Problem Solving

Today I was putting a bike rack on my car. A brand new bike rack from Thule – great design, well made device, terrible instructions. There were several times where I had to infer what piece went where from very little information. It was a lot of trial and error. I had to problem-solve.

I was relying on the information that this was a well made rack, not a piece of junk from a cheap store. The pieces that I had already placed went in smoothly and were clearly fitting exactly the way they were supposed to go. When I went to fit the later pieces I found myself thinking as I had in a well crafted game – if it doesn’t go in smoothly, it probably isn’t the right solution. That kept me on track. I was able to not stay too long on spurious, ill-fitting trajectories, so that I would change course and more quickly find the well fitting solution.

As a game designer, too much click and try on spurious objects leaves me frustrated. I am currently stuck in Machinarium, Botanicula, and Half-life 2 at points where I got bored with trying to find the game mechanic. I am probably not the typical gamer. I don’t want to have to navigate and click-to-find too much before finding the mechanic. I want it right in my face but with a complex puzzle so that I have to figure out how to use it. I want to be able to use my trial error to quickly get feedback on how to leverage the mechanic in the current situation. Otherwise, personally, I go to a walkthrough or leave the game.

But back to the bike rack. How many things do we do each day that are aided by exploratory problem-solving, the kind that is so core to good games? Assembling and fixing things without good instructions, certainly any kind of innovation, how about managing a household budget? Managing with limited resources to create “lemonade” from lemons – I guess that is back to innovation. It feels like the quality of how we live our lives, and how in control of our lives we can ever hope to be, is based on our problem solving ability. Is that true?

Play, Eat, Play

“A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.”

Thanks Wikipedia, but you forgot one really important descriptor: FUN!

That’s exactly what we had last night at our second teacher/student focus group. Just what were we focusing on and why would it possibly be fun? Games, people, games. We have four science-based games that we are alpha testing. Gulp. So, we thought, Why not invite our friends from Pilgrim HS, Codman Academy, Boston Arts Academy and Fenway High School, to come to our offices and play with us? Double gulp. Exciting and scary…
What if they are bored? What if they have nothing to say? All legitimate deep-seated fears of any research and design group, especially one that believes so strongly in the power of play and how that play can transform learning.

The format for the evening was Play, Eat, and Play some more. Simple, right? And that they did! Any fears that we harbored way down deep were quickly put to rest as our guests became fully engaged and immersed in our games. The most powerful moments came during the second Play session when we played as a group.  The true test… volunteer students got up in front of the group and drove the games while explaining, in great detail, what was happening, what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what would make the game even better. And luckily, the other participants weren’t shy about adding in their two cents as well. It felt like a true brainstorming session!

So, guess what? They liked all of the games. They had a multitude of ideas, most of which we hadn’t even thought of. One student even figured out a way to solve a light maze puzzle that completely shocked the game designer.

Bottom line. We have three games we love in alpha test stage. We have a long way to go until they are perfect. We also have some new game designers to credit when we roll the games out—a group of smart, thoughtful, and creative high school students from the Boston/Rhode Island area.

Needless to say, we are smiling today.