GAM 382: Serious Games

Project 3: Paper Prototype

Due Thursday, May 14, 1:30PM in class

Objectives

Introduction

Paper prototyping is a great method for getting quick testing feedback during early stages of game design. It has all these advantages, and maybe more:

• Get a quick sanity check on game concept, playability.
• Get useful feedback with little required investment in terms of programming and art creation.
• Get feedback before early (lame?) ideas have too much momentum, investment.
• Allow flexible testing of alternate ideas (since it's easy to create the alternate versions).

In this project, you'll create a paper prototype for your initial game design and then playtest it in class. Here are some links to videos showing use of paper prototypes:

• trouble
• handheld kids game
• white water rafting

• article in gamasutra
• short article
• longer article

This is a group project.

What you will do

• First, determine what aspect of the game you will test. It doesn't have to be the whole game, but it should be capture the core game mechanic. If you have different mini-games, you should prepare segments of each one.
• Create paper versions of the background and any important/relevant objects. Don't try to make them fancy. They just have to be (barely) recognizable. If you agree on the scale of the prototype beforehand, you should be able to share the work of making the objects. (Hint: some good materials to use are different types of post-its, and segments of transparency film for things that move around over the screen.)
• Select one or two team members who will be the "computer", switching out parts and moving them around.
• Do at least one dry run to get a feeling for the interaction and see if you're missing any important parts.
• What questions do you want to have answered by the playtesting. Consider making logsheets for the non-computer group members to use during the playtests, so they can quickly record critical info.
• Bring this all to class on Thursday for playtesting with people from the other group.

What you will hand in

• Introduction: A brief statement of your project learning objectives.
• Prototype: A description of your prototype. What aspects of the game were and were not included in the playtest? What components were included in the paper prototype? How was the test run?
• Results: An analysis of what you learned from the test. What parts of the game worked well? What did not work well? How will you change your game design based on the results of the test? What concerns do you still have about your game that may require further playtesting?
• Conclusions: Your final thoughts about what the playtesting told you, how you could improve the process next time, and testing with paper prototypes in general.