BearRoom is a digital board game platform made by my friends and me. We set out to create a platform where people could access all their favorite games in one place, while preserving the special-something that make these games fun in the first place: connecting with the people you play with, face-to-face.
At a glance
Designing and testing the game instruction experience for BearRoom
This case study focuses on our approach to designing the way people learn how to play new games on BearRoom. With our first game ready (an adaptation of Sushi GO!) we needed to create a tutorial that would guide people through the learning process.
Timeline
4 weeks for research, design, and testing
My Role
Research, design, prototyping, testing, and keeping our team in the loop with learnings.
Team
Just me this time!
Process
Research, and gathering inspiration
Creating a prototype
Designing the test
Conducting the test
Data analysis, and revisions
Before we begin…
How do BearRoom games work?
Imagine you and a friend are playing a game of Monopoly. Except, instead of a physical board, you’re both looking at a digital board, displayed on a tablet, or a TV. And instead of having all of your property cards and money in front of you, you’re each holding a phone, with those cards displayed on the screen.
This is the format we used for our adaptation of Sushi GO! (If you’re familiar with Jackbox Games, this is very similar.)
Monopoly board game
Monopoly, in BearRoom
The instruction experience was a unique opportunity for us to innovate, and improve upon the traditional board game experience.
The challenge would be to teach people how to play a completely new game, in an unfamiliar format.
First, I started looking for inspiration: what are some ways that games are taught, and what aspects might contribute to them being more or less effective?
1. Research, and gathering inspiration
Use the left and right arrows for a break-down of the examples I looked at:
Comparing game instruction methods. It seemed like in-depth manuals and visual demos by themselves were not enough to create a thorough, yet engaging learning experience. There needed to be both aspects, along with a way for players to practice in a realistic game environment.
1. Sushi GO! paper manual. The depth of the paper manual make it a great resource for players who need to clear up confusions while they play. However, this depth also makes for a less-than ideal tool for those who want to learn the game from scratch. On its own, the manual is a great reference, but a poor tutorial.
2. Sushi GO! App tutorial. I liked how this tutorial was embedded in the game environment, and carefully explains the specific touch-screen interactions (e.g. "press and hold".) However, there was still a bit of text overload, with less supporting visuals than it could have had - as well as the inability to move backward in case you skipped too quickly.
3. Having a friend teach you the game. On the learners' side, this is great in a ton of ways - having a knowledgable teacher to answer your questions means you don't have to spend effort looking things up. However, the experience is heavily dependent on who is teaching, (and whether they're willing to take on the extra work). Sadly, we can't depend on always having an expert in the room whenever we want to learn a game.
4. YouTube tutorials. This is a more accessible version of the expert friend who can quickly give you a demo of the game, with the added bonus that it can be replayed indefinitely. One flaw is that in YouTube's format, it's difficult to search for specific information. YouTube videos are great as a tutorial, alongside a manual for when you need to reference specifics.
5. "Learn as you play" tutorials. When thinking of great learning experiences, Mario Party mini games immediately came to my mind. These games have simple controls and goals by design, but I love how they provide infinite practice rounds to familiarize yourself with the controls before playing for stakes. It's engaging because you get to play a game, while also solidifying the rules in your mind.
2. Creating a prototype
It seemed like an effective learning experience had a few key, moving parts:
The manual, or a comprehensive guidebook that that could be referenced for clarifying rules, understanding roles, etc.
A demonstration, where players can see the setup, the key interactions in the game, and understand what a turn consists of.
An opportunity to practice, where players can play without worrying about penalties, and solidify their understanding.
Taking inspiration from the most (and least) effective aspects of each instruction method, I started creating different prototypes.
Use the left and right arrows to view both prototype samples:
Prototype 1: A live demo, where participants would be guided through specific actions on their phone tutorial, while I simulate the response on the shared laptop screen, Wizard of Oz style. This prototype was intended to prime players on how the game would function on our platform.
Prototype 2: A condensed version of the manual, intended to be used by players to reference in-depth explanations. By representing scoring using visuals, and minimizing the amount of text shown at a time, I hypothesized that this would allow players to understand the rules just as well as the manual, but with less fatigue.
3. Designing the test
We started out this research effort with the intention of figuring out: How do we teach people how to play this game as painlessly as possible?
However, one issue I kept running into was feeling like the prototype wasn’t quite ready to be tested yet.
Looking back, there was still a lot I didn’t know about how people experience learning a new board game. I realized that rather than trying to bring out the most perfect prototype we could think up, this situation might be most valuable in showing us how people manage to learn a game…especially when the tools provided aren’t enough. By observing what people look for out of necessity, we could learn a lot about what is fundamental to learning a game.
It seemed like we had to scale back our original question. What we really needed to know, is How do people learn how to play board games?
4. Conducting the test
For testing, I recruited participants from a student organization I was a part of, with one criteria: people who hadn’t played Sushi GO! previously.
I got to speak with 8 different people—provided with either Sushi GO’s original game manual, or the instructional prototypes we created, I observed what they did in order to learn the game.
4. Data analysis, and revisions
I learned a lot of valuable things about how people viewed the board game instruction experience. Many people shared that learning a game was by far the most difficult part about playing board games, and some even avoided them because of it.
Summary:
No singular instructional method seemed to win out in terms of experience, but in the end, all 8 participants relied on all three methods to learn the game on their own. For most, the rules didn’t truly set in until they actually played the game.
There was unanimous praise for the the “cheat sheet” on the back of the original Sushi GO! game manual, for being easy to reference while they played.
Those provided with only the manual and demo prototype felt as though they didn’t provide the full picture of the game. We ended up providing these members the original manual, as a temporary solution.
Most people seemed to prefer…
…the original manual when starting from zero knowledge of the game…
…the demo prototype to understand how the game worked on the BearRoom platform…
…and the “cheat sheet” to reference while they were actually playing the game.
Reflections and revisions
Knowing now that I needed to strengthen my foundational understanding of how people learn to play games before prototyping an experience of my own, if I were to run this study again, I would take a more hands-off approach and observe what kinds of information people seek out if they are tasked with learning a game on their own.
The “cheat sheet” was one aspect of game instruction I completely overlooked, yet was probably praised the highest. They’re a common tool in games, but I never truly appreciated the supporting role they play. While my perception of a tutorial was shaped by siloed, individual experiences like watching YouTube tutorials or reading a game manual, learning is never just a single interaction—it’s an ongoing relationship, taking different forms depending on what people need in each phase of their learning.