scouting as many as possible.

But, as fun as I think I made the game, there are 8 billion people out there, and some of them won’t be served by the mechanics that I’ve created and the dynamics won’t appear as I envisioned them. As such, I decided to create a few different rules, or variants as I call them, of the game, that I hope will help enlarge the number of different people that will like to play the game which, by the way, I’ve decided to call “Mapping Party”.

These are the three variations that emerged from discussions with my playtesters:

Extra challenge – Word chain

            WOR – Word chain. In this challenge, the player needs to choose a word and say it. Then they choose another player to play with. That player needs to continue the word chain by saying a word that starts with the last two letters of the first word (for example, education would be a valid reply to the word red). If 11 words are chained together or the scouting player manages to „lock out” the other player, then the tag is unlocked. A player is „locked out” when they can’t come up with a reply to a word (for example, „blue” is a word that locks the other player out – there are no English words that start with „ue”). Generally, proper nouns such as person names are not accepted as valid replied.

Extra rule – Stealing

            Once every turn, instead of moving or scouting a PoI, a player can choose to try and steal a PoI that another player is currently scouting (claimed PoIs cannot be stolen). To steal a PoI, the player has to win a number of challenges equal to the number of scouted tags on the PoI that they are trying to steal (number of scouted tags = number of unlocked tags + 1). The player that is trying to steal a PoI can choose their own 3 distinct challenges to sequencially solve from the list of challenges. If the player that is trying to steal a PoI card fails a challenge, then they end their turn. Each stealing attempt must start a PoI card from the first tag, indifferent to where they failed the challenge the previous time. Only one PoI card can be stolen at a time, and a player cannot steal from the same player two turns in a row.

Extra rule – Returning to start

            At the beginning of their turn, a player can choose to skip their turn, and return to the starting hex (the black hex). The player needs to return the card they were currently scouting to the pool of unclaimed PoIs.

I’ve added the extra challenge for Socializers and Achievers. The Socializers will want to see how other players think and will jump on any extra opportunity to have verbal interaction with other players. The Achievers will want to prove that they have the best control over the language that the players speak. Also, the WOR challenge suits a game of two players better than the NUM challenge, where there’s no reason to pick the number 1 if there are only two players. This is also the result of my playtesters loving the concept of challenges and wanting more of them. The WOR challenge can be exchanged with any other challenge.

I’ve added the extra rule especially for Killers. I’ve recently played a game called Carpe Astra which allows you to choose between Slander and Network during your turn to gain resources and influence, with Slander being the option of taking influence from another player and transferring it to yourself. I’ve played with quite a few Killers in that game, and noticed that ALL of them almost always if not always went for Slander, because they loved to take stuff from other players in order to further their advance. I decided that this stealing mechanic would suit a target audience such as teenage boys really well, and I’ve had positive feedback on it from the Killers that I’ve played with.

Lastly, one of the Socializers that I’ve played with mentioned that she would’ve liked to be able to return to the black starting hex and having more mobility on the map, even if that required her to give up a PoI she was currently scouting. I realized that this would indeed help her and would allow for more strategy in completing the missions, so I added it to the variations.

There you have it, three extra rules which I believe will help different target audiences feel better about the game and enjoy it more.

Two target audiences, as we define them when making video-game pitches, that I would see could play this game and have fun, would be teenage boys, between 13 and 16 years old, and women between 20 and 30 years old, who have a focus on their professional lives. The boys fit in the Achiever and Killer archetypes, so they would probably go for the Stealing mechanic, while I would see the women with that social profile as Socializers, but also Achievers, so they would like the WOR challenge and the returning to start mechanic.

That being said, I would like to mention again that I’ve playtested this game with people of various ages, cultures and personalities, from 8 year-old kids to game design tutors and marketing professionals and received more and more positive feedback from them as I iterated onward. I believe that at the moment the game is in a state where I can say that it definitely answers the three criteria I discussed about with Rob a while back:

• I want people to take notice of what’s laid on the map.
  By adding the PoIs’ real location on the map as it’s added to OpenStreetMap, I’ve made sure of this. McGinty’s in Ipswich, for example, is almost where McGinty’s really is (small error due to the coloured hexagon, but it should be within a 100m radius). That bank that’s in front of your house, close to Aldi’s in Ipswich is definitely there as well. People will know what’s on the map and know that features are where they are in real life as well, should they want to further explore the town.
• I want people to know which Points of Interest they have searched.
  By having the players unlock the tags one at a time, I make sure that each PoI they scout is memorable. This will allow people to remember information about the PoIs that they are scouting and also notice errors or missing information in the OSM database with PoIs they have information about.
• I want people to know how to assign characteristics to things.
  That’s why I’ve added all the tags to each amenity, as opposed to earlier iterations where you made guesses about which tags went where. Like this, people will familiarize themselves with common tags (addr:*, postcode, opening_times etc.) and will begin their OSM journey with some previous knowledge, should they want to become a contributor.

Chris F.

Iteration seven

The feedback for iteration six was good, as I mentioned in the previous post. The only negative comments were made about the wording of the rules of the game and the balancing in the missions.

First, some players thought that the wording in explaining the THR and NUM challenges. Here’s the old wording:

NUM – All players think of a number between 1 and the number of players. They each take an amount equal to the number of players of tokens in your hand and without the other players seeing you, move as many tokens as you want from a hand to the other, keeping at least one in the first hand. If your number of tokens is the highest unique number (nobody had the same number in their hand), you unlock the tag.

THR – All the players throw a token on the board. If you are the closest to the Key area of the amenity that you’re trying to scout at the moment (bank if you’re scouting a bank when doing this), you unlock the tag.

For NUM, they didn’t know which hand was which and which hand to use when. Also they didn’t understand when the hands should be shown, and whether they should be shown at the same time.

With THR, the players were confused as to whether there were any special styles in which you could throw, and if all the players needed to throw at the same time.

These are the rewordings I did:

NUM – All players think of a number between 1 and the number of players. They each take an amount of tokens equal to the number of players in their right hand and without the other players seeing you, move tokens to the left hand until you have the number you thought of in your right hand. All players place the right hand, formed in a fist, over the table. At a signal, all players turn their hands palm-up and open their fists to reveal the tokens. If your number of tokens is the highest unique number, you unlock the tag.

THR – All the players throw a token on the board at the same time. If your token is the closest to the amenity that you’re trying to scout at the time, you unlock the tag.

Secondly, I mentioned that the players thought the missions would take too long to complete, considering that the game only lasts 15 turns. Taking into account that I’ve written the missions when the game finished once all the amenities were claimed, it’s understandable that they weren’t exactly balanced. I’ve tweaked them a bit now,and players should be able to complete at least one, if not two missions per game.

It’s also been suggested that a partially completed mission (only one or two of the three tasks) should get points. I agreed with that, and now each task is worth 2 points, while finishing all three gives the player 10 points.

Definitely the most rewarding moment for me as a designer was when I saw that once an amenity was claimed, as the players were taking out the card to reveal nothing underneath the last tag they unlocked, the players would make a triumphal claim. Some would make a fist-pump in the air, others would simply squee of joy. I absolutely loved that, and I think that’s one of the best feelings you can get as a designer, seeing that your design worked.

It’s also been suggested that I add some sort of delimitation between the tags, so players know when to stop pulling out a card. This is an example sheet of PoIs before and after the change, where I added a bullet-point at the beginning of each tag. I also realized that having the challenges at the end of a card is a problem, since youțd need to take the whole card out before seeing the challenges. As such, I moved the challenges at the top of the card, underneath the title.

Before on the left, after on the right

The last mandatory rule addition/change that I’m going to make is that once a player has claimed a PoI, they immediately take an extra turn in which they can move up to six hexes (instead of three). Something similar has also been suggested by Rob, and I’ve definitely seen the need for it in the past few games. You need to give the players a reward, and sometimes points are not enough. It’s good to know that they’re encouraged to have “streaks” of claiming PoIs if they can.

That’s about it for iteration seven, and this is the iteration that the game will ship with for my dissertation. There are a few additions, but this is the core game.

Next I will talk about targeting the game at different target audiences and where the minigame ideas came from.

Chris F.

Playtest and feedback on iteration six

I’ve tested the game with 4 players today. As a famous company would say, they were a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs. Alexandra was part of them, but so was an economist, a DnD dungeon master and a photographer.They played the game I’m currently working on seemed to enjoy themselves quite a lot. They also had some feedback for me, which I will take into account for doing the last iteration of this game before submission. Let’s see what they thought.

First, I think it should be said that from all the playtests that I’ve done till now, the game is definitely more enjoyable the more players there are. I’ve never seen players laugh while they were reading the rules of another game, except maybe with Munchkin. That was really nice to see.

Once the game started, things got heated pretty soon, with players trying to snatch cards from other players by going to the same PoI hex, people getting quite vexed that they had the same choice 6 times in a row at Rock Paper Scissors or that they managed to roll an even number on the die during their first turn. The dynamics were very nice between these players, helping each other understand the rules without needing me to step in and explain them, and they understood them very well.

At the end of the game they came up with a few suggestions that I will explore over the next couple of blog posts, but overall they wanted me to know they had a lot of fun and would also love to play the game with Bucharest instead of Ipswich, just to see what’s around that they don’t know about. I’d say that this playtest was a real success.

For ease of use, we put all the challenge tokens into a bowl.

Two post boxes, one of which almost complete, one fast food, one bank and a bicycle parking. Not bad for turn 8.

This was also the first time I’ve played with actual coloured and graphical cards, and I really like they way the PoI cards came out.

I think the game is now as finished as I can make it, considering how much time I have left till submission. Over the next few posts I will post the final iteration of the game and rules, as well as discussing the different target audience forks for the game and analyzing the overall state of the project.

Chris F.

Iteration six

Nothing too major in this iteration since I feel that the game is working quite well, there are just a few minor tweaks I’d like to address:

• Players can move up to three hexes instead of six as previously mentioned.
• The game ends after 15 turns. The player with the most points at the end of the 15 turns wins.
• Once a player claims a PoI, they put one of their tokens on top of it. This is to keep confused players from thinking a PoI hasn’t been claimed and also helps find out who had the most PoIs in each region at the end of the game.

It’s also been suggested that while the minigames are really awesome, a small problem is that you always get them in an exact order no matter what PoI you’re on. In order to address this, I decided to have each of the PoIs have one minigame that you always start with, and then two random ones.

With the previous iteration and additions, I had 7 minigames in total, but I realized that tossing the coin and rolling the die have the exact same result, a 1 in 2 chance that you are going to get it right, so I took out the coin toss. With 6 minigames remaining, here is how I assigned them to each PoI:

• Bank: Hide a coin/die in one of your hands behind your back. Show your fists (with the coin/die in one of them) to a player of your choice. If they don’t guess which fist the coin/die is in, you unlock the tag.
• Fast food: Roll a die. If the result is an even number, you unlock the tag.
• Place of worship: All players think of a number between 1 and the number of players. They each take an amount equal to the number of players of tokens in your hand and without the other players seeing you, move as many tokens as you want from a hand to the other, keeping at least one in the first hand. If your number of tokens is the highest unique number (nobody had the same number in their hand), you unlock the tag.
• Pub: Catapult a due or coin on the game board. You do this by putting the die/coin (whichever you prefer) in the palm of your hand, then you bang your hand on the underside of the table, so that the momentum will catapult the die/coin. If it lands on the board, you unlock the tag.
• Post box:  All the players throw a token on the board. If you are the closest to the Key area of the amenity that you’re trying to scout at the moment (bank if you’re scouting a bank when doing this), you unlock the tag.
• Bicycle parking: Play rock-paper-scissors against another player. If you win, you unlock the tag.

The other two types of minigames for the amenity that you’re currently scouting are drawn from a pot. If the PoI has more than three tags that need unlocked, then just cycle through the minigames in the order they were initially played.

I also changed the board a bit, changing the colour of the pubs since it slightly too similar to the colour of the parks. The pubs are now cyan.

 

I’ve also had a look at the scoring system and decided that, for extra intrigue and dynamic forming between players, to have a player only get points for a PoI if they claim it. By doing this, I encourage player interaction in the form of players coming to steal other player’s PoIs. The only time when you get points for non-claimed but scouted PoIs is at the end of the game. At the end of the game, you get a point for each tag you scouted on the cards you’re currently the last person who scouted them (when you scout a card you take it either from the pack of PoI cards or from in front of a player and put in front of you. That way you just need to count what’s in front of you at the end).

That’s it for iteration six.

Chris F.

Playtesting iteration five

I playtested the fifth iteration today with three players, and everything went smoothly. Letțs discuss what went well and what I saw that still needed work on.

First, it needs to be said that this iteration has been played with three players: Alexandra, whom I mentioned before. She’s an artist and an employee at the shop where we played. Silviu, the kid you can see in the picture and who likes all sorts of games, and Vali, who knows A LOT of games (can’t imagine what would happen if he were to meet Rob and talk about boardgames).

The playtest lasted for about 45 minutes, and we played 15 rounds. I decided on the spot that would have been better than waiting for all 106 amenities on the new map to be claimed, especially since there was a kid involved, and they’re not known for their patience.

The playtest went well, with players laughing and having fun, as well as asking questions about what each tag on the cards meant as they went along, and also asked questions about Ipswich and OpenStreetMap, which is totally what I wanted them to do other than playing.

The 7 minigames that I mentioned in earlier posts worked beautifully, all of them being very popular with the players, and having a lot of “awww”‘s, “yaaaay”‘s and “dammit”‘s shouted in the store (luckily, being a weekend, the store wasn’t that full so other people weren’t distracted from playing Jenga and the Game of Thrones TCG) while playing.

At the end of the playtest, everybody said they had a lot of fun and would like to play the game again. I’m really glad they enjoyed it and that means that I’m very close to getting it right, especially with the time frame that I have left for getting this into a finished state.

I have one final playtest scheduled for tomorrow, and a few minor tweaks that I’ll post shortly into what will become iteration six, then I will spend the rest of tonight and tomorrow making everything pretty and printable.

Chris F.

Iteration five

A slightly modified board, a new rule and more minigames. This is iterations five.

I’ve been told the area that the map covered was slightly too big, so I decided to zoom in one more level and see how it would look like afterwards. It looks good. I also got a new hexagon pattern and redrew the hex grid, mostly because the one I was using earlier was pixellated, but also because the hex grid was still too small for my 16mm tokens, which meant that in order to make the hexes bigger I would’ve had to make the pixellated hexes even more pixellated. Now the 16mm tokens should fit ok, I’ll see a bit later when I print the board and playtest this iteration.

I’ve also added a new rule based on the dynamic that I noticed in the playtest for iteration four, that the players always stood in one place wanting to finish each PoI as they got to it. That made for not too much interaction between players. With this iteration, the players must move each turn, and they cannot “scout” the same type of amenity two consecutive turns. So you can’t go from a pub to another pub the next turn, you’d have to go to another type of amenity, like a place of worship and start scouting that one.

Lastly, since the players liked the minigames so much, I decided to add a few more, which are a combination of luck, twitch and skill. Here they are, in order:

• Catapult a due or coin on the game board. You do this by putting the die/coin (whichever you prefer) in the palm of your hand, then you bang your hand on the underside of the table, so that the momentum will catapult the die/coin. If it lands on the board, you unlock the tag.
• All the players throw a coin on the board. If you are the closest to the Key area of the amenity that you’re trying to scout at the moment (bank if you’re scouting a bank when doing this), you unlock the tag.
• Think of a number between 1 and 5 (for 3+ players) and write it down. If your number is the highest unique number (nobody wrote the same number down as well), you unlock the tag.
• Hide a coin/die in one of your hands behind your back. Show your fists (with the coin/die in one of them) to a player of your choice. If they don’t guess which fist the coin/die is in, you unlock the tag.

What I’ll do for the moment till I produce the cards with these minigames randomized on them, is put each of these on a token or a piece of paper and have the players draw 3 each time they start scouting a PoI, then put them in sequence on the PoI card. Then the minigames will need to be solved in order for that PoI card.

Playtesting today then I’m coming back with feedback.

Chris F.