Pocket god game usability playtest - part 2 - solutions

Ok, so, first of all the game usability issues encountered by the game tester, broken down into high, medium and low priority:

HIGH

• Game aims/type unclear
• Help too long and unclear
• Overwhelming amount of functionality

MEDIUM

• Controls not clear initially
• 'Open Feint' wasn't explained
• Started at episode 29 with no explanation  about the earlier episodes

LOW

• The request to allow push notifications was unclear
• Unclear when items/environment options are toggled on or off

* Disclaimer * 1 play test is far too small a number to truly be able to draw conclusions on the issues in the game (you need at the bare minimum 6 to be able to start drawing more reliable conclusions), but I'm running with what data I have...

Game aims/type unclear

Traditionally people know what type of game they are buying/getting. The game's background or premise is typically setup using an introduction movie. Pocket God cannot rely on people knowing the type of game, as people often download iPhone games on the spur of the moment. This leads to players not knowing what they’re getting into. This is exacerbated by not providing an introduction to the game.

The introductory page to the Pocket God help states:

Welcome to the Island of Oog, on an island inside your iPod/iPhone live the Pygmies, a tiny race of people that worship an unseen force... YOU. You are their God and it is your responsibility to keep them in line and guide them through their ongoing adventures.

I feel this doesn't sufficiently explain the game. The playtester thought she had to try and keep the pygmies alive/prosperous. This was why she got so upset when the pygmies started dying. The introduction needs to explain that the fun starts when you're willing to let the pygmies die, as they can be replaced easily. 


The intro text should be clarified, making it clearer what the aim of this game is. An introduction could also be added (this doesn't necessarily have to be a movie, it could be a series of images like Beneath a Steel Sky).

Overwhelming amount of functionality/Help too long and unclear 

I recently praised Batman Arkham Asylum for its well paced gradual introduction of controls. The problem with Pocket God is that as there's no storyline, there's no clear path through the game through which to introduce the different features. There's no storyline, all the functionality is available from the off, leading to this feeling of being overwhelmed by our playtester.

Pocket God could add a tutorial, introducing players to the different 'activities' available... But this undermines the spirit of exploration and discovery that the game relies on ("ooo look, I can throw them into the volcano!").

An alternative - I think the best way for the player to learn any game is to gradually seek out new functionality at their own pace. If Pocket God initially loaded with just 1 area available, this could act as a 'nursery' area for the player to come to terms with some of the more basic controls before allowing the player to approach the other areas in their own time, downloading them whenever they felt ready. This could also be applied to the different 'episodes'.

This approach of essentially splitting the areas would allow the help text to be split up. Of the 34 pages of help, 10 are generic, 4 are for 1 area, 3 for another, 5 for a third, 3 for a fourth... and 3 for a fifth. A lot of these pages are presented when they aren't relevant - why do I care about the T-Rex when I'm in the underwater area? If the pages in the help text were context specific (only show the help text for the area I'm currently in) this would simplify the text significantly.

The help text could be split into 3 sections to further reduce the number of pages presented at any one time:

1. Overall controls
2. What can be done here?
3. Open Feint/Social

Controls not clear initially

The controls are translucent. While it makes sense to try and be as efficient with screen space on the small iPhone screen, there's a risk (as seen here) that players miss the controls entirely.

I would suggest researching a little more to see how often this problem occurs with new players, and if it is a common problem to offer an option to set the controls to opaque or translucent, with opaque the default selection.


'Open Feint' wasn't explained
What is 'Open Feint'? Is it another app? How is it related to Pocket God? None of these questions are answered sufficiently.

There's no attempt to sell it at all. Imagine users as surly teenagers (several are) asking "what's in it for me?". Explain what's to be gained in signing up to this thing, e.g. See how your friends are doing by signing up to Open Feint - think Facebook meets games! (I stole the end from the Open Feint site).

As a backup, ensure a negative decision can be reversed easily (I think this is already the case, but couldn't be tested as the playtester signed herself up).

6 of the help pages attempted to explain Open Feint, but do a poor job. The explanations are text heavy, and I was unable to find the pages demonstrated when I attempted to use Open Feint myself. I think this functionality needs a video (implausible on the iPhone) or explanation text in the application itself.

Started at episode 29 with no explanation  about the earlier episodes

It must be good advertising to display clearly each time the game's updated... great for return users, not so good for first-timers. As the play tester said - "Episode 29? What about the other episodes???"

There's a couple of options with this issue:

Option 1 - do nothing. It makes no difference to the player, this problem doesn't interfere with their play (although it does un-nerve the player slightly during their initial play).
Option 2 - give the player control to advance 'episodes' at their own pace. I.e. they initially start the game in episode 1, with an option to move onto 2, 3, etc whenever they chose.
Option 3 - don't show the episode number when the game is initially loaded, display only on subsequent openings of the game.

The request to allow push notifications was unclear
This will be a common issue for many apps. What are 'push notifications'? And even those who know what they are, how often will they be coming in?

I just realised I didn't really know what they are, and after 5 minutes of studious internet research I'm now... none the wiser. I can't find much about what they are, other than they're the little red blogs apps get in their corner to let you know something's happened.

Much like the Open Feint issue Apple need a 'What are push notifications?' link each time this question is asked. There should also be another link/a following page detailing exactly how the push notifications will be handled by the specific application. Allowing users to read and learn about unknowns will massively increase the likelihood of people agreeing to said unknowns (or 'knowns' as they would then be... known).

Unclear when items/environment options are toggled on or off

I was working with a client just a couple of weeks ago who encountered the exact same problem. The 'on' selection looked very similar to the 'off' selection. This meant participants were forced to switch the option on and off several times before they could see the difference.

The solution is to differentiate the two states more clearly. This could be done by changing the on/off state from a subtle glowing around the silhouette to clear colour changes. Or using ticks and crosses alongside the silhouette.

Conclusion
Pocket God needs several changes before I could say that they support new users. It appears to have suffered game usability growing pains. Designs that were suitable initially have suffered with the increase in content. While I'm sure more experienced players will be able to overcome several of the game usability issues discussed with no problems, the issues will remain for more 'casual' gamers.

Next time - A discussion on 2 attempts to introduce achievements in iPhone games...

Pocket God - game usability playtest part 1

I recently ran a game usability playtest of Pocket God on the iPhone. Why that game? It's developers Bolt Creative recently claimed that it's been downloaded 2 million times. I was intrigued to see the appraoch the developers took to keep the game fresh - to release regular free updates (30 "episodes" over just over a year).

With so much additional content being added to the core game I was curious to see how the game introduced itself to a new player. I decided to conduct a very-mini playtest, consisting of 1 tester. Step forward test subject number 1 (the girlfriend).

Test subject number 1
Preferred genre -  Strategy/Puzzle
Favourite game - Ceasar 3
Systems owned - iPhone and PC/Mac (some play time on the Wii)
Average time playing per week - 2-3 hours

*Disclaimers*

1. I had no contact with the game before the playtest -  I didn't know anything about the controls or content. Not ideal for a playtest, but it was necessary (the iPhone used for the playtest was owned by test subject number 1).
   
2. I deliberately didn't allow test subject 1 to read any information about the game before the playtest - not even the reviews. She would normally have read the reviews, and learnt about the game to a much greater degree before purchasing. A lot of the issues encountered wouldn't have been encountered in real life (as the tester would have read around the game before commencing). I wanted to enact a spontaneous purchase.
   

The playtest

I'm just going to write what happened:

Before the game loads, an 'Open Feint' window appears and requests to use the players data. The tester (hereafter referred to as her, or she) was unsure what this was for. She thought it was a different application altogether and guessed it was some form of social tool (it is, but there's no explanation - what it is, or what you'd want to sign up to it for).

Next she asked if they want push notifications. "Are these warning messages? How often will I be warned?"

The game starts and informs her that episode 29 is loading - "Episode 29? Why start on episode 29?"

The game loads with 1 pygmy on the screen... it picks up a fishing rod and starts to fish. Almost immediately it is pulled into the sea and eaten by a shark - much to her dismay. She's left with no one on the screen anymore. She doesn't notice the 'add pygmy' button in the top of the screen. She gets distressed.

With some assistance she notices the controls in the top of the screen. They load the help, which offers some explanatory text... but this is rather small and hard to read. There's a total of 34 help pages - too much for her to take in. They started reading... then gave up. She gets distressed. "Ice monster? What? I'm meant to throw the pygmies at the ice monster? How? Why?"

She creates a couple of pygmies and tries dragging one around. Succeeds in dropping the pygmy into the sea, where it quickly drowns before she can pull it out again. She gets distressed.

After a couple of minutes she is starting to get to grips with the controls. However, they still felt overwhelmed - "There's too much...".

Pulling up the map she accidentally takes the pygmies to the 'underwater zone' "Are we underwater now? Why?". She panics, fearing the pygmies would drown.

Finding the toggle controls (where the player has the ability to toggle various interactive aspects of the zones on and off). She toggles a couple of options, but is unsure what they control "Are they on or off? What are they?"

After 5 minutes of the playtest she abandons the game. "I just don't know what to do..." She believed she was playing the game incorrectly, that there was a way to be benevolent and save the pygmies from their rather gruesome fates.

After playing

After playing she went online to see what she was missing. Reading the Wikipedia entry, the tester realised the whole point of the game was essentially to torture and kill the pygmies in a variety of amusing ways... This didn't appeal to them. The game was not to their taste, but they were still able to find several issues. The biggest being:

• The game never introduced itself to the player - there was insufficient help and no tutorial. It was also unclear exactly what kind of game it was (a sim-killer)

I'll discuss the other issues, and how they could resolve some of them next time!