Found Shelter : Sky Children of the Light

Found Shelter Sky: Children of the Light

Seojin Jung 2019195162 Information Architecture

© 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2021 June 7th

DISCLAIMER

This look-book is a project done by undergraduate in Yonsei University. The content of this look-book is not an official publication by thatgamecompany. Research data was collected with consent and the study was only done for educational purposes.

© 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Ta b l e of Contents

•Introduction •Netnography Research •Heuristic Evaluation •Sky Community •Project Overview

© 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction Sky: Children of the Light is a mobile game that has built strong-founded community since its very beginning.

Throughout netnography research, the unique community of Sky was observed and analyzed, exploring its own characteristic culture and community values. In this look-book, we will explore the world of Sky: Children of the Light with its hueristic evaluation and Sky community. In the end, inspired from the special relation between Sky and Sky community, the creator aimed to design new feautres and services that would enrich social experience within the world of Sky.

© 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

© 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Netnography Research Netnography research was conducted over the community of Sky: Children of the Light.

Research aimed to collect and analyze data of social interactions and public conversations community members have on online community such as Discord, Twitter, Reddit, and Kakao open chat rooms for Korean users.

The ultimate goal was to understand the relations and effects community has with the game and users’ experience in game world. The research was done mainly through observation over any activity community members have, mostly in the official Discord server since it was the most active and resourceful platform. More data was collected through interviews.

From the data collected, analysis over Sky community and possible enhancements to be made to maximize users’ experience within Sky world in relation to social interactions was done. With those, project to design and create mockups of features that provide unique social experiences was proceeded.

Heuristic Evaluation Place-making One of the most unique factors This could mean that beginners of Sky often a b o u t S k y : C h i l d r e n o f t h e get lost while navigating through the maps Light is its unkindness. There and end up very confused with what their is no maps or straightforward next steps will be. Of course, there are ways directions the game provides to know their final destinations, but to reach to users. In the beginning, the that, players still have to spend considerable game simply introduces the basic time to get used to their surroundings and to game mechanics to the players finally understand their next steps. Whether and afterwards, it is all up to the this is a downside or not is totally up to you. players.

Those who love open-world exploration, this comes off as pleasant experience in a sense that players are give with freedom to decide their next steps and destinations. However, for other players who are very unfamiliar with open-world games, they are most likely to be confused and lost, eventually detering them from wanting to continue playing the game.

The most common way for players to navigate the game is to continue exploring the world while getting used to the visual implicaitons the maps provide. There will be unique, eye-catching, easy to remember landmakrs or objects for players to locate themselves.

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Sky offers a distinctly different game

What is interesting is that th

experience from other games with its

and social interactions with ot

aesthetically beautiful, serene graphics and its

perception to spaces in Sky wo

very slow-paced game flow. Amidst of these,

playing by yourself yesterday,

players either get to enjoy the world as places

most spaces you visited did not

or fail to achieve any significant experience in

emotionally memorable experi

most spaces.

you visit the same spaces with becomes whole another story.

he presense of other players

Sky has very well-developed social features

thers drastically affect players'

in its utmost details. Players are able to

orld. For example, if you were

have speical bonds and interactions with

y, you may have thought that

other players. They also get to enter new

t really leave any cognitively or

areas when they join forces. This is why the

ience for you. However, when

company and game constantly reminds

h other players, the experience

the players of other players' presense and encourage them to play together. © 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

ds

Heuristic Evaluation Consistency During the research phase, small group interview was conducted unscripted to understand the details and important elements from players' experience with Sky. The table at the bottom is an open code table with important factors and words many interviewees constantly mentioned. In summary, interviewees indulge themselves in the world of Sky mainly for healing experience where they get to build meanigful memories with other players. They highly emphasized on the strong bond they share with their Sky friends, which they said, it enriches and changes their experience in Sky world.

Consistency Currency

There are total five types of currency in Sky, which is relatively more than any other game with currency system. Mostly used currency is Candles, Hearts, and ascend candles which are the three at the top in the image above. Players can gain candles by collecting candle lights that are scattered across Sky world. The lgiths reset everyday and the maximum number of candles that can be collected per day is limited. Hearts can be earned through exchanges with friends. The one in the middle is ascend candles, which players can only earn in "Eye of Eden."

Consistency Friend System In Sky, when player befriends other player, they can unlock new social interactions in their "Friend Node." By unlocking one, more social interactions get opened for players.

Players have to spend certain amount of candles to unlock each social interaction and only one person has to pay the candles. The one who pays the candle requests to the other to unlock interactions, which the other player has to agree to accept. Interactions like hugs, high-fives, and chatting are provided to players. The higher your "Friend Node" is, closer you are with the player. Currency of Candles and Ascend Candles are required to fully unlock the "Friend Node." Exchange of Hearts is also one of the interactions, which is an essential to collect hearts.

Heuristic Evaluation Resilience

As it was mentioned in previous chapters, Sky is rather "unkind" to its players in terms of its guidance and explanation for them. Often, players are the one who have to actively seek out for information when they need one. In-game, players can learn new information by choosing the icon of question mark. Many players search information in online communities, especially in the official Discord server where they have a specific channel to ask questions to other users. The channel is always highly active, helping users to get answers very quickly. For other ways to gain information, players can simply follow around random players they encounter in-game or play with veteran players until they are fully familiar with the game. © 2017-2021 thatgamecompany, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Heuristic Evaluation Reduction The biggest complexity problem in Sky is the gesture menu. Players use gestures to express and communicate with others since chatting feature in Sky is unavailable for those who are not friends with each other. There are numerous gestures in Sky because players often have to engage in communication without actually using verbal words. However, the gesture menu Sky has at the moment is too unorganized, which delays players from finding the gesture they want to use right away, which interrupts the communication between players.

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S KY C O M M U N I T Y

Founding values and messages the game portrays convey virtues of friendship, harmony, and community through mutual respect and union. Interestingly, Sky communities reflect such values both in-game and in online communities. Especially in official community platform like Discord server managed by the company, it is extremely rare to find any kind of conflict and severe arguments between users including foul languages or lack of respect. It is both strangely unusual and fascinating at the same time to see users in online communities to be so prone to keep the community values and become the protectors themselves to maintain the community safe and sound for themselves and others.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

From weeks of communication and observation over community members of Sky, I decided to focus on user latent needs of my target audience in which they look for a “healing” experience in Sky. Many users have mentioned and shown that they are emotionally attached to the game because of the people they got to meet through Sky and memories they shared with them. In other words, Sky has become the second home for these kind of users in a sense. They have found shelter within the Sky world surrounded by its peaceful, serene, beautiful cinematic graphics, slow-paced gameplay, and friends - they get to escape the hectic reality they live in.

Considering all of these, the project focuses on key words of “escape from reality” and “meaningful social exchanges.” To help users achieve their need of “healing,” the project is about developing new social features ingame and some improvements on already existing elements as well.

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PROJECT OVERVIEW N E W S O C I A L G AT H E R I N G P L A C E

This area in "Hidden Forest" is an empty space after past seasonal event took place. After the event was finished, the space is rarely occupied or visited by players since there is nothing for players to do.

There are sometimes players who visit this space to have a place to talk with their friends without being interrupted. Considering how this space has been wasted for long time and its lack of significance it holds to the players, I chose this space to turn into a new social gathering place for players. In-game, when players want to chat with strangers, they have to befriend each other and unlock the chatting feature, which cost them Candles. Or either one of them has to possess Table item to be able to chat together. I thought this sometimes prevents meaningful social interactions from happening, so I wanted to offer a social gathering place for players where they do not have to spend any Candle or go through excessive steps just to talk with players they have not befriended.

I thought this current system sometimes prevents meaningful social interactions from happening, so I wanted to offer a social gathering place for players where they do not have to spend any Candle or go through excessive steps just to talk with players they have not befriended. Considering how this space is designed as a room, it is suitable to be a social gathering place with features like these: • In the room, all messages that are sent by players can be viewed by other players disregarding whether they have unlocked chatting feature.

• The players who are in the room will continue to stay in the same server even when servers combine.

• The benches do not require players to spend one Candle and there is no time limit.

PROJECT OVERVIEW V O I C E C H AT F E AT U R E

Many players who often play with their friends use Discord or other voice chatting apps to be able to talk with their friends while playing together. This is because in Sky, it is hard to type while players are navigating their characters. They have to stop their characters to type something in, which interrupts the gameplay. Even though many players use Discord for this reason, using DIscord also sometimes interrups the gameplay because since Discord is different application, players have to close Sky to begin voice chat in Discord and return to Sky. When players close Sky, the characters in-game automatically sit down on that spot and does not move until the players return. This is an inconvinience especially when you play with other players as they have to wait for each other to be back.

I wanted to include voice chat feature in-game so that players do not have to go through such inconvinience. Voice chat feature will be added to the top of "Friend Node" just like chatting feature. I decided to add it at the top because for most people, they are usually only comfortable verbally converse with others when they are close enough with them. Players have to spend 12 Candles to unlock Voice chat.Just like the original system of "Friend Node," only one player out of pair has to spend the required amount of Candles and the one who is paying is the one who is requesting. When player clicks the voice chat icon in "Friend Node," the game will show this pop-up screen to double-check, which is necessary since player is about to spend Candles. When player chooses yes, 12 Candles will be taken out from their possession and the other player will be able to agree or disagree to unlock the feature. If they disagree, 12 Candles return to player's possession.

© Icons made by Freepik & Kiranshastry from flaticon

PROJECT OVERVIEW V O I C E C H AT F E AT U R E

Once both players agree to unlock the voice chat, the feature opens in "Friend Node." Either player can start the voice chat with their friend by clicking it.

Players can block the voice chat feature if they no longer want to use it, which will disable from both players to start the voice chat even when only one person blocks it.

If more than two players wish to voice chat all together, every one of them has to have unlocked the voice chat with each other. For example, if there are three players, A,B, and C, A and B, A and C, B and C have to have voice chat unlocked for all three of them to be able to voice chat together. If only A and B and A and C have unlocked the feature, B will not be able to hear what C says, while they can hear what A says. From the perspective of the player, player will be able to see those who are having voice chat with them by the voice chat icon above their head and headphones. Voice chat can be manually ended by one of the participants. If one person gets transported with different server, the person can no longer participate in the voice chat. Players have to be in the same server to be able to voice chat together.

U S E R LO C AT I O N When players clicks the icon at the top left corner, players can switch the chat from friends to global and global to friends. Since there is no nickname system in Sky, participants in global chat will be randomly named as "Child_n". This is inspired from how players refer to themselves as children of the light from the game title. To prevent too many messages from one player and to still encourage players to befriend each other and unlock chatting, global chat only allows players to send one message in every 10 minutes. Only the participants in the same server can join the global chat. When player clicks a message from other player in global chat, the eye mark like the one on the right image will appear on the current location of sender of the message. This way, players can locate themselves through global chat.

PROJECT OVERVIEW G LO B A L C H AT F E AT U R E In Sky, players can only chat in certain ways: they have to be friends through QR code exchanges, they have to unlock the chat feature in Friend Node, they have to use Table items, or they have to find a bench and spend one Candle to chat in limited time. While this chat system is one of many things that makes Sky special, it still makes it difficult for players, especially the ones who just began to play and do not have proper information source.

To help players who are looking for groups or needs to ask questions, I designed global chat feature. New icons are added at the top of chat logs, which are icons of friends chat, global chat, and question mark for new players. When player is in friends chat, it is just like the current chat system in-game where players are only able to view messages from their friends who have unlocked the chatting.

PROJECT OVERVIEW GESTURE MENU IMPROVEMENTS

For the improvements on current gesture menu, I added favorite gesture feature, in which user can favorite maximum four gestures. This will help users from spending unnecessary time to locate the gesture especially when for ones they use more than other gestures. Additionally, the image above contains guestures and functions players most likely to use often. Currently, when player scroll down the gesture menu, those functions at the top also gets moved, which means they have to scroll back up everytime they use gestures. So I made the top part of the menu to stay in its place even when user scrolls down.

GESTURES REARRANGEMENT & C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N S Gestures are rearranged and orgznied into different categories: pointing to direction, expressing of opinion, emotions, greetings, jumping actions, dancing, and extra. I gathered gestures that are similar with each other in terms of its meaning together so it is easier for users to pick and choose approriate gesture faster and easier.

GESTURE MENU PROTOTYPE VIDEO

HYPERLINKS P R O J E C T B LO G L I N K