Screwed

Context

Game Design, MFA Design for Social Innovation

Introduction

As part of the Game Design course within the MFA Design for Social Innovation program, my team and I were tasked with creating a game to address a social problem. The project brief included:

1. The game has to effectively demonstrate our shared design values

2. We must playtest the game so that it doesn’t “break” - the mechanics need to be tested and proven to work

3. The purpose or learning intended from the game must be emergent

Problem and Values

The problem my team wanted to address was that people often feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, or even shameful talking about sex.

We talked to friends and family about their experiences having conversations about sex and found that people wanted to be able to talk about sex with their friends or their partner, but often just didn’t know how. People who did feel more comfortable having these conversations shared how amazing those experience were, and how good it felt after talking about sex in an open and honest way. Based on these conversations and our own experiences as a team, we came up with the following shared design values for our game:

• Sex positive: Our game should reflect sex positivity - that sex is healthy, pleasurable, and consensual

• Shame-free: Our game should encourage openness and honesty without judgment

• Fun: Our game should promote laughter and be enjoyable to play - maybe at a party!

• Inclusive: All gender-identities, sexualities, and experience levels should be able to play our game - even people who aren’t sexually active

Playtesting

Activities:

• We conducted a lot of research playing different games to understand the game mechanics that might be helpful for us in our game including Balderdash, Apples to Apples, Red Flags, Joking Hazard, King’s Cup, Never Have I Ever, Scruples, and Awkward Moment.

• We built a simple question-and-answer-based game to test that mechanic first. Then we slowly added in other elements and rules to the game, testing each one to see what worked and what didn’t. Initial iterations of the game were made of out paper/markers/sticky notes etc.

• Playtests were conducted with small groups. Some playtests were more interactive, where we would make changes to the rules during the game when things wouldn’t work. Other playtests were run as if we weren’t there so we could watch the game playout and then incorporate learnings after the fact.

Insights:

• Players need to feel in control of the questions they want or don’t want to answer

• Players want options to “pass” or “skip” when they aren’t comfortable answering a question

• Humor is important for helping players feel more at ease

Final Game Design

“Screwed is a NSFW game about sex, love, and screwing your friends.”

Key Takeaways

Game design shares many of the same processes and values as UX or human-centered design such as:

• Playtesting and Iterating: We learned not to spend too much time planning and designing before testing our ideas with users. We prototyped and iterated quickly to learn and make adjustments to our designs.

• Designing a feeling/experience: For each interaction in a game, we learned to ask ourselves - “what is the feeling we want players to experience?” and then we would design, test and iterate each interaction until we achieved that desired feeling. This learning translates to the design of any product, service, or experience - how do you want your user to feel and how can you achieve this feeling through your design?

• Stay centered on your values: With a team of 6 designers, we obviously encountered disagreements and differences of opinion. However, starting our work based on our shared values helped guide all our decisions and resolve any conflicts by returning to those values.