Project information
Made by Yumi Batgerelijn, Daan Brinkhuis, Ernst de Bruijn, Jeroen Endenburg, Max Jansen, Natalia Pozdeeva and myself.
Made in Unity for the PC.
Finished december 2015.
HKU student project for an external client.
About Voyage
Target group: Newly hired employees.
Singleplayer mixed reality game.
Summary: The aim of Voyage was to speed up the incorporation of new employees into the organization culutre of the company.
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Game flow
When we started the project with brainstorming, paper prototyping and iterating, we soon found that our preferred user-centered approach was not the right way to look at this complex problem.
We were dealing with complex layers of human behaviour and values, a subject that is very abstract, so we switched our approach to system-centered design.
The underlying system is displayed on the left (picture made by Daan Brinkhuis). It is based on the project guidelines and our own observations based on iterative research.
Game flow: HR
There are two parts to the system we created, one for the employee, our player, and one for HR. HR starts the game where he can make a new profile for an employee. Once created HR can choose the challenges the employee will face out of a portfolio of pre-made challenges. They can also see the results of the challenges the employee has chosen to share with HR.
Game flow: Employee
The employee will play for about an hour each week where he will complete challenges. Through the challenges the employee will get to know the corporate culture of the company. For completing the challenges he will get a reward but he can also choose to skip the challenge. Afterward he can reflect on the choices he has made in the challenges and he can choose to send the results to the dashboard of HR. The employee can see the statistics and results of the challenges in his dashboard.
The game
In our final concept we decided to go for a mixed reality game. The challenges would be carried out in the real world since that is the only way to learn about the corporate culutre of a company, by experiencing it. The results of the challenges would be put into the game where the challenges would be connected with point-and-click gameplay and a logical narrative (i.e. if the challenge was to go to the director then in-game the characters would also have a conversation with the director in-game).
Narrative
In the narrative the main character had a buddy (displayed below) whose purpose it was to bridge the gap between reality and the digital game. The buddy was supposed to keep the magic circle intact.
Game design
In the last part of the project I worked on the challenge design which was made in close collaboration with the client (who is an expert on orgnization culutre). It was a balancing act of play and fun versus information, with me advocating play and the client wanting more focus on the information.
Portfolio site of Merlin Woudstra
mlwoudstra@gmail.com