PROJECT: N.O.V.A
ROLE: Research, Visuals, Design
Duration: Sept 2013 - Dec 2014
Vision
N.O.V.A is a game environment exploring less intrusive ways to guide users and teach them how to play.
The project was the outcome of my Masters in Game Design, while looking for new ways to train players that don’t break the immersion.
Challenges
Teach users to play without intrusive messages and tutorials.
Guide users to objectives without directly showing them.
Kick Off
Being gamers ourselves, my team mate and I had become more aware over recent years of game developers changing how they taught users to play. Compared to ‘Retro’ games like Super Mario, Metroid and Zelda that gave very little or no instructions, new games were being more direct with their guidance.
This got us thinking: Is there a more immersive way to teach and guide users through a virtual world?
So we went on our quest, in search of an answer.
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How do users feel about current methods?
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What is happening in the industry?
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Is there a gap in the market for a solution?
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What challenges could we face moving forward?
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What literature should be review to support our research?
One of our interviewees
Understanding the User
We started our journey with user interviews with ‘Casual’ and ‘Hardcore’ gamers. This helped us understand what they enjoy (and don’t) when starting a new game. You can see the key points that came from these interviews below in our User Personae.
Meet the Users
Primary
Name: Sean Perkins
Age: 27
Occupation: Train Dispatcher
Sean is a self professed game aficionado. He lives and breathes gaming, when he’s not at work he’s playing or reading about them. Sean enjoys gaming for the challenge and the immersive storytelling. When picking up something new, he gets frustrated by long-winded tutorials and constant hints.
Secondary
Name: Michaela Connor
Age: 32
Occupation: Sales Assistant
Michaela plays games to fill time on their commute to work and when theirs nothing on TV once the kids have gone to bed. They look for something easy to pick up and play when picking a new game. They don’t want to be learning bags full of complicated button combinations and the rest of it.
Industry analysis
Next up we spent some time doing what we were looking forward to. Playing games. 🎮
We tested several past and current games which helped us to see the trends of the industry. As technology advanced, we saw that games also started to get more complicated. This brought with it long and more in-depth tutorials.
We saw an opportunity where guidance could be improved while also supporting immersion for the user.
Design psychology
As part of my research, I took some time diving into the psychology of design and interactions. Most notably was ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ by Don Norman and ‘The Sciences of Artificial’ by Herbert Simon. With inspiration from this reading, we realised that we needed to find a way to mix the design principles described in these books and what we saw in our industry analysis.
Testing the waters
Now we had gathered some insights, we wanted to test our ideas to see which would work in reality. We created a total of four tests utilising the methods of guidance we had put together from our ideation sessions. We recruited between 10 and 20 users to take part in each test.
The tests helped us understand what did and didn’t work in a virtual environment, allowing us to define and refine our methods of guidance and learning.
Refined guidance
We thought we’d cracked it. Our tests gave us some great insight to refine our idea and re-focus on the user. We went on to tweak elements of our designs while building our final proof of concept - N.O.V.A, a fully playable game utilising our research. During the building of this game, we tested with our user groups to iron out issues with the experience.
This method of continually testing throughout supported us in refining our designs. Ultimately, this gave us a much better outcome.
Challenge 1
Learn by exploring
Our research told us that our users didn’t enjoyed having their hands held though the games they played. For example constant popups telling you what to do or graphics telling you exactly what to press. So we utilised a system of ‘Learning by doing’, simple user controls and enviromental clues.
We found that this method of learning gave players the sense of achievement they enjoyed while also introducing to our guidance method for the concept.
Challenge 2
Real world guidance
Our game environment utilised simple elements such as landmarks, colour association and visual perception to guide users throughout the game. The aim was to replicate real-world guidance that users would be familiar with, but also allow us to tell a story with the environment.
On top of this, we found that the users felt more immersed when playing and wanted to explore more which cemented our method of learning.
Takeaways
There is a really good opportunity to utilise visual guidance and explorative learning more in the games industry. The popularity of the games like Stanley Parable, Falls Guys and others like them that use very simple methods of tuition and guidance have shown that user are willing to learn by themselves and feel a sense of achievement when they do.
We still see some room for improvement in our concept and would have love to test and refine the game more.
N.O.V.A
An exploration of guidance and learning
If you’d like to see more and read about the solutions we created you can watch my outcome video from here.