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After playing SiSSYFiGHT 3000, students were given a 90 second brainstorming session to come up with a new setting for the game. These new settings had to capture the original’s aesthetics (MDA game design framework), which were identified as:
Fellowship: Negotiation, Cooperation, Betrayal
Challenge: Tactics, Problem Solving
Narrative: Drama
Students were then divided into groups and had two hours to chose a brainstormed setting, and make a playable variation on SiSSYFiGHT. Our team created a survival-horror variant of the original game called “O2 – Last Breath.”
After testing and reconvening with the class, each group was then presented with a “memo” from the Evil Publisher, BigAss Games, who demanded some last-minute “tweaks” be made to their game. Our group’s memo read:
Memo:
Wanted to let you guys know: the latest audience research numbers came in, and it doesn’t have enough appeal with tweens (boys and girls 8-13). It’s skewing to old and to male, so the current projections have our missing our sales numbers.
The research reports show kids think the game is fun, but the rules are a little to complicated for tweens. And girls were kind of alienated by how mean everyone always gets.
Maybe this will help: retrotech toys are the hot trend for tweens, apparently. Virtual pets and furby are back this Christmas, if you can believe it. We want to get on that bandwagon.
Can you simplify and redesign the game to include robots, somehow, without alienating the girls?
My wife thought robot ponies would be cool, but its your game. Tell your designers we have to hit tween boys and girls to hit our numbers.
In order to facilitate the demands made by BigAss Games, our group made the following changes to O2 (dubbed Patch 1.1):
 
About Dee Majek
2014 Programming
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