Goro Goro Gatcha - Game Development
During my university studies, I engaged in a collaborative project centred around the development of a game we called Goro Goro Gatcha. This project was a fusion of talents, where each team member assumed diverse roles. My primary focus revolved around UX research and design within the endless runner game genre.
Before starting the collaborative project, I created SMART goals to understand my learning objectives over the module.
Methodology
The psychological development of the team followed the defined stages of the ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing’ concept (Tuckman, 1965). It allows a team to gel and nurtures high performance. The initial meeting marked the beginning of our forming stage. We quickly built a rapport and any prior anxieties about what our role in the team would be were quickly resolved.
We followed a SCRUM methodology (Schwaber, 1995) with Anouk as Team Leader and Hanni being SCRUM master. Rob and I were assigned as the Development Team. This agile method of working allowed us to work iteratively and incrementally towards the end goal. (Srivastava et al. 2017). It enabled us to divide the workload into sprints with our weekly group meetings, and bi-weekly UX sub-team meetings acting as Scrum meetings. We held regular reviews to identify the tasks for the following sprint, to assign workloads, and to monitor any areas where any obstacles could occur.
Project Planning
We formalised the tools we would employ for different aspects. We would use GitHub as a repository with Google Drive for large file storage (LFS). Figma, Figjam, and Miro would be used for mood-boarding, group tasks and ideation, with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop used for any graphic design work. We utilities G-Suite for calendars and weekly meetings and decided to continue using Discord for ongoing team discussion. We also set up a HackNPlan board to centralise our work and keep track of ownership of task and granulated subtasks.
Initial Rapid Ideation and Design
We decided to create a game with a highly replayable core loop, and all team members took part in a crazy 8’s activity. This was a useful design sprint exercise which allowed us to quickly generate ideas, using a voting method to ascertain the most popular. We created mood boards for the top five ideas, and each added our own research. This was done asynchronously to allow the meetings to focus on discussion.
UX Research
I was the lead UX researcher and carried out literature reviews and looked at online articles for addictive gameplay and replayability to understand what appeals to players and what techniques we can apply to include this within our project. I explored the differences between playability and replayability, and the associated ludic activities, to define how to strike the right balance to ensure that the game is replayable enough to offer value for money, but not too replayable where the developer might affect future sales. (Fratessi, 2011).
I also carried out competitor research to identify different aspects that we should consider, from Heads Up Displays (HUD) and currency to how games market their stories/narratives. Initial research formed the basis for a competitor analysis review which was compiled into a Pluses and Delta diagram by the UX sub-team. This confirmed what aspects were enjoyed by players, as well as pain points.
User Interviews
To gain a better understanding of our target user and valuable feedback from our concept and art direction, our sub-team carried out two rounds of user surveys. The first survey looked at Gaming Behaviours and Replayability. The results were insightful and enabled us to focus on key areas of replayability.
This was followed with a second survey and interviews asking each participant for opinion on likelihood to play, art direction, concept, collectability, customisation and replayability. We each took part in interviews, sourcing our own participants.
We used the results of all surveys to inform our design and development decisions moving forwards.
Data Synthesis and Key Findings
The UX sub-team simultaneously created an empathy map to sort responses into ‘Hear’, ‘Think/Feel’, ‘See’ and ‘Say/Do’ categories. We were able to define the key pains and gains from our survey.
I synthesised the data from the second survey using affinity mapping techniques, to better understand the key takeaway themes. I presented the findings to the group, providing group motivation through positive feedback, and ensured that next iterations took these opinions into account. This also gave me an opportunity to list areas for future scope.
Ideation and Mind Mapping
Hanni and I used mind mapping excersises to develop ideas for narrative, VFX, character design and currency. We were able to exchange views and articulate ideas well.
User Flows
To define the user journey as well as the mechanics of granulated sections such as Navigation/Structure, Fight Sequences and the Shop Area, we created user journeys and task flows. Hanni and I continued to work together, casting a critical eye over each other’s work. The final iteration of the user flow was shared with the team, and opinions were collated with sticky notes.
Wireframes
With Hanni focusing on the final UI element and character design, I took the lead in creating initial wireframes to speed up the workflow. These gave us a good foundation to imagine what the game would look like and segment the work ahead.
UI Design and Iteration
Throughout the iterative refinement of our game's UI, we remained committed to the SCRUM methodology, ensuring a structured and efficient approach. As Hanni led the UI design, I actively contributed by designing initial iterations, aiming to expedite the process. My role involved creating early-stage designs, allowing for swift progress, while Hanni incorporated refined illustrations later or even spearheaded the final iterations. This collaborative workflow within the SCRUM framework facilitated a dynamic and iterative UI development process, enabling us to achieve a polished and cohesive design for Goro Goro Gatcha.
The Pitch
As part of our final assessment for this module, we were required to pitch the project to industry experts to gain valuable feedback. We approached the pitch in the same way as the rest of the project, using project management tools to assign tasks, with each member of the team taking responsibility to certain slides. We received an overwhelmingly positive critique from the practice pitch, and took note of all feedback to refine our pitch for the final submission.
