Episode 12: User Testing and Moral Choices in the Bioshock Series
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Bioshock is one of the most critically lauded games of all time. Released in 2007, today it still holds a place in Metacritic’s top 25 games ever.
The game’s story, all about an underwater city that fell victim to a mix of Objectivist thinking and superpowers, is still largely hailed as an unusually mature experience among games. But does it deserve that praise? And did Bioshock: Infinite improve on anything when it showed up in 2013?
This week we talk about Bioshock’s approach to moral choices (especially in comparison to Papers, Please), transferability of training, and whether or not the studio’s approach to user testing made any sense.
Show Notes & Links
During recording I couldn’t remember how many Little Sisters are in the game. There are 21.
Instead of examining one game in detail, this week the broader concept of metagaming caught our attention.
From Dungeons & Dragons to Tekken to League of Legends, tons of games can be played at a meta level. There’s so much information about games out there, and whether you take it into account can make or break your play style.
It’s not always looked at kindly, but metagaming is a powerful tool. Players of card games like Netrunner have built elaborate lists of potential card combinations, and pro League of Legends players can craft complex strategies around their opponents’ known play styles.
Beyond games, this has huge implications for communities of practice and knowledge management. How can companies and organizations capture the informal knowledge built up around their business processes? We found some direct tips they can take from metagaming.
Episode 10: Managing Expectations for No Man's Sky
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We made it to episode 10! Double digits!
Released in August, No Man’s Sky was one of the most hyped new games of 2016. Promotional materials and press coverage promised 18 quintillion planets to fly your spaceship to, and innumerable things to do on and around each destination.
Gamers got those 18 quintillion planets on launch day, but not much else. No Man’s Sky is a perfect case study in why you shouldn’t inflate expectations about a product or service, but also a lesson in how not to handle the aftermath of a problematic debut. We talk about what Hello Games could have done differently and why it’s crucial to set appropriate expectations for any new product or service.
We recorded this episode at the end of September. As of this post, Hello Games is still silent about updates to No Man’s Sky and has not responded to any of the game’s criticism.
Episode 09: Incentives and Emotional Impact in Papers, Please
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This week we concluded our three week Arstotzkan travelogue with a look at how Papers, Please handles incentives and emotional impact.
The game has an unusually subtle approach to morality and choices, and avoids Mass Effect style extreme polarized choices between good and evil. How does this all tie in to incentivizing performance improvement? What about Empathy, Narrative, and Intrigue? We cover a lot of ground this week.
There’s friction in almost everything you do in this game, but why isn’t that annoying? And just how does Papers, Please handle abstracting analog objects into digital representations? Why did we keep playing despite such a high cognitive load?
This is our second episode of a three-part series. We’ll conclude our Arstotzkan adventures next week, when we examine Papers, Please’s moral choices and emotional impact.
Episode 07: Instructional Design in Papers, Please
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In Papers, Please players step into the shoes of a border control agent faced with increasingly byzantine rules to admit or deny entry into Glorious Arstotzka.
Each game-day presents you with new restrictions on what paperwork to check. The difficulty ramps up slowly but surely, and by the end of the game you’re adeptly cross-referencing 4 or 5 documents at one time in purposely limited screen real-estate.
Papers, Please somehow manages to make bureaucracy fun, in part due to a remarkably well-constructed scaffolding process that teaches players all the necessary skills and tasks.
This game gave us so much to talk about that it’s the first in a three-part series. To start, this week we focused on the instructional design techniques Papers, Please uses to teach players the ins & outs of border control work. Next week we’ll move on to related applications of User Experience design. Glory to Arstotzka!
As promised in this episode, here’s a look at the limited screen real-estate that Papers, Please gives you for document shuffling.
If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. Did Papers, Please strike a chord with one of your past jobs? Let us know!
Witness, a cooperative crime-solving mystery board game, is on our minds.
In Witness, each player knows different facts about the case. Gameplay revolves around whispering clues to each other in an effort to piece everything together.
It’s so clearly applicable to communications training and working in cross-functional teams that Witness doesn’t just provide lessons – it might actually be useful as a game played during training.
Super Mario Maker, a game for the Wii U, could probably support entire books about the approaches and design choices it reflects.
It’s a complex level creator for classic side-scrolling Mario games. Anybody can use 72 different pieces in infinite combinations to build the Mario level of their dreams (or nightmares).
Imagine being dumped into that playground with no structure or rules. Without guidance and constraints, figuring out how to design fun and challenging levels could easily be overwhelming. Thankfully, Nintendo caught this problem ahead of time.
In this episode we specifically examine the game’s onboarding process. The way Super Mario Maker teaches players how to play has implications for getting someone up to speed in other games and elsewhere.
If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. And if you’ve seen any other interesting ways games handle onboarding, let us know!
Episode 04: Cooperative Learning Principles in Pandemic Legacy
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Brandon introduces Pandemic Legacy and its applications of cooperative learning principles in this week’s shorter “lockpick” episode.
Pandemic Legacy is a collaborative board game that takes a serialized approach to gameplay. Players work together to stop the spread of diseases around the world, and consequences of decisions made during one game carry forward to the next time.
Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy are available wherever finer board games are sold.
Episode 03: Experiential Learning and Text-Based Training in Mr Robot: Exfiltration
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In a smaller “lockpick” episode, we take a look at the new awkwardly named game Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n. The game (available for iOS and Android) pretends to be a messaging app like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Set in the world of the TV show Mr. Robot, you take on the role of a hacker specializing in social engineering. It’s a choose your own adventure style experience where you decide whether and how to blackmail and coerce your way into systems.
Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n serves as an interesting exploration into how chatbots or other text interfaces might be useful in training and experiential learning.
Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n is $2.99, available for both iOS and Android
Bioshock is one of the most critically lauded games of all time. Released in 2007, today it still holds a place in Metacritic’s top 25 games ever. 
Instead of examining one game in detail, this week the broader concept of metagaming caught our attention. 
We made it to episode 10! Double digits!
This week we concluded our three week Arstotzkan travelogue with a look at how Papers, Please handles incentives and emotional impact.
After 
In Papers, Please players step into the shoes of a border control agent faced with increasingly byzantine rules to admit or deny entry into Glorious Arstotzka. 
Witness, a cooperative crime-solving mystery board game, is on our minds.
Super Mario Maker, a game for the Wii U, could probably support entire books about the approaches and design choices it reflects. 
Brandon introduces Pandemic Legacy and its applications of cooperative learning principles in this week’s shorter “lockpick” episode.