Tales Of The Wind
Exploring Applied Games With A Card Game.
A photo of someone playing my card game.
What Was This Project About?
For the first year final project of my UAL Game Development Diploma I chose to explore how an applied game, which is a term used to describe a game that is designed for a: medical, educational or therapeutic purpose, could be designed to help to support depression in a rather general sense. In order to explore this subject I decided to design a digital card game that would employ several different systems in order to support players who were dealing with depression.
For the research that I conducted for the therapy aspects of my project, I researched both depression and applied games that dealt with mental health looking at three main applied games in particular: Sparx, Superbetter and Personal Zen. Deconstructing these games lead me to the observation that all of these games had been kept hidden from the mainstream channel of the games industry as the lack of fun that they provided players with meant that they were only recommended to people who were activity seeking help or who were currently taking part in traditional therapy practices. As such I felt that these games failed to tap into the full potential of applied games since these products can give players the chance to receive support in a play area where they can escape the stigmas that come with "getting help" and truly relax which would be a good opportunity for those who allow these stigmas to prevent them from seeking support. In order to challenge this I decided to design my game to appeal to both gamers and people who are interested in receiving emotional support, in hopes of creating a concept that if fully realized could theoretically receive mainstream attention.
In addition to this I also conducted great study into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mood diaries for this aspect of my project since I felt that these were two forms of therapy which could potentially be smoothly integrated into a game experience along with various other simple self-help methods such as getting the participant to learn a new hobby.
For my research into the design of card games during my project, I mainly looked at Slay The Spire, Magic: The Gathering, Underhand, Miracle Merchant and Card Thief conducting a full deconstruction of the later. Besides learning how a designer can create depth and strategy in a card game by giving the player a series of systems that they will have to work around by interacting with those systems through the use of cards, this research also drew my attention to the way that Magic: The Gathering and Underhand creates a narrative with their cards which in turn lead me to questions of how I could tell a narrative in my game through using cards.
What Was My Initial Plan For The Project And How Did It Change?
Originally I was inspired by the Japanese genre of Robot, or as it is also called mecha, to make the card game segment of my game revolve around kinetic robot battles that would see the player using their cards to attack, defend, change weapons and move across a 2D battlefield both vertically and horizontal resulting in a more kinetic reimagining of Slay The Spire. Alongside this system there would be three other main segments to my game. To start with my game would feature a series of mini-games which would be based around the player character conducting different basic self-care activities like having a shower. Upon completing one of these mini-games the player character would receive a buff which would carry into the main game-play of the game and promote a certain real life benefit to conducting that self-care activity creating a positive connotation towards that activity for the player. Moving on, the game's second set of mini-games would be based around slowly teaching the player a specific skill through game-play such as how to play the piano. An example of this could be a Cooking Mama style game designed to teach players how to cook actual dishes. Lastly this game would also include a dialogue based section in which player's would discuss their day with a fictional character. This system would be based off of both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mood diaries.
However after reviewing my concept with several people who experience depression I was convinced to change my game's main game-play into something less violent in order to avoid triggering trauma based depression for certain players. In response to this I transformed the concept for my card game into a strategic resource management game where you will play as a traveling merchant who will encounter a series of fantastical villages that are currently struggling with various disasters. You will have to use your items to help the village as they respond to various events controlling their three values: Food, Wealth and Manpower in order to secure victory. For inspiration for this game world I looked towards traditional European folklore, The Wind In The Willows and the works of Hayao Miyazaki imaging a world full of nature, fae and humanoid animal like creatures.
Once I had completed my planning I did not have enough time to create a prototype for all of my game's different systems and as such I put all of my focus into creating the card game segment of my game. I made this decision as I desired to improve my skills and knowledge in game design through the final outcome of this project.
Prototyping, Production And How To Access My game
Following this I began to develop my card game by creating a series of paper prototypes in order to experiment with my game's mechanics and card designs. Although my initial prototype was tedious and boring I managed to create a fun play experience for my second prototype by settling on a limited number of card types, a mangable space of possibility which I could reliably predict as a designer and a sharp focus on giving the player a sense of control over the balance of the game's values. Images of my second prototype can be seen below.
Feeling that I had a solid base for the design of my final product I begun to produce my final card designs for my finished prototype through using adobe photoshop. Once I had produced my first initial batch of cards I then refined the designs of my cards changing their front and color scheme to make them more readable and attractive. A comparison between some of my card's old designs and their new designs can be seen within the images below. The images on the left show my old cards whereas the images on the left show my new cards.
Now that I had produced a finished concept for my card game I then designed a short manual for the game, which can be found below. You can use this manual with the game's cards, which can be discovered by following the link below, in order to be able to play my game.
Evaluation
Looking back at this project which was admittedly overambitious for the parameters that I was given, I feel that through conducting surveys and discussions on the subject of my game's concept with people who had and had not experienced depression, I have learnt one main lesson regarding applied games and mental health. What I discovered was that although participants were greatly interested in gaining comfort through discussing their problems and receiving a small amount of gentle support through engaging with a game's set of mechanics. They showed concern for any concept that required player's to carry out real world actions for in game gratification, such as baking a cake for an in game reward, voicing both a lack of interest for the idea as well as a belief of the importance of carrying out a beneficial activity for its innate reward. This lead me to believe that an applied game for mental health should be focused on both informing the player of the benefits behind certain self-help activities, and creating a fun way to engage with certain beneficial practices and thereby removing the connotations of a need for effort and a chance of a possible threat, that those practices might have for the individual.
However despite learning this lesson I feel that on a personal level this project has also taught me that a game made as a tool by a smaller team is better suited to aiming to achieve something small like teaching players about a historical subject or developing players typing abilities. This is due to the large amount of research that a topic such as mental health requires which can stretch out a project’s required development time. As such any projects that I conduct in the future which are focused on the subject of games as tools will be focused on achieving much smaller goals.
In order to contact me or to stay up to date with my future projects please follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/AstonRevitt
Alternately you can also use the email address Revitt.Aston@Yahoo.com to make professional inquiries.
