Introduction to Games with a Purpose design and Playtesting

AN INTRODUCTION
TO
GAME DESIGN,
PLAYTESTING AND
GAMES WITH A PURPOSE
LUCA GALLI
POLITECNICO DI MILANO

ABOUT MYSELF
LUCA GALLI
Ph.D. Student - Politecnico di Milano
http://www.lucagalli.me
lgalli@elet.polimi.it
2
• RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND INTERESTS
• Robotics & AI
• Game Design
• Crowdsourcing and Human Computation
6th Qualinet General Meeting

AGENDA
3

AGENDA
• Play vs Games
• Pointers to Game Design
• Introduction to Games with a
Purpose
• Gameplay validation through
playtesting
• A Classic Example: Big Rigs
4

5
Something really bad is
going to happen…

6
Or not?

WHAT IS PLAY?
7
Autonomy: play is a voluntary activity.
Safety: during play there are radically reduced serious
consequences in what we do
Exploration: the possibility to experiment and try out new
things
Mastery: the will to improve one’s own skills

GAMES VS PLAY
8
Games are distinguished from play
– Play is free-form
– Games are rule-based
A game is a closed, formal system that
· Engages players in structured conflict and
· Resolves its uncertainty in an unequal
outcome.
Fullerton, T.; Swain, C. & Hoffman, S.
Game Design Workshop: A playcentric approach
to creating innovative games, 2008

9

10
FLASH INTRODUCTION
TO GAME DESIGN

11
Mancala, 7th
century AD

12
Unreal
Tournament
3, Epic
Games, 2007

13
Turn based boardgame vs Real time action shooter
Handmade physical board vs Personal Computer
Public domain rules vs Copyrighted

1 - PLAYERS
14

2 - OBJECTIVES
15

OBJECTIVES: EXAMPLES
16
Solution: solve a problem or puzzle before (or
more accurately) than the competition or
following certain constraints
Connect Four, Milton
Bradley, 1974
Professor Layton and the
Miracle Mask, Level-5, 2011

3 - PROCEDURES
17

3 – PROCEDURES: EXAMPLE
18
Starting action: Choose a player
to go first. Each player chooses a color:
red or yellow.
Progression of action: On each
turn, a player drops one colored
checker down any of the slots in
the top of the grid.
Resolving actions: The play alternates
until one of the players gets four
checkers of one color in a row. The row
can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.
Connect Four

4 - RULES
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• Define Objects
• Restrict Actions
• Determine Effects (ECA rules)
Chess: A player cannot move her king into check.
Poker: A straight is five consecutively ranked
cards; a straight flush is five consecutively ranked
cards of the same suit.
WarCraft II: To create knight units, a player must have
upgraded to a keep and built a stable.

5 – RESOURCES: EXAMPLE
20
Card Hunter, Blue Manchu Pty Ltd, TBR
Time
Points
Actions

6 - OUTCOME
21

GAMES WITH A PURPOSE
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Games with a Purpose (GWAPs) are digital games that generate
useful data as a by-product of play. [vA06,LvA09]
The design of a GWAP requires to create a game so that its
structure encourages computation, correctness of the output and
players retention.

EXAMPLE:INGRESS
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EXAMPLE: INGRESS
24

EXAMPLE: AUSTRALIA
COVERED
25

CASE STUDY: FASHION TREND MINING
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Problem statement: segment fashion images for mining trends based
on visual features of garments (e.g. color and texture)
Use case: identifying trends in collections of images of people
and garments
Applications: retrieving similar garments, inspect clothing trends
in image collections, analyzing trends change in the years
Color
descriptors
Texture
descriptors
coarse
(sub-)image
similarity

THE FASHION TREND MINING PIPELINE
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Male, 24 Female, 22Female?, ??

REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION
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Task Description: Recognize if a particular
garment is present within a picture or define a
new one and outline its contours.
Input Objects: A fashion image, an optional
tag defining the garment to identify.
Aggregation Strategy: assign a value of 0 to
each pixel outside the contour and 1 to each
pixel contained within the contour, sum all the
contribution and apply a threshold based on the
number of players.
Output Data: For each submitted task the game
has to provide the contour of the garment within
the image (Polyline) and a tag defining the
garment that has been segmented

Solution Mechanics:
Pattern Recognition
Established genre:
Draw and Guess
Inversion Problem Mechanic
PLAYERS:Number >=2
Multilateral Competition
Two different roles:
Sketcher: has to draw the contours
of the stated garment
Guesser: has to guess the garment
drawn by the sketcher
SKETCHNESS
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PLAYER ROLE: SKETCHER
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● The only player to see the
low confidence image
● “May” be asked to provide a
tag for the image
● Is asked to draw the contour
of the object for which the
tag is provided within the
allotted time
● Goal of the Sketcher is to
let the other players guess
the tag within a time slot
without providing
any other hints than the
contour
Low
Confidence
Image
Tag of the
target
object
Contour
provided
by the user

PLAYER ROLE: GUESSER
31
● Any other player in the game
● His/Her goal is to guess the
object for which the Sketcher
has provided the contour
● Not allowed to draw on the
whiteboard, just to type
in the chat box the probable
answer as fast as possible
● Scoring:
● Sketcher: 10 pts + 1 for each guesser
● Guesser: 10 pts to the first, then
decreasing down to five
Contour of the garment
provided by the Sketcher

RESULTS:
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RESULTS:
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Sketchness Aggregator
Kota Yamaguchi, M Hadi Kiapour, Luis E
Ortiz, Tamara L Berg, "Parsing Clothing in
Fashion Photographs", CVPR 2012

TASK TO GAME
MECHANICS MATCHING
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Does a game with game
mechanics similar to the task
exist?
If so, integrate the task within
the existing game
If not, a custom game with
custom game mechanics has to
be implemented...

HOW TO EVALUATE A GAME?
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The Goal is a fun game…
… but also to solve a task!
Game designs are hypotheses
Playtests are experiments
Evaluate designs off playtest results
Repeat

REQUIREMENTS
SPECIFICATION
36
uTask
Task
Description
Input Objects
Output Objects
Execution Interface
Operations Output Validation

HOW TO IMPROVE GAME
DESIGN
37
We want to make informed decisions:
• Get data early, get data often
• Iterate constantly
• We don’t know what’s best (players do)
• Create a feedback loop between design and
playtest

38
TRADITIONAL METHODS
DIRECT OBSERVATION

39
TRADITIONAL METHODS
VERBAL REPORTS
I don’t know
what I am
supposed to
do...
I am bad at
drawing...

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TRADITIONAL METHODS
Q&A/SURVEYS

41
TRADITIONAL METHODS
ISSUES
Artificial gameplay sessions
– Many potential biases
– Distorted data (interpreted behavior)
– Lack of empiricism
– Missing elements of objectivity
– Sometimes difficult to establish emotions,
baselines, and independence

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TECHNICAL APPROACHES
STAT COLLECTION

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STAT COLLECTION

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PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS
Heartrate
Skin
Conductance Level
Eye Tracking
Face Recording
EEG

45
A CLASSIC EXAMPLE:
Just how bad is Big Rigs:
Over the Road Racing?
It's as bad as your
mind will allow you to
comprehend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f3HDsg
LV68

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CONCLUSIONS
•Play is a universal need
•Games and videogames are entertaining and
controlled means to satisfy it
•We can exploit players to accomplish astonishing
results...
•...if we design a good and tailored gaming experience
•Technological improvements cannot fix a gameplay
mined by bad design choices

THE CUBRIK PROJECT
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● CUbRIK is a research project
financed by the European Union
● Goals:
● Advance the architecture of
multimedia search
● Exploit the human
contribution in multimedia
search
● Use open-source
components provided by
the community
● Start up a search business
ecosystem
● http://www.cubrikproject.eu/

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