Tandem Design's goal is to help teams making transformational games maximize every team member's contribution, deeply ground their prototypes in theory, and have a clearer, more-shared game vision throughout their process. Tandem Design focuses on making to reflect and iterating on theory and related transformational goals.
3. GAME-DRIVEN GOAL DELINEATION
1. Iterating on Theory and Related Goals
• Iteratively make clear, well-defined goals
• Use this iterated theory to make more effective games
4. GOAL-DRIVEN GAME DESIGN
2. Anchoring Reflection Using Prototypes
• Use game prototypes to ground reflection and discussion of goals
• Use prototypes to inform understanding of theory
5. ALIGNMENT
3. Aligning the Team’s Shared Mental Model
• Give an interdisciplinary team the tools to understand each other’s contributions
• Evaluate both game and research artifacts as a group
6. THE 7 STEPS OF TANDEM DESIGN
• Delineate Goals – define your transformational goals
• Literature Review - understand and define your goals,
ground them in literature on related theory
• Iterate Delineation – repeat goal delineation loop
• Align – ensure team is moving towards the same goal
• Prototype – create playable prototypes
• Playtest – play game prototypes early and often for feedback
• Iterate Design – repeat game design loop
7. DEMONSTRATING TANDEM DESIGN
THROUGH OUTBREAK
E AC H S TAG E O F TAN D E M D E S I G N I S F L E X I B L E ,
T H E F O L L O W I N G AR E S AM P L E AC T I V I T I E S F O R E AC H S TAG E
8. OUTBREAK FINAL DESCRIPTION
• Collaborative board game
• Players explore a mad scientist’s mansion and hunt for the cure to a
terrible outbreak
• Players are uncertain what is in each room
• Find out what is in the room by playing a 20-questions-like mini game
• Game Goal: comfort asking questions, comfort with
uncertainty
11. OUTBREAK EXAMPLES
DELINEATING GOALS
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
• Set high-level goal of the game
• Individually brainstorm sub-
goals from the earlier lit review,
collect and funnel as a group
• After a playtest, re-center goal
based on play dynamics
• Set “increasing curiosity” goal
• Extract from the literature
through group playstorming
“comfort with questions”
• Set additional goal based on
play “developing good
questions
13. OUTBREAK EXAMPLES
LITERATURE REVIEW
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
• Take the goal, operationalize it
through research literature
• Take list of sub-goals and play
dynamics, read literature on
each for a deep-dive
• Post-playtest, re-read literature
to ensure that the theory
implemented is true to what the
literature says
• One team member reviewed 15
papers on curiosity, team
extracted a list of “curiosity”
outcomes
• Read literature on why question-
asking is difficult and how it
relates to curiosity
• Re-read question literature and
compare to play dynamics from
playtest field notes
14. SAMPLE LOW-FI “RESEARCH ARTIFACT”
FROM OUTBREAK, A LIST OF THEORIES AND
OUTCOMES
Theories Curiosity
Outcomes
Magic Circle Emotion
Contagion Positive
Valence/High
Arousal Modeling Pluralistic
Ignorance
Collective/Social Identity
Psychological Distancing
Value/Role Consistency
Imagining future and past
selves
Self-affirmation
Compartmentalization of
identity
Growth Mindset
Benevolent Masochism
Misattribution of Arousal
Increased tolerance for
uncertainty
Curiosity Contagion
Failure is not a threat
Search for unanswered
questions
Questions are normal
16. ITERATE OR ALIGN?
SAMPLE QUESTIONS TO ASK
• Do I know enough (bare minimum) to start making a playable
prototype?
• Do I need to understand the theory I’m trying to use more deeply?
• Have I spent too much time on theory?
Note: you should never spend too much time in a single loop
18. OUTBREAK EXAMPLES
ALIGNMENT
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
• A group brainstorm of one-
sentence game ideas based
on reviewed literature
• A team playtest of one
member’s game prototype
• A discussion of one specific
theory and its relation to
multiple prototypes
• Six team members brainstormed
65 ideas, clustered into 15 high-
level concepts
• Outbreak prototype 1 designed
by 2 team members, all 6 play
the prototype to better eval. it
• Discuss how growth mindset
plays out in multiple prototypes
19. OUTBREAK EXAMPLE GAME IDEAS
FROM ALIGNMENT #1
“A high-stress, escape the
room game where you ask
questions to find clues to
escape while the board
shrinks”
“A deck-building game using
positive self-affirmation and
identity cards”
“A role-playing spaceship game
where you must complete your
mission and fix the spaceship
before it launches”
Role-Playing
Question-Asking
Games About
EmotionCaretaking Games
21. OUTBREAK EXAMPLES
PROTOTYPING
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
• Script one single round of
game play
• Diverge and create two
versions of the same game
with one changed mechanic
• Make a fully playable game in
low-fi materials
• Draft a rule list
• Wrote a script of each question
a sample player would ask and
how other players would
respond
• Changed one mechanic to make
question-asking round either
timed or not timed
• Draft a rule list that can be fully
read and game playable for non-
team members
24. OUTBREAK EXAMPLES
PLAYTESTING
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
• Playtest just one mechanic or
one round of game play with
the internal team
• Playtest the full game in the
field with your target audience
• Handoff the game to a group of
colleagues to see how they
play without facilitation
• Team members try out a
choose-your-own adventure
mechanic, find that content
generation is overwhelming
• Field playtests at local
afterschool programs with
adolescent students
• Handoff to a group of colleagues
with instructions, observe and
record playtest notes
26. TANDEM TRANSFORMATIONAL
GAME DESIGN
• Iterating on Theory
• Questioning assumptions about our goals
• Discovered a diverse set of sub-goals relevant to curiosity
• Anchoring Reflection Using Prototypes
• Articulated a relationship between curiosity and uncertainty
• Kept multiple stakeholders on the same page
• Alignment
• Give an interdisciplinary team the tools to understand each other’s contributions
• Evaluate both game and research artifacts as a group
28. ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
We are a research team at Carnegie Mellon University in
the Human Computer Interaction Institute currently
designing and studying game-based interventions.
Alexandra To
CMU HCII
PhD Student
Elaine Fath
Schell Games
Game Designer
Jessica Hammer
CMU HCII, ETC
Faculty
Geoff Kaufman
CMU HCII
Faculty
29. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the SCIPR (Sensing Curiosity in Play and Responding) project
and co-PIs Justine Cassell, Jessica Hammer, and L.P. Morency, generously
funded by the Heinz Family Foundation.
We also thank Eda Zhang, Anny Fan, and Catherine Kildunne for their
support in playtesting and designing Outbreak.
To., A., Fath, E., Zhang, E., Ali, S., Kildunne, C., Fan, A., Hammer, J., Kaufman, G. (2016) “Tandem
Transformational Game Design: A Game Design Process Case Study”, 2016 Meaningful Play.
Carnegie Mellon
Human Computer
Interaction Institute
tinyurl.com/tandemdesign alexandrato.com
30. TANDEM TRANSFORMATIONAL
GAME DESIGN
Carnegie Mellon
Human Computer
Interaction Institute
PRESENTED BY
ALEXANDRA TO (AATO@CS.CMU.EDU), ELAINE FATH, JESSICA HAMMER, GEOFF KAUFMAN
Editor's Notes
I’m a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
Today I’m going to talk about…
Tandem Transformational Game Design
a design process that consists of two cyclical sub-processes - game-driven goal delineation and goal-driven game design
given these 3 main tenets of transformational game design, i want to talk about two of the main ideas in tandem design
iterating on theory and related goals
anchoring reflection using prototypes
I WANT TO BE CLEAR THAT…
-the ideas in our process are not new,
-these ideas already exist in game design practices and in academic research on design
-but we are presenting a method for doing this in practice
given these 3 main tenets of transformational game design, i want to talk about two of the main ideas in tandem design
iterating on theory and related goals
anchoring reflection using prototypes
I WANT TO BE CLEAR THAT…
-the ideas in our process are not new,
-these ideas already exist in game design practices and in academic research on design
-but we are presenting a method for doing this in practice
We used Tandem Design to define our goals, align our team, and create rapid physical prototypes
non-digital, increase curiosity
Speaking about the SCIPR project in detail is beyond the scope of this talk, it is the case study for this design process, but i’m happy to chat with anyone afterwards about this ongoing project
Outbreak is a board game in which players explore an isolated research base
They’re hunting for the cure to a terrible plague
But players are uncertain what is in each room of the base and whether it can hurt them or help them
They can find out by playing a 20-questions like mini-game, which we’re not going to talk about today
Today, we’re going to focus on making rooms that provoke player curiosity, that make players want to ask questions
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
Here is an artifact that came from our first round of literature review
What you’re seeing is some of our notes from a meeting in which we identified related psychological theories.
This is part of a larger list, this is what we found most interesting and wanted to pursue further
We went for volume first and did a little filtering and clustering and came up with this list. The transcription is on the right.
So it turned out there was a lot of richness here in our first pass
Curiosity turns out to be quite complicated
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
Here are just a few of those 65 1-sentence game ideas
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
We made 5 prototypes, today we’re only going to talk about one of them
——————
Today I want to focus on one game, Outbreak
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
in this first step, you may come in with a really sharp, clearly defined goal, and that’s great
it’s also possible to start much broader and more vague, you will keep refining and getting clearer through tandem design’s scaffolding
for SCIPR, we knew we wanted to increase curiosity, and we knew our target population was for middle school students
The very first step for anyone using tandem design is to delineate goals
Just to reiterate here are two of the main ideas from Tandem Design, and some of the benefits tandem design had for OUR process
we questioned assumptions and uncovered rich information about our goals
and we kept out team aligned and produced research in addition to game prototypes
Tandem Transformational Game Design
a design process that consists of two cyclical sub-processes - game-driven goal delineation and goal-driven game design
I’m a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
Today I’m going to talk about…