Project Remake
Project type: LARP (live action role playing) game with transformational goals
Timeline: 2023.2 - Present
Role: Learning experience researcher and game designer
Project Overview
Content Table
Project Overview
Skills -
End-to-end Custom Primary Research
Understanding of Research Methods
Communicate Research Result and Findings with a Wide Variety of Audiences
Recruit and Coordinate Testing
Know Games in Industry
Have you ever noticed the education resources and professions scattered around in a city? What would happen they form a burst network? How can game experience help the education professions start building such a network?
Our team, Project Remake, is part of the Center for Transformational Play at Carnegie Mellon University. We are currently working on a 2-hour interactive LARP experience for K-12 educators that aims to teach what Pittsburgh’s education collective, Remake Learning, has learned in the last decade about effective grassroots education community-building and organization. The goal of the LARP is to reduce participants’ feelings of fear and confusion around collaborating in cross-disciplinary educational communities, teaching what Remake Learning calls the “5 C’s” of effective collaboration.
This project aims for live playing sessions at SXSW 2024.
My Role
As a researcher and designer in team, I am responsible for designing game concepts, narratives, mechanics, and also design the learning measurements for the transformational outcomes of game experience. In summer and fall 2023, I helped with playtest recruitment and game promotion.
Team size: 4
Role: Game designer and researcher
Final Deliverables:
1. Two LARP (live action role-playing game) prototypes, Time Bureau and The Great Revival of Atlantis, including:
Character Sheets
Host Guide
Game Map
Game Design Document
Gameplay Props
2. A final LARP game ready to be shipped - Monsters of Appalachia.
Playtest Video
Character Sheet and Game Props
Skill 1
End-to-end Custom Primary Research
Design and execute research to answer questions along the process
Questions
What are our overarching goals for our game? What are the barriers we are facing?
Q1
Q2
What are some effective game ingredients in previous studies?
What elements in LARP make it a good solutions? How to design LARP story-telling, characters and mechanics for first time LARP players?
Q3
Research Design
Question Space Analysis with Client
After the stakeholder mapping and affinity diagram activities with the client, we defined the game goal: the community will be able to create their own unique educational ecosystem with strategies. With the team, I did analysis on the barriers that stop stakeholders from working closely with each other. Power imbalance, misconceptions (I don’t know that community can help/I don’t know who to trust), unfamiliarity (I don’t know how to do this) are main barriers.
Literature Review
The team thought of role-playing games, especially LARP, as the category having the most potential to make changes on behavior and dispositional level, due to the immersive experience it provides. I read 12 relevant papers, books and lecture videos together with the team to understand the previous works and studies that may form a theory foundation and game ingredient references for our project.
Semi-structured Interview with SMEs
To gain deeper understanding in the LARP game, I prepared for and co-conducted hour long interview sessions with subject matter experts in the game design area. Three LARP experts, Vincent Baker, Gabriel de los Angeles and Cindy Lott, generously gave their time, experience and insights that guided us forward.
Skill 2
Understanding of Research Methods
Playtest measures and assessments for the learning goals and player engagement
Before
We hoped to measure the learning happening and players’ engagement and emotion during the gameplay so that we can improve, but no qualitative or quantitative methods were defined. We were using general playtest questions to get information and feedback.
After
For learning evaluation: I designed pre- & post-assessment aligned to three learning goals, and made sure all three were covered and well assessed. Backward design, KLI framework and Bloom’s Taxonomy from instructional design field were the principles backing up the design.
For player engagement measuring: I adopted mixed research methods to measure the fun, embodiment and emotion changes of players during the playtest, including semi-structured interview, content analysis, observation, and survey.
Skill 3
Communicate Research Result and Findings with a Wide Variety of Audiences
External Communication Example
Problem: Client was curious about the reason we chose LARP as the design solution. The team needs to explain the theories behind the decision.
Solution: I made a deck linking the LARP game elements back to the barriers identified in the kick-off meeting, and the rationale of how these elements would target the problem and assist players overcome the barriers. In a client meeting, I did the presentation to the client with the deck to introduce the game category choice.
Internal Communication Example
Problem: Center for Transformational Play, as a young organization, hopes the future teams could learn playtest recruitment experience and approaches from current teams.
Solution: I created retrospective notes with Google Slides, and organized expert suggestions, actions my team tried and lessons my team learned with themes. It would be shared with all game teams at CTP, which enables them to add their thoughts.
Skill 4
Recruit and Coordinate Testing
Organize participant recruitment process and experiment broadcasting approaches
Goal
We hoped to hold a playtest every month during this fall semester. However, we did not have clear strategies, nor we were fully aware of the channels and resources around us. The LARP game prototype could take hours to play one round, which added to the difficulty to recruit enough test players.
Solution
First, I scheduled interviews with media/playtest recruitment experts who work at or have fellowship with CTP. We discussed their knowledge, insights, as well as common pitfalls they saw in the game playtest recruitment process.
Then, I created promotion materials for online or in-person channels, including a game blurb, graphics, and a one-page flier.
After that, I coordinated the recruitment process on various channels. I contacted local organizations and businesses to broadcast the playtest information through their email lists, Discord channels or professional contacts. Fliers were posted on coffee shop bulletin boards to attract participants from a wide range. Online sign-in sheet were created with Google Form.
Also, to pace future CTP team a easy playtest design process, I created a Playtest Handbook, which is less than 10 pages but provides essential knowledge and easy-to-follow action lists. All the channels, contacts and resources were also organized into the handbook.
Game promotion poster
Playtest Handbook - Side A, Table of Contents
Skill 5
Know Games in Industry
Actively learning from existing games in industry and be inspired
Before
Problem: When rapid prototyping, we realized that there were not enough nourishing in-game context for players to feel embodied as their character, so they were facing the difficulty role-playing in front of strangers.
After
Solution: I studied selected role-playing, story-telling and LARP games on market together with team, such as A Quiet Year and Treehouse Dreams, paying attention to the elements that bring changing dynamics between characters. Also, I might borrow inspiring concepts from other games, like relationship cards from Fiasco, to make a twist to the existing prototypes and see the effect it led to.