Week 2: Nuclear Threat domain, Audience barriers, Platform

This week our team dove deep into subject area research to try and understand how we might answer the questions the Transformational Framework poses. Splitting up research work into different parts based on the transformational questions, we were able to make some exciting discoveries. Our client provided a starting point of information that he had come to know about through the On The Morning You Wake production process, which helped a lot.

By the middle of the week, we had a detailed domain map laid out by Derek, an understanding of barriers our audience faces from interviews Clare conducted, and many different academic and activist primary sources to reference from Katherine and Shiva. Shiva also found some prior works we could play such as Hair Trigger, a mobile game created by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and though it is a single player game, we were excited to find another transformational game with similar goals as our client. We attended the Playtest to Explore workshop, which helped us learn about various brainstorming techniques, and reinforced the idea that we had to figure out a narrower focus.

Project Box brainstorming

Through ranked choice voting, we were able to find six sub-domains that we would be interested in pursuing. On Friday, we presented our chosen domains in our client meeting with Raul. He was most interested in us pursuing the nuclear testing domain, while also keeping in mind the topic of relevance to daily life as we refine our transformational goal. He recommended two particular subject matter experts, and we hope to be able to meet with them in the near future. Raul also provided us with much more detailed information about the On The Morning You Wake project. It is a highly emotional experience, and complementing that emotional tone is a good thing to keep in mind for our design, even though our guests will likely not have a chance to experience the documentary prior to our session.

Domain map simplified
Domain map expanded
Domain topics as ranked by our client Raul

We were also able to make great progress in figuring out what technological constraints might inform our design. The Games for Change festival will be taking place on the Hopin platform, which has various features we can use such as a group chat, individual participant profiles, polling, and integration with social media. Next week, we will set up a dummy Hopin event to fully understand the platform. One additional component of research, conducted by Oscar, focused on remote large-scale multiplayer experiences. We found several past ETC projects that can serve as a model for how to conduct such an experience- both Dtox and Cloudworks have valuable lessons to teach about what types of experiences will hold a large, remote audience’s attention for an hour. This research also illuminated our technology options, either using mobile devices or networked play for guest input. 

Lastly, we made some plans for week three. Clare made several different logo option drafts for us, and will begin working with Shirley Yee to refine the concept.

Logo concepts

We will survey the faculty and student body as a gut check on what barriers a proxy audience similar to the Games for Change audience actually faces. With assistance from Raul and some ETC faculty, we will be setting up an SME meeting, which we are eagerly awaiting. We will also conduct further research on the sub-domain of nuclear testing, and use the Hopin platform for internal testing of the platform’s constraints. Our first priority is to have a solid answer to the most common question that comes up about our project- just what, exactly, is the transformation of our transformational game?