What is the experience of The Move Maker – a game to be played by families indoors while promoting physical and social action? And how is it appropriated to the players’ everyday home environment?

This study evaluates a hybrid play system as a family activity during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown – and an adapted (unmoderated) test method for system evaluations during a pandemic lockdown. It was part of the EXACT research project about exergames for balance training at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU, Norway.

My Role

• Planning, conducting and leading the study.
• Recruiting participants.
• Analysing the data and writing up the data.
• Lead the writing of the research paper.

Mapping the Player Experience and Appropriation of the Game

Briefly about the Move Maker: The Move Maker is a hybrid movement-based play and game system designed for physical activity in small places. The game is designed as a modular game system with a suite of minigames, competitive, collaborative and creative. The research and design process of the game is described in this post.

Research Objectives

Evaluate the Move Maker as an indoor activity for families:

• Uncover the player experience
• The play styles the design accommodated
• The practical appropriation of the system – and any emerging correlations

The aim was primarily scientific (developing methodology and design theory). However, the study also uncovered potential design and market opportunities.

Problem space: Inactivity is a downward spiral to lifestyle deceases and mental discomfort.

The situation: During a lockdown, families are bound in their homes with decreased possibilities for physical and social activities.

Market opportunity: Few non-console-based digital games are promoting physical activity. Moreover, these games take up designated areas for playing and are often played in solitude due to expensive and complex technologies. The Move Maker is designed to fit anywhere and accommodate social play.

Method – Unmoderated Testing in the Wild with Technology Probes

Key Findings

Player Experience: The game was found to be engaging, fun, exciting, and challenging and fostered an uncommon closeness. We observed the players as highly engaged with exhilarated utterances and social interaction.

Appropriation of the system: Any place in the home was transformed into a play space; kitchen stoves, frying pans, sofas, floors, a piano bench, and toy cases were used as part of the set-up.

Accommodated play styles: The dominating play styles were collaborative play and finding solutions to bodily puzzles together + creative appropriation of the set-up to suit their play preferences as the situation developed.

Improvement: There is a need to flatten the learning curve of the game. There was a need for a proper manual and a higher information level. The devices need more refinement on usability.

Summary

Reflections

The adapted method proved highly useful. However, data were inconsistent because the video recordings were of different quality. Therefore, we recommend this method for exploratory investigations and where other methods are inappropriate.

Design Knowledge

The discussion of the findings led to 4 design guidelines for modular-based game systems:

Designing Configurable Interactive Playgrounds

This design recommendation is based on the following findings from the evaluation:

• • Space: Large parts of the homes were made into playgrounds
• • Time: The game setup was not fixed but changed over time
• • Shared spaces: The game was set up to foster social play.

Design implication: Movement-based game systems should be flexible and easily configurable by the players to allow them to transform their existing surroundings into an interactive playground. The game system should allow players to dynamically change the setup during play and between play sessions.

Temporarily Redefine Social and Family Roles Through Playful Bodily Togetherness

This design recommendation is based on the following findings from the evaluation:

• • Some restraint cards led to interdependence, while others led to parallel play
• • The players chose to solve the game challenges through close cooperation
• • The players experienced closeness
• • The game system places the generations at the same level
• • The game allowed for awkward movements and silly positions.

Design implication: Experiences of playful bodily togetherness can be achieved in movement-based game systems by adding game challenges that require players to bodily collaborate and move in odd and unfamiliar ways.

Designing for Emergent Play

This design recommendation is based on the following finding from the evaluation:

• Emergent play with the game elements was typical.

Design implication: Movement-based game systems should consist of tangible interactive elements that inspire bodily play without having to be part of a game setup. This way, the individual elements can work as invitations for engaging in and developing bodily play activities.

The Sensibility of the Probe and Game System Design

This design recommendation is based on the following finding from the evaluation:

• Significant amount of time was spent with the elements as single elements—and not as part of the system.

Design Implication: When designing modular-based game systems, designers should be aware of the different levels of complexity in use between the individual elements, i.e., modules, their interrelations and how they affect the use complexity of the system as a whole.

If you want to read the entire study, the scientific outcome, process, methodology and theoretical grounding is published as a peer-review original research paper in the Frontiers in Computer Science Journal, section on Human-Media Interaction.