Design Process
Conception
Iterations
Relationship Goals is meant to capture the dramatic arcs of the dysfunctional couple trope within soap operas. There are a variety of ideas and themes central to the game’s core experience, all used to enforce the main hook of ‘drama’.
Our team focused on soap operas/television dramas presenting characters as deceitful and backstabbing. We translated these actions into into mechanics which would support our game narrative. As these characters tend to have shallow goals serving as ulterior motives, we represented these amoral goals in our asset cards.
In the Alpha playtest, our most notable problems regarded point calculation; we identified the necessity of value visibility regarding point calculation and the different number types.
In the early game rounds, users had trouble understanding how reputation points and Assets, as portrayed on the cards, affected them personally.
In turn, the ease of calculating reputation points was troublesome for some users. We mostly attributed this to the design of the cards and how the cards, as laid out on the game field, overburdened the players with information.
Takeaways
After making the verbs of our games explicit to the player, we observed players taking those verbs personally, especially if these actions misaligned with their own morals.
Had we more time to design for this sentiment, we would have explored the idea of creating personas for the players. As such, having characters would help players detach any immoral verbs from their own person.
Players uncomfortable with associating ‘immoral’ acts to themselves are not obligated to do so; in turn, character cards could encourage roleplay between players unfamiliar or uncomfortable playing together..