Intuitive Interaction on a Climbing Wall — Designing Short Circuit
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School of Science |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2025-02-17
Department
Major/Subject
Game Design and Development
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Computer, Communication and Information Sciences
Language
en
Pages
48
Series
Abstract
Designing games for the ValoClimb, an interactive climbing wall, is a uniquely difficult challenge. Games need to be easy to understand, approachable for all ages, and safe to play while encouraging exercise. These factors combined with the novel interaction method and constrained perspective place high importance on making interactions and game mechanics intuitive. Intuitive interaction results in faster and more confident interaction making for a better player experience. Iterating on game mechanics to make them more intuitive for players can be long and laborious. Due to the diversity of our audience, solutions are more difficult to verify and issues may be overlooked. To help overcome these challenges, this thesis examines the visual and game design of Short Circuit, revealing a set of problems hindering intuitive interaction, with our methods of mitigating them. The development process of Short Circuit is analyzed, including our methods, the early prototyping and later production phases of development. Intermediate artifacts are observed to highlight problems in intuitive interaction and the changes we made to mitigate them. Important areas of the game's design, including a novel procedural generation method for drop-in-drop-out multiplayer are introduced. Based on learnings from both general HCI research, past ValoClimb games, and the development journey of Short Circuit, a set of intuitive interaction challenges and mitigation methods for them are discussed. Applying these methods, future game development times can be shortened, and the focus of playtesting sessions can be more easily directed to all aspects of the game, instead of testers being preoccupied with difficult-to-understand game mechanics. Although our research is conducted related to ValoClimb games, these principles can be adapted to other platforms and game genres to speed up the prototyping process as well.Description
Supervisor
Hämäläinen, PerttuThesis advisor
Vähämäki, JoniKeywords
intuitive interaction, game research, game design, climbing games, active video games, motion games