There are 3 major playtest during development. First is the demo level playtest. The second one is the cutscenes, the third one is complete version.

First playtest, I found 6 playtesters to play my game, the opinion varies greatly. My partner said that she hate to rate in the game. And she suggested to add some transition level like rating between little animals and human to start with. And that become the idea of tutorial level later. The major problem is about the UI. Although I set the canvas at 1920X1080 resolution. But 2 playtest participants including my course leader said that it does not show correctly in their computer. Furthermore, there are questions about input system, dialog box and some minor programming problems.

For the UI problem, I have to say that my knowledge about canvas in Unity is quite weak after months. As a result, I have some tutorials about the pivot and anchor in Unity. And it took me a whole day on adjusting and playtesting to fix it. I put all the elements from the background to canvas, makes the game happen only on UI level (except for the dice). And then reassign each elements’ anchor, pivot and position to eliminate problems. Gladly to say that it is fixed without any bug.

The second playtest is the minor one, only to test the narrative design. I put the intro and ending cutscene to see whether players understand the story. Fortunately they are aware of what is going on this time. And then I discussed the ending design with my course leader Prof. David King.

The last playtest, also the biggest one, is the feedback of the complete version of my game. One thing to celebrate is that no sudden bug occurred during the test. Almost all participant thought that this is a complete game rather than a prototype. But more opinion about narrative and feedback have been mentioned.

The most critical one is raised by my course leader. He said that there are inappropriate content in level 2 and level 5. I misused words to describe mental health and misuse a history figure to express myself. Actually as a non-native speaker, making a game that contains sensitive content is stressful. I don’t know about the boundary where players would feel offended.

Each level has some chance of offending some groups of players so it’s rather hard to filter inappropriate content. Luckily playtest is the most efficient way to cross out the errors. What my course leader said is really helpful and touching – to learn about sensitive content in a second language is even tougher. So I can only pay more attention on the words used and history mentioned.

At a higher level, I have discussed feelings with many playtesters. Some of them are a little confused but surprisingly some of them are fully aware of what I am trying to express. And even more, one playtester told me something I did not think about. He said it does not matter who kill the protagonist in the end, it’s all karma and it is inevitable. That’s why I can later explain the idea better with other playtesters. And about the ending, David and I discussed a lot by splitting players into different endings that they like. It is important for me to stand a point but it is also important for them to choose a side. And that’s why I insist on making another ending after submission.

Thanks again, for all the playtesters. You are the reason that I make the game.

Lets start with the first level. The upper group have 2 subjects consist of a sick one and a life-saving one. As clearly stated in tutorial level, average score is 5, but I did not tell players what average’s definition is. For sick one I would rate as 4, he had a contagious disease and will infect others. For the lifesaving one, considering he saved hundreds of lives, I would go with 7. And in lower group there are a subject with rich family. She is a student and an instagram influencer. I would go for 5 or 6. The level is for tutorial as well, the description are clear – sick, good and the beauty.

Then level 2, a classic variant of the trolley problem – 1 versus 5. But now it’s a poor 1 with educated 5. I let the gap become broader than before. For utilitarian they should rate as system asked. But for players who refuse to go like this, this will be their first try to manipulate the system. Rate 5 subject low when they are actually valuable to human society.

Level 3, also a classic problem – will the player save their kin? Sister versus two strangers. In this level I will always choose my sister even though I created the situation. Because I do have a little sister in reality and I don’t want her to receive any kinds of damage, even in a game. You can say that I fail the test.

As a conclusion, I gave players 3 health points in the beginning, and for some players, the first 3 levels are all they can get. So it is selected from all 6. First tutorial, second and third classic. That’s my plan for the first three levels.

Lets go with level 4, It is a classic criminal case happened in 19^th century in England. It is called Mignonette Ship 1884 or R v Dudley and Stephens. The press would call it Cannibalism at sea: the starving Victorian sailors who ate a cabin boy. Did 2 starving man with family ate a sick boy a crime? That is highly debated among centuries. Consent, justice and many other views are thriving through the case. So I put it in levels: will you sacrifice a boy to save the other two with family?

Level 5 is the one who raise player as a god. They will choose whether to kill a will-be father of a serial killer in the future. That is simply player’s choice that I would not judge.

Level 6 is my favorite. Player will choose whether to end Sisyphus’s endless work or keep on with it. For hitting by the car the concept, it would better to use Prometheus as his liver was eaten and reborn every day. But I prefer Sisyphus’s because endless and meaningless work seems more tragic than physical pain. I wonder whether player would end a god’s pain by killing another innocent. In future development, Sisyphus might lure player to do so by supplying items or resources or to persuade players to kill him and save the mortal. Either can be possible.

For the difficulty design, I left it all with the time limit. Even though health points can also be a way to make the game harder but I wish player to see the first three level even they choose hard mode.

After the demo level the first thing I would do is the ending. Because it is a game of irony, I have to give a clear ending to state a point with players. The ending also have a clear view even before the development. The ending have a clear point that Karma will come. For those who judged people and took them as simply numbers will be judged and rated as well. When the rating person is about to be rated and discarded, that would be the reward and irony for utilitarian supporters.

Yeah for me, I cannot stand taking people as numbers and ignore their human rights. Once I thought it could learn to a new Nazi it would scare me like hell. So I put player all the way through the horrible rating to witness the end – main character was killed in the same way he kill others subjects with lower total score.

So let’s talk about the endscene. I build up a city view to demonstrate that player have finished all the test and head back home. The core part is to distract players’ attention, making them forget about the test and then surprise them. So the view start with a simple one – player walking on the street with cars drive by.

And later he will find the familiar road he came from was blocked. So he have to go another way.

Then the view changed with a strange view: like the road in the tests but another view. And traffic lights are broken to build up the tension. Then the camera zoom in with the out-of-control car and music changed.

Finally the familiar view with familiar information display. Player would know that our main character himself, is under rating by unknown power right now. 0 score shows him doom day. Crash. The end.

And the tricky part is how to let player know that the car is hitting him as well as players in front of the screen. So I have to prepare an intro level to collect their personal information. So the end scene will be more powerful that it shows their personal information in the end.

I used a Auto-Driving Simulation System Test Contract as a way to collect their name and age, for usage in endscene.

Technically, I use Unity timeline as a tool to design and build intro and end scenes. It is a professional tool for cutscenes in games. Clear timeline panel will show development when and where will happen what. Very useful tool.

After the cutscenes, I have to add a tutorial level to further introduce the system and build up the game world. The key is to tell players how to use it and what score should they rate for each subject.

Here I used Tutorial Master 2 in Unity Asset Store, also a very useful tool to show popups and arrows illustrating every function. Also I added some code on my scripts to make sure the system works smoothly with my own.

Develop Route

The game start with the prototype level. I break down the level with 2 major parts: Upper for the road and lower for the panel.

The road consist of multiple parts – the car that out of control, 2 different victim groups, score board and time and health point indicator. Above all that I start with the simplest one: build up the road. From the assets I found many tiles representing the road. But what should a road look like near the traffic light? A common sense now becomes a problem. I search for images for roads and make one eventually. The road are divided by a solid line to tell the players that they have 2 choices in the level. And the car is guided by dotted line. And all line meet with zebra crossing in the end, where I’ll put subjects.

Then the car’s animation are also a problem that I wish to make a brake marks in the end. But it did not go well and there are no clear tutorial on specific questions like this. So I have to compromise. I used the simplest animation driven only by scripts that the car will go straight towards targets. Normally it is the end of the road, and occasionally it is the upper group.

In building up the tension, I use the DoTween plugin to control the car’s speed. I wish to leave the impression that in the beginning of the level, player would notice that the car is moving fast. And then they will get busy reading documents and leave scores. So I set the car start fast and end in slow speed.

Now let’s have a look at the lower panel that show information. The portrait panel have actually only one valid info – the subject’s gender. But it doesn’t matter because it does not affect the final answer. Then why it have 1/3 space? I wish players to look into each subject’s eyes when they make decisions. That make player believe that all subjects are real and looking at you when you rate them. The impression can raise player’s consciousness about what they are doing – judge people with their life at stake.

Thanks Tomat for the Face generator program, In his blog he allowed developer to use this to generate random profile and mention him in credits. His work really helps me with faces and names of each subject. Many thanks to him and there is his blog:https://www.tamats.com/blog/?p=814

Then is the middle and largest panel, information panel. It convey the most dense level of information but still rather simple – name, age, job and external description. Age, job and description will directly affect the answer. In the next devlog I will introduce this as the level design part. Lastly there’s assessment panel.

Then there are interaction section between two parts – subject groups and total score slot.

The basic procedure is like this: player click on a certain subject, the panel shows his personal information and then player rate him or her. Final step is to add up all scores and shows it in the proper slot. Describe this are simple, but to achieve it is quite hard for me at the very start.

After days and days of programming and learning C# in Unity. I accomplished all functions need above and the first version of layout are like this.

Then the first challenge comes up: Textbox. The FMP is a text-heavy game that almost all the settings and plots will show in text. So I want that when textbox is on, all other stuff will stop and wait for its end. That stumped and frustrated me very much. I don’t know how to do it and not sure which function will suit all my demands. I don’t want to crash my codes all over in the future. Then all I can do is to think while scanning all tutorial related.

The answer narrows down to a function called Coroutine in unity. For Unity it only support single thread running. If developers want to let some function running and others to stop without setting the timescale to zero, they will use Coroutine. And thank god it can help with almost every aspect with my FMP, and later on I learn from various tutorials to get a better understanding. I googled a lot and all its APIs, it works. And that’s basically how the first prototype begin.

Part 1 A Reign-like prototype failed

For my final major project, I wish to attract players into moral choices without long story and triple-A scenes. So what I can do is modify some scene from reality and raise player’s empathy.

For moral dilemma, a common sense is that both decisions are in the middle area of right and wrong. And the only restraint is that players cannot choose both. First, I refer some rules from Moral Machine made by MIT media lab, which set some non-typical trolley problem situation and collect answers from participants.

They adjust the situation from an unstoppable trolley to a brake-failing driverless car. And two option contains crushing into elder people group and kittens. Participants of Moral Machine can also see the comparison of their choices among average to get a better understanding of their ethical thinking process.

In the beginning I wish to start a prototype like Reign, which the players will perform as a king and to balance 4 kinds of power by either-or questions. The game is easy to get started by sliding left or right like the mobile apps. But to be a good king is rather hard. I really like the idea and the either-or structure is similar. But the problem is designing the 4 key indicators within the game.

I tried introducing a media system into the trolley problem, which will immediately respond to players’ choices by media comments. So the indicators can be representatives from different groups like child-care, animal-care, antiracism, and maybe other groups.

But things start to get tricky. If players try to maintain balance between groups, then the game will not be a moral question, because player will be criticized anyway. All they have to think is which group they can screw around and which cannot. It’s not about choosing between lives but more like avoiding or avenging media. So far, I cannot think of a good mechanism based on Reign and I have to give up this one.

Part 2 A satirical game prototype.

Last time during the lecture I shared something about witnessing the player’s choices. With them knowing that one group have their friends or loved ones, will they stick to their original stand? That might be like a questionnaire game that can help player knowing who they are but I am still not satisfied. Personally, the walking simulator without a good story is not that attractive to me.

But unfortunately, the idea have already been made by a developer, and the game is called Dr. Trolley’s Problem. The idea is to test all variant of classic trolley problem and see the percentage of each choices. It contains almost all classic moral questions and each problem is displayed by a level.

Also there are other trolley problem-related game is under development. One that interest me is the one who had a utilitarian mode. The word, utilitarian reminds me of what people will do facing the trolley problem. They will compare that 5 life outweigh 1. What if we can make it with more detail, will players compare like this?

So the prototype start to form up. As MIT Media lab shows, if more details are presented to participants, they will have inclination like intend to save younger subjects. So what if we boost that inclination and make the rate in public?

That’s basic idea for the FMP in early stage.

Deconstructing the Game Structure.

I would say that the idea of irony in my project is properly conveyed. More than half of my playtest participants have the feeling that “rating people are horrible” and most of them are satisfied with the ending design.

(Spoiler Alert)The idea in the project, according to the first devlog(), have changed several times. First I want players to choose their attitude towards moral dilemmas and raise their ethical thinking and reflection. But the original plan failed due to “strategy” aspect over “moral” aspect. I am afraid that the game can be played as a puzzle game that only have one solution. On that, I would say the game will not suit as morally notable game.

Luckily the third plan worked out. I will choose a side first for players. And in later level design, I could say that the idea is to raise their conscientiousness and feel loth about the action “rating”. They will face their kin in the test, and some famous cases in history. In the end, for different players like total utilitarian or just game completer, they will all see the outcome of the people who rating others like numbers. The ending design, at the very moment when I finished the last scene, are designing itself. I got goose bumps after completing the ending. Not that the ending is designed well or have elaborate mechanism, it’s just telling me the idea worked out!

Other aspect I would say went well with the project is the path of learning new knowledge. Not only my Unity developing skills and C# programming improved, but also every aspect of the game itself. Through programming, I found more content can be added and therefore more narrative and mechanism raised in my head. In the beginning, I keep telling myself that the time is limited, even learning from all past projects that I started early this time, I know that the scale can be unacceptable if I cannot manage it. The plan is to finish the game with endings and complete mechanism. With that in mind, I start collecting Unity skills that the project need.

It is really frustrating at the beginning. There are loads of functions that I would like to program but I don’t know how. I stuck on a very simple thing: how to stop other functions when the textbox is going on? The details can be found in former devlog(). The procedure of learning is difficult but when all outcomes piled up in front of you, I would be lying if I say that I am not proud. Looking back, the help of many Youtube channels and tutorial makers on Bilibili (Youtube-like website in China) are critical to me. Even there are many ways of accomplishing a function, they could help me find a proper way out.

The aspects during developing that I am not satisfied are 3. The overall visual aesthetic design, the sound effect and limited total number of ending. I’ll skip the third one because I will make another ending after submission.

For the visual aesthetic design, I used pixel art as my projects in the past. Because I know the idea is innovative enough for me and I cannot afford another innovation on art design. Most of the scenes and items (UI, characters and other stuff) are assets from Unity asset store. For me I almost went through assets store every day to make sure I didn’t miss anything useful. In project, there are 9 or 10 different asset package from various artist. On that, the art design can only be tolerant but not that consistent as from one artist all along. Luckily the style of pixel art is suitable enough for this kind of development. So the game in the end seems quite consistent.

And more VFX shall be used considering lots of details. In one level of choosing whether to kill Adolf Hitler’s father, it would be much more comprehensible if there is a nostalgia filter showing that we travelled back through time. Due to lack of time and experience in VFX, I gave up that design which would be one of my regrets.

The second part is the use of audio. I’ve learnt my lessons during the past development experiences that I added certain sound effect in hitting the button and character talking and walking. And the ending’s background music can contrast the atmosphere beyond expectation. The lack of audio design is still one thing that I think can be improved. The main levels are almost silent and it could be explained as some design. But I would say that I did not have the time choosing an appropriate music so silence is my choice. Good music and audio design will help build up game world. For that I would describe my project as only acceptable in audio design.

If there were more time, I would systematically learn about shaders and other VFX content in Unity. I would find a pixel art artist to customize my asset even it will cost a lot. And I will spend more time on find the proper audio asset and consider it as an essential part in making a game.

In future plan, I would added 2 more endings in my game. For now it only has an ending for utilitarian, not moral players who refuse to rate at all. This ending will be added before final exhibition. And one more ending for players who enjoy total random, which are also originated from thoughts that we have no rights on judging people, the ending will also be decided by random. Not practical schedule for this ending but the overall design was finished.

Furthermore, the panel design within levels can also be improved in coming version. More levels will be added including more forms of moral dilemma. I would like to develop an “Inspect” skill to player to tell whether each subject is lying or not. And thus one or two more resources will be add into the game, completing the reward feedback.

If time can be repeated, I would spent less time worrying about the technical obstacles and study more possible functions for my game. Unless projects in the past, I spend enough time in Final Major Project this time, and the outcome is satisfying for me, as my players feel the same as myself or even more after playing my game. So there are not much regret this time.

Thesis are really helping me about developing the game. I stated an opinion that every moral related game has an ethical framework consist of level of morality, moral dilemmas and reward system. I start designing the game by putting players in a low level of morality. In which system that can rate people’s value and sacrifice the group with lower total score, I would say the level of morality in my game are quite low. And the idea is to make players discomfort with it.

In moral dilemma design, I choose cases from history and came up with some of my own. In reward system which I did not fully explore in my game, I used the only resources in my game – health points as a reward. They will survive the test by doing the wrong thing – rating people. What game system teach them are wrong and the reward system reminds them of it. But further design can be implemented as players’ feedback should be in more forms.

Playthrough and Victory&Ending:

Defeat:

At the contrast, policy card system in Civ6 is not as important as book of law system in Frostpunk. It can help you form your empire but will be less immersive.

For some of those who are eager to debate me about the conclusion above, please hear me out. Civ6 is a great piece of art that can be played as long as possible. The One More Turn and the sun goes up meme is not just a joke.

In Civ, player will face too much information than other 4X simulation games. So sometimes you have to do some subtraction to keep the game in hand. People are happy to talk about Communism and Fascists, but in games that have huge content, it have to be a simple line of description. If Firaxis games are expanding each single civilization and government into details, the game will be too huge to play.

So for players, choosing Five-Year Plan does not mean that you are with your comrades building the country, it will only bring 100% bonuses in Campus and Industrial Zone. It might be disappointing to some players, but for a greater cause, it has to be this way.

But all things above might require a better judgment than fully restore a situation like child labor. Extracting key elements is even harder than showing all to players.

So for those developers who are designing a game with huge strategic content, Firaxis games have showed the way to face with decision making system – as short and clear as possible. Player will sometimes get confused if one minor part was expanded into a long story.

In analyzing the developing path and reading the player comments, we will see that the topic of child labor vs child shelter is wildly discussed. Player can draw conclusions from various perspectives. One that impress me the most is that, child labor is known through the game as a primitive and illegal labor structure to all players. No one is arguing about this.

Lets talk back to the system and explain it a little bit. In the beginning of Frostpunk, player can choose policy to implement through the Book of Law system. There are 6 choices that you can make to start with. There are an interval between one and the next decision, so player have to choose the sequence carefully. One major route is whether the community use child labor.

For this branch, players can choose child labor (safe jobs) to boost production or they can build a shelter for children. For the sake of productivity, child labor is way better than shelter, which will cost precious resources and opportunity for decision making. But child labor is forbidden worldwide and each player knows it.

So here comes the first question: in a surviving game, is morality still the standard for what’s good or not? Different players have complete opposite views. One who act as a god, will not care about individual’s welfare but the surviving of the whole city. But those who act as a part of the community, will hate depriving human rights. Every player has to become a policy evaluation expert in Frostpunk, keep analyzing the pros and cons of the implementation of a policy.

And the developer took a step further. In choosing child labor (safe job), players can later choose the child labor (all jobs) which will bring child mortality. And people will lose hope greatly. Sadly, in reality, those child who work from a very young age have no chance to choose “safe jobs”. They are born to face all jobs. Child mortality and malnutrition is the direct consequence. The two step policy making show the full view of child labor situation in the past. And they divided it by the type of jobs are smart. Defining the child labor by the job type is also a key element to discuss. Working in parents’ farmland is not child labor but in factory, it is. But defining it is not that easy, in parents’ farmland can also have abolition and vise versa. The developer must have done their research in this field to divide it by the jobs’ fatality.

For the opposite, if players choose the shelter for child, they can later choose to train and educate children into junior apprentices. It will bring even more boost on the production than child labor but in a later stage of the game. In fact the major solution for child labor is education for all. When a kid will receive education regardless the race, age or financial situation, there are no room for child labor anymore. Now most of modern countries have the compulsory education system, thanks to god.

The four choice reflect a lot, but there are more choices to make in Frostpunk, making its gaming experience different for players. To me, the child labor is the lesser evil in the game (there are choice to be a dictator and use people as human battery), but once you took the step, the game will accuse you in its ending. Is survival worth it no matter the cost? It is the final question the developer asked to each player.

In conclusion, as a game developer we can choose to dive deep into a historic event with details as 11 bit studios do. Not just child labor, but also the reason of its occurrence, the outcome and how to avoid it. Combination of all can make a decision making system more creditable for players. It can also raise attentions to certain topics, player are happy to discuss it when it is well arranged into the game.

The two cases I choose for research is 11 bit studios’ Froskpunk and Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. Reasons for the choice and each games’ attributes will be listed below.

Frostpunk(11 bit studios, 2018)

Attributes:

• Post-apocalypse survival game
• Community and construction simulation
• Resource management
• Policy making

In the world of a post-apocalypse freezing surroundings, player have to help construct both the city and community. As a governor and a god to the city, players can choose to sacrifice the welfare of the citizens and children in return of higher productivity. Or players can care more about their people but it might lead to the death of all. The point that I admire the most in Frostpunk is its creditability of decision outcomes. Player can force workers to work overtime and ignore their need for medical help. But in that situation, player must become a full dictator to avoid being overturned.

During the research, I will focus on a policy which player will interact with at the very beginning – child labor policy. It has two different route and two more branches that follows. Learning from child labor situation in reality and its origin and outcome, we can witness how 11 bit studios refer to child labor progression and policy intervention to develop its creditability.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (Firaxis Games, 2015)

Attributes:

• Turn-based strategy game
• Lead a historic civilization to ruin all enemies
• Engage with past and present technological advances, social system and heritage of history
• Policy card system simplified historical events and policies.

Civilization series, often simply referred as Civ, is a video game series that need no introduction. As the newest iteration, Civ6 added a brand new policy card system, which allow players to choose their own developing path. Due to the size of its content, we will focus only on this system.

Policy card system simplified many historical events, represent the new incarnation of social policies. All cards are divided into four types: Military, Economic, Diplomatic and Wildcard. Instead of extracting from one policy in Frostpunk, Civ6 choose to simplified all the policies into one or two clear effect that will change the game immediately. Though some policies like “Five-Year Plan”, which originated from the Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plan, is too much simplified as 100% bonuses on 2 different zones, the system are still have great readability and good for decision making. This bring up another route of developing a decision making system in video games. Subtracting extra description and effect, let only its most distinct attribute shine.