Test Report

Types of Testers

• Peers (Ramona, Kylie, Emilia, Jad)
• People who have not seen my progress (Kate)
• Ideal user-testers (Roxanne)
• Queer Friends (Raymond and Dylan)

Types of user-testing used

• One-to-one testing

Methods of user-testing used

• In-session observation
• Post-session questions
• Open Discussions

In-session Observations

Everyone except for Roxanne had some difficulties using the the keyboard and mouse to control the camera and movement of the player. Roxanne was hesitant to shoot at the dancers and ultimately decided not to. Emilia, Jad, Kate, Raymond and Dylan were completely immobile due to the mouse and keyboard and therefore didn't even walk around let alone use the gun. Ramona was able to move after a short adjustment period and Kylie felt comfortable to move but didn't feel compelled to move around. Ramona shot at the dancer who was dancing on their own while Kylie didn't shoot at anything. Out of this group only Roxanne, Ramona and Kylie had tested the first version. 

Apply design thinking and ideation methods to concept

In the last two weeks, our thesis class asked us to apply numerous design thinking and ideation methods in our prototyping process. Personally, I don’t come from a formal design background, so I’ve never encountered any of these approaches and methods in a structured environment before.

The Five Why’s 

This exercise was interesting, but probably more useful for someone who has just recently identified an area of interest. Since I’ve been working on my thesis research since October/November, I already have a very comprehensive list of reasons  why I want to pursue my thesis research. Here were my answers:  

Q: What are you making??
A: A queer game. 

Q: Why queer? Why game?
A: Games as a medium has always given me queer possibilities (even within
heteronormative narratives and settings)

Q: Why?
A: Games expand stories, like films, but offer at least the facade of interactivity, which brings
play, which triggers imagination. 

Q: Why is imagination and play important for this?
A: Play is prehuman, play allows you to let go of other things, lets you learn and make
mistakes in a safe space. Queer spaces often were very playful. 

      Q: Why?
A: Queer spaces such as cruising display many properties of heterotopias, and magic circles, they are temporary boundaries of play that have rules that are assigned either positive or negative. Also some historical queer spaces were straight up LARP (live action role play) such as Molly Houses. Ballroom Culture from New York in the 80s (and contemporary forms) are also versions of LARP (in the realness categories definitely). 

Creative Mind Map 

This exercise was interesting, and it allowed me to view my creative process from a holistic point of a view which gave me the insight on where I spend my time on and what I value in my process.

Making this map made me realize that I spend most of my time researching my initial inspiration/hunch, which as I have mentioned in my previous post is found through investigating lost history. Once I have gathered enough research, which can take months, I start experimenting with my hands and prototyping. In this class, it may seem like I was asked to come up with prototype ideas much quicker than I am used.  However, because I have been doing research for my thesis since October, coming up with some initial prototype ideas weren’t entirely difficult as I have remained true to my creative process.

Documentation of Week #1 Prototype

From July 4^th to 6^th our cohort attended a 3-day prototyping intensive at the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) in North York.

 

Prior to this class we were asked to prepare a mind map for our creative process. In the map, I forgot to add a crucial step to my process, which is how I get started on a project. Usually, which is almost 99% of the time, my project in inspired by an event in history, usually a forgotten (or almost forgotten one). I have always been interested in how stories get told (historiography) but more importantly, which stories get told? How do we forget? What are collective memories? I have also been interested in history in relation to a specific site or space. In the past, I have researched stories from Limehouse, which was the first Chinatown in London, UK to an unknown sculpture of Columbus as a child in the east side of Vancouver, Canada. I begin my research and creative process.
 
 
 

The Research Process - What? Why? How? So What?

Assignment: find 3 existing projects and answer what why how and so what for each of them.

• ‘what?’ – the identification of a ‘hunch’ or tentative research proposition, leading

eventually to a defined and viable research question

• ‘why?’ – the need for your research in relation to the wider context, in order to test

out the value of your proposition, locate your research position, and explore a range

of research strategies

• ‘how?’ – the importance of developing an appropriate methodology and specific

methods for gathering and generating information relevant to your research

• ‘so what?’ - challenges you to think about the significance and value of your research contribution, not only to your practice but to the wider research context, and how this is best communicated and disseminated.

Mis/Represent: Women & Visible Minority Representation in Videogames

OCAD University, Digital Future, Masters Thesis, 2015

Sherif Taalab, 2015

What?

Taalab seeked to illustrate the ways in which “visible minorities and women are represented in AAA video games.

Some of the questions Taalab is asking her thesis are

• What are the obstacles being faced by women and visible minorities in how they are represented by AAA video games?
• How can we empower women and visible minorities through gaming platform and social media?

Final Game Sketch: Club Baths

Club Baths is a walking simulator set in a gay bathhouse. The title is a reference to one of the four gay bathhouses that were raided by the Toronto Metropolitan Police in 1981. When the game starts, you find out that you’re a researcher who’s doing work in the office and the owner calls you to propose that you take the night off and explore the bathhouse instead. At this point, any choices you make will still result in the owner directing you to where the keys to the door is located and it is up to you whether to take up his offer. There are certain things in the office that you can interact with, such as a Grecian statue, some documents lying on the floor and on the shelves and some books. Once you are ready, you can find the key and open the door to the bathhouse. As you walk through the hallways, you find other statues and things you can interact with scattered throughout the space. Most of the statues are snippets of poetry There isn’t a clear structure or linear narrative and you are free to wander and discover all the pieces of the puzzle on your own. Once you have interacted with most of the things in the space, you will be able to solve the last puzzle, which is big piece of marble that, once you’ve selected all the correct answers, opens up to a waterfall which leads you to a black room, and the music changes once you enter the room.

Water as Virtual Reality, or some initial thoughts on why I like liquidy, watery, slippery things.

In the science fiction film Solaris (based on the novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem), director Tarkovsky tells a story of a psychologist who gets sent to a space station to check up on a group of scientists who have fallen into separate emotional crises. The space station is orbiting and conducting research on an aquatic planet called Solaris but its mission has been stalled due to the fact that the scientists on board are suffering from what appears to be emotional comas. Not long after the psychologist’s arrival to the space station, he becomes distressed by the presence of his late wife, or a virtual version of her. After her insistent reappearance after each time he kills her, he finally accepting her presence as reality and slowly descends into an emotional crises just like the fate of the other scientists. In the last scene, the psychologist is shown back at his father’s country home, but as the camera zooms out, it appears that he is actually on an island in the Solaris ocean.

Turns out the oceanic planet of Solaris was studying the scientists instead, and the source of all the virtual disruptions that caused the scientists psychological distress.

GDC 2018

This year I was accepted by Different Games to attend Games Developers Conference in San Francisco as one of their ambassadors. Different Games is a collective of alternative and indie game designers, educators and other DIY voices in games that hosts conferences, workshops and other events around the US and Canada. It was an incredible experience to be able to attend such a big industry event as a graduate student and my goals for the week was really just to try to learn and do as much as I could without burning out.

Different Games hosted a mini-conferences for all the ambassadors to introduce themselves and their work/research on the day before GDC opened which served as a great way to begin some conversations that would last the week as we bump into each other at different north east south west halls of the Moscone Center half zombified. I started off GDC by attending most of the level design workshops and the rest of the week was filled with other level design related talks and a few narrative and storytelling talks. I consciously chose to go with more workshops as oppose to social and political talks. Not to diminish the importance of politics and activism in games and games industry (it was a good year for that too #unionization), and of course in my academic work I write extensively about the political dimensions of video games and play as a necessarily counter to capitalism, I just felt like since I have been to many academic conferences in my life and I will be presenting at the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference in Regina later in the year, I would do something different. Some highlights include: