Essential Experience

Essential Experience:

Phase 3 - What is our essential Experience?

PLAN

Before we begin Ideation it's useful to map out the exact experience we'd like our player to have. This can involve ideas of how to achieve this for example what technology can be used and other related suggestions.

Design Goals - player & environment etc

After this task we should have a better understanding of our own intentions and can begin the idea generation stage of this project!

WEEK 6 - What is essential to our experience?

During this section I will be working with Kiera to map out our essential experience. This allows us to use our project aims and put them into the perspective of a game/experience.

This will include the following:

What experience do I want the player to have?

What is essential to that experience?

How can I capture that essence?

ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE

What am I trying to provide players? What are my intentions?

In my Project Goals I established what I'd like to achieve for this project and how I'd like to impact the player. During my research I have made it clear that I am interested in the mind, human behaviour and helping others, furthermore, I'd like the experience to be a form of 'self-help' and provide people with the support to manage and regulate their emotions. This can impact players in the present as well as teach them ways to overcome this in future scenarios. Ideally, the game should be played during sensations of anxiety and stress in order to feel more calm - the experience almost acts as a 'Therapy Tool' which I covered during Phase 2.

To take this further I will be using the experience technique I learned during Semester 1 of year 2! Splitting the experience into 3 distinct questions will allow Kiera and I to be much clearer with what we want and how how we plan to achieve it.

Essential Experience Questions

1. What experience do I want the player to have?

This can include the way we want the player to feel. What do we want the player to be doing or to be thinking about? Do we want them to be focused or on edge and under pressure?

2. What is essential to that experience?

What is necessary to fulfil this experience? A lot of interactions? Intricate puzzles placed around the environment? Music?

H3. ow can I capture that essence?

What can be implemented to capture this essence? Here we can dive a little deeper into narrative or possible technology that can be used. Surround sound, a physical interactive space, the use of AR?

OUR ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE

WHAT EXPERIENCE DO I WANT THE PLAYER TO HAVE?

Immersed
Engaging
Transfixed
Peaceful
Feeling of safety
Feel and think deeply
A sense of comfort and calm
Completely indulge in your surroundings
Provide a space for self-reflection
Encourage emotional regulation

It's important for the experience to be as immersive as possible. This will require a lot of research into immersive experiences and technologies to explore ways we can do this. I would like players to feel engaged throughout and feel a sense of calm and safety therefore, looking into visuals and sound to do this will be a main part of our game. I would like players to come out of the experience feeling relaxed, at ease and refreshed as if they have overcome feelings of anxiety/overwhelm.

WHAT IS ESSENTIAL TO THIS EXPERIENCE?

A personal experience
Specifically chosen visuals and sound
A focus on audio/music
Subtle interactive elements
The feel of a safe environment
For players to feel as involved/immersed as possible

It's essential for players to feel a sense of control in the experience. To have them feel as involved as possible, interactions are important just as much as engaging sound and visuals. To feel this sense of control can also help users feel in control of themselves and their bodies which can help to reduce sensations of stress and panic. The subtle interactive elements around the space can be integrated into the environment whether that's part of an interactive narrative or even just offer players the chance to customise their experience - these are examples of interactions that get players involved and require their full focus/interest.

HOW CAN I CAPTURE THAT ESSENCE?

Surround Sound
Sound, Audio, Music, Visuals
Multi-sensory Interactions
Maybe VR/Mixed Reality
Take advantage of technologies such as physical immersive rooms/spaces
A space to indulge and reflect
Options for customisation
Control
Haptic Feedback and Vibrations
Realistic stimulation of sound

The most important aspect of this gameplay experience is the way it makes users think and feel. Because of this, the design for this project should be heavily sound and visual based. Taking into consideration what players will see and hear just as much as what they might be doing. It will be necessary to carry out user research and surveys to understand how we can connect with the user emotionally, and encourage 'emotional regulation'. I desire to have the players feel calm, relaxed and settled, so research into how to achieve these emotions will be required. In addition to this, the purpose of interactions will allow players to have control over themselves and their bodies by requiring their focus and connecting the player with their surroundings. This is what completes our game and separates it from being just an experience.

DESIGN GOALS

What are my goals I want to achieve

from this essential experience?

FOR PLAYERS

I intend for players to feel at ease during the experience and after feel recharged.
I want players to be able to play our game if they are ever placed in a scenario where they may feel overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. Our game can be resorted to in an instance of panic.
I intend for players to feel recharged, refreshed and regulated after playing.
There must be some kind of interaction in order to achieve full player engagement.
I intend for players to feel fully immersed through the benefits of sight and sound.
It's especially important for this game to be a first perspective game therefore there is no need for a character design/development - this is because it's important for players to feel as involved as possible and interact with their surroundings themselves rather than controlling a character. We intend for the outcome of this to positively impact players directly.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Must consist of appealing visuals and engage players.
Make use of technology in order to achieve full immersion.
Sound is required to achieve immersion and engage players. This will play a massive part in encouraging emotional regulation as we know from my research that music can be composed to evoke specific emotions.
Interactive elements - basic interactions and mechanics which keep players engaged and create gameplay.

"The game shapes itself around the experience not the experience around the game"

Essential Experience Summary

SIGHT AND SOUND

Overall it's essential for my game to take advantage of sight and sound as it's two main components. These two elements play a huge part in encouraging emotional regulation and when implemented correctly, can help us to achieve this in-game. It's also essential for the experience to have some kind of interactive gameplay in order to fulfil player engagement. These tasks must only be simple interactions possibly placed around an environment however, the outcome from interacting with these things must be effective in some way. During gameplay, players will be affected by the music they hear and the visuals they see, which should promote well-being and provide them with emotional support.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay mustn't be too complex because we don't intend to apply pressure to players or make them feel uneasy at any point during the experience. It'll be extremely necessary to carry out testing and user research to identify what players feel most comfortable doing in-game. During my Phase 2 research, I also explored the effect of shared experiences which can increase empathy and feelings of love/joy which are just as effective as personal experiences. We could potentially explore both multiplayer and solo gaming experiences. A solo experience would be more personal, and allow players to act freely in their own surroundings. However, a multi-player game would give players the opportunity to work with others collaboratively and this can increase communicative skills and build relationships with peers.

ENVIRONMENT

The environment will be a fully immersive digital environment consisting of calming visuals and sound which should essentially make them feel comfortable and safe - similar to the aspects of a personal safe space. The platform is still undecided, this is something we can play around with and decide later during Phase 4. During our project proposal we must provide examples of platform/requirements to show experimentation and decide this during design/development in Semester 2, as well as exact idea of how the game will look in terms of art style and visual representation.

A short summary

Kiera and I intend to create an immersive gameplay experience through engaging visuals and sound, resulting in both physical and emotional regulation.

RESEARCH AVENUES

I thought it would be a good idea to note down some potential Research Avenues for Phase 3 - so Kiera and I used https://nodenogg.in/#/ to create a quick mind-map of potential research routes.

We began by writing up our Project Aims on one side and Research avenues on the other. We both had our own suggestions which meant we had a wide range of possibilities at the end to fuel our inspiration.

MICROCOSM: ekgames

NEXT...

From this exercise we now have a plethora of research avenues to choose from to further our understanding of our topics. Suggestions included areas related to Emotional Regulation, technologies we could look into such as haptic vests and physical game boxes and survey/questionnaires to conduct to gather user research.

Look into engaging senses
Visit immersive exhibitions/senses that exist
Immersive experiences - how can you make one?
Research into Immersive technology - haptic vests, binaural beats, physical game boxes, simulators.
Sensory Rooms
Effects of light, colour, sound
Different platforms - VR, MR
Surveys, Questionnaires
What makes an engaging environment? Safe spaces, Comfort zones, where do people feel most at ease?

A BRIEF PLAN

Kiera and I have planned to spend the next week doing a deep dive into these areas and compile a thorough amount of research to help us progress. We will then use what we have learned to fuel our ideation process, and continue researching topics that remain relevant to our concepts. We also agreed to begin by establishing our Target Audience so we know who we are targeting our experience towards which can affect our Design Conclusions.

Here is my plan:

Begin with User Research - Purpose of Design, User-Centred Design, Target Audience, Personas & Journey Mapping.
Identify a Player Experience - Experience Mapping
Begin Ideation process with Kiera
Continue gathering research into Emotional Regulation, Immersion, Technology and anything else that supports my ideas.
Gather Inspiration from games, videos, visuals etc
Conduct Surveys and Questionnaires to understand human behaviour and opinions on music/sound
Finish with prototyping these ideas, testing and gathering feedback.

The following section can be found here: User Research