Lesson 6 - Paper Prototype (Experiential Learning Cycle)

Today we created a paper prototype of our game which is the 4th step of 'The Experiential Learning Cycle' diagram which you can see on lesson 4 of my post (Active Experimentation). Although we broke down our game in categories(essential elements) by the games theory which we read, testing our game proved to show that this is also an important step since we found several flaws in our game which couldn't have been done without testing or very thorough planning which still could be wrong such as removing some features like discarding a card and the amount of card in the deck.

The first time we played the paper prototype we found out that the score to win the game was too low (220) so we went to step 2 of the diagram which is reflective observation and analysed our game; what went wrong, what did go to plan and the only thing we detected going wrong was the amount of points to win. Before playing the prototype for the second time we knew that the points had to be increased so we were about to double the initial points we decided but thought that might be too much so we analysed how many points can be earned in total and found out that 440 points was way too much because the maximum points that could be earned was 280 so we decided to go with 260 points to win the game.

After testing the game for the second time (step 4 - active experimentation) we analysed our game again and decided the game was too easy but due to the large amount of cards in the deck, this made getting the combination to win simple so we drastically reduced the amount of card in the deck and decided to remove the feature of discarding cards since it seemed like a useless feature; the feature reduced the amount of trading so people just kept throwing them away and picking up a new card in the deck to get the certain card to place in the gallery.

Step 1 is accomodated with the the play test of the game since you now have a concrete experience of it. Step 3 of the experiential learning is fixing the flaws by adding or removing features of the game so in the group's case we removed the feature of withdrawing cards.

Before playing the prototype we should have reviewed our game with the theory applied on step 3 so that everyone in the team and other people playing understood the rules and choices that could be made in the game and allow us to pick up on things missed out since everyone wasn't sure about how the point system worked such as getting a bonus point when you have 3 cards by the same artist in the genre. this feature should have been explained in step 3 under rules which was not there.

To conclude I feel that the experiential learning diagram looping is important because as said above we found flaws in the active experimentation and reviewing the theory applied to our game; nothing is perfect so constantly reflecting is an important step to designing.