User Experience Post Mortem

When we started developing Coastal News Network, we almost immediately knew the look and feel of the game we were going for, with themes of censorship and an underlying mystery. However, on the surface, we wanted our game to read as a newscaster simulation. To incorporate these themes, we decided on two major sections: a script building phase and a teleprompter reading phase.

We quickly narrowed down the script building phase based on an idea our engineer had, and planned to leave it as an untimed, relaxed section to allow players to take their time reading and picking articles. However, we struggled to incorporate the sense of urgency we were looking for in the teleprompter reading phase. Initially, I thought we should implement a timed rhythm game, much like "Night in the Woods", in which pressing the appropriate button prompts would slowly read off a refined version of the script.

The most surprising result from user feedback came prior to playtesting, when we first presented our ideas to the class. Based on user feedback, we realized that a typing minigame would be much better suited to the teleprompter phase than a rhythm game. We had some concerns about how implementing music would feel out of place with the eerie, quiet atmosphere we were trying to create, and felt that it might be out of scope given the semester deadline. As a result, with this feedback, I proceeded with creating a paper prototype of the day progression, including the script building phase and the teleprompter reading phase.

I investigated teleprompters and other typing games and found that a slow scroll would be best suited to our needs. Though typing was an important part of our overall design, we didn’t want players to get caught up with their typing stats, so we also incorporated several word choices for each story. These represented moments that players could speak “off the cuff” and make major changes to their perception by the townspeople. This, along with the way the text was revealed as players typed, stopped players from rushing through this part of the game.

In addition to the typing element, I wanted it to feel like players were getting a peak into the “behind the scenes” part of newscasting, so I tried to emulate a control panel style view, where players could see the recording, the teleprompter, and their view count in one place. This was heavily inspired by “Not For Broadcast”, an indie game our artist found. To match our clean style, I made the teleprompter take about half the screen, to emphasize the focus of this section, and majorly paired down the number of screens found in our inspiration photo.

When we playtested our prototype, I found that there weren’t any major concerns over UI elements, such as their placement. I tried to emphasize simplicity with my design, with clear buttons that would "force" players to progress through the day.  I tried to keep these in accordance with standard popups, and found that playtesters were able to intuitively navigate through the pages as I'd hoped. The biggest complaint in terms of UI was the lack of a tutorial, which we expected, and remedied via additional popup windows before the final product.

Overall, I was really pleased with our game and how it was received by players. I’m grateful to have been apart of such a fun and communicative team this semester!