Play and Analyze a Game

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Due: before class on January 26, 2009

10 Points - Design

Contents

Overview

Your assignment is to play a game and evaluate its "user interface." You may choose any type of game, played in any medium. You will present the game and your evaluation of it through at most five slides to a group of your classmates during section. Identify at least 3 features of the game interface that make it easy to play and at least 1 feature of the game that could be improved to make it easier to play.

Project Requirements

The goal of this assignment is to get you to think critically about user interfaces and specifically the user interfaces for games. We have not yet introduced you to any formal means of evaluating user interfaces, so it is up to you to decide how to evaluate the interface for the game that you select.

As mentioned in the overview, you may choose any game in any medium. For example, you can choose a video game, a traditional board game played through a computer in an online setting, a traditional board game played using physical pieces, etc. We suggest that you pick your game carefully, to ensure that you can find both negative and positive aspects to its "interface". Traditional card games played with physical cards might not be a very good choice, for example, because you may find difficulty generating enough commentary on the interface.

You will describe your results by creating 5 sketches, each on one side of a standard 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. The five sketches must include:

  • A sketch describing the game and how it is played
  • 3 sketches describing positive aspects of the game's user interface
  • A sketch describing a negative aspect of the game's user interface

You must scan or take digital pictures of each of your sketches and link them to the wiki before class on Monday, January 26.

You must also bring your original sketches to your section on the week of January 26.

You will present your sketches describing the game and your analysis of it to a small group of your classmates in section. The section TA may select a few presentations to be given to the entire section.

Note: Your sketches must adequately describe the game and the positives/negatives that you found with the interface, as these slides will be viewed by the instructors without the benefit of seeing your presentation. For Writing Service Help just link to paper writers, professional writers will provide you with an original custom papers for any topic you specify.

Grading

Your assignment will be graded using the guidelines that follow:

Sketches (6 pts)

You receive 2 pts for your sketch of the game, and 1 pt each for identifying 3 positive aspects of the design and 1 negative aspect of the design.

Quality of the Analysis (2 pts)

The quality of your analysis of the interface will be subjectively evaluated by the instructors. Full points will be given to assignments that have clearly demonstrated effort in thinking critically and deeply about the design of the game user interface.

Quality of the Sketches (2 pts)

The sketches will be evaluated on the basis of how well the game and the analysis of the game interface is presented. We will not be evaluating your ability to draw, but rather what you chose to draw. This will be evaluated by the instructors without the benefit of seeing your verbal presentation, so be sure your sketches are sufficiently descriptive on their own.

Submission

Creating a Wiki Page for this assignment

Begin by creating a new wiki page for this assignment. Go to your user page that you created when you made your account. You can get to it by typing the following URL into your browser:

http://vis.berkeley.edu/courses/cs160-sp09/wiki/index.php/User:FirstName_LastName

Replace FirstName and LastName with your real first and last names. This will take you to the page you created for yourself when you created your wiki account. If you have trouble accessing this page, please check that you created your wiki account properly.

Edit your user page to add a link to a new wiki page for this assignment. The wiki syntax should look like this:

[[PlayAGame-FirstNameLastName|Play and Analyze a Game]]

Again replace FirstName and LastName with your name. Look at Jeff's user page for an example. Then click on the link and enter the information for your assignment.

Uploading Images

To upload images to the wiki, first create a link for the image of the form [[Image:image_name.jpg]] (replacing image_name.jpg with a unique image name for use by the server). This will create a link you can follow that will then allow you to upload the image. Alternatively, you can use the "Upload file" link in the toolbox to upload the image first, and then subsequently create a link to it on your wiki page.

Add Link to Your Finished Assignment

One you are finished editing the page, add a link to it here with your full name as the link text. The wiki syntax will look like this: *[[PlayAGame-FirstNameLastName|FirstName LastName]]. Hit the edit button for this section to see how I created the link for my name.

Linked Submissions


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