Splitting Attention Players didn't look up at the screen to watch the bunny dancing on stage, partially because they felt there was no connection between what they did and what Tokli was doing. In fact, some players wondered why there was the dancing bunny in the first place. The team felt that because the experience was freeform and players were not given directions, their attention was focused on the images on the table. As a result of this, the group decided to make a more directed experience that moved the players' attention from the table to the bunny so that they would know what to watch and when. Understanding Your Impact As the players select different buttons with their turntables, they affected how one part of the body danced and how one line of music was played. Many players did not connect the animated character on their interface with the animated character on the screens. Furthermore, they did not notice the impact they were having on the music. This was the most troubling issue because enabling people to collectively control Tokli and his band was the primary goal of the game. It was decided, in order to give the game a focus and help people understand what they were doing, that some structure to the experienced would need to be created. Tokli would now sing instructions and encouragement to the players as they played and the game became a collective game of matching, where each player had to match two cards. When all players matched their cards correctly, Tokli would do the appropriate dance. If not, Tokli would do a "broken dance" and encourage the players to try again. Changes: To address all of
these concerns, many changes had to take place. The interface art was
redesigned as a set of 16 cards, one of each body part in one of four
colors. A series of states were designed and implemented in code to
enable the team to achieve a more structured, goal-oriented experience.
A timer was introduced so that the players only had a set amount of
time to match their cards before Tokli either got his groove on or stumbled
awkwardly. The interface would appear and disappear as the players were
expected to play or watch Tokli. Much tuning was required to conduct
the players' attention effectively. Finally, an instructional rap script
was written and Josh Gad from the School of Drama was recorded as the
voice of Tokli.
Originally, the drumpad was intended to provide the players an opportunity to play along with the music. However, the overwhelming majority of players wanted to use their drumpad as a selection button to select the matched card. When players tried to hit the pad to select the card and found it did nothing, they usually went on to try something else, resulting in a loss. The group decided to give the players the ability to select the cards as they matched. In addition, the cards would disappear when selected, which would allow players to know who was still matching after they had made their choice and encourage them to help each other. Difficulty Understanding Matching Players had trouble understanding the mechanics of the updated interface. Many didn't understand that they had to spin the card in front of them around the table to the matching card, and those that did often thought that they had to match either the color or the body part, not both. To address this, sets of cards were shown on the screen during the introduction which indicated what a correct and an incorrect match looked like. Cards Look Alike At the beginning of the experience, Tokli tells the player to "match the cards to make me move". Many players had trouble seeing the differences in the cards, and few people understood them as parts of the dancing bunny's body. To solve this, the cards were made bigger, colored more boldly, and redesigned to look more different from each other. Changes: To help solve these issues, many more changes had to take place. In addition to continued revisions of animations and low-level code, the group also implemented changes as a result of player's feedback. The cards were redesigned and the bunny body parts idea was discarded because it was felt that the body parts detracted from the players' understanding of the interface more than it improved the game aesthetically. Instead, the cards became a bunny head, a guitar, musical notes, and a pair of maracas. The cards were also re-colored so as to be color-blind safe. The cards-to-match were placed on the outside of the ring instead of inside, so that they would be closer to the players' turntables. The color of the table and timer was changed to gray so that color-matching confusion was avoided.
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