The Journey by iA.IID

The Journey SEOJIN JUNG | 2021-2

CONTEXT MAPPING IID

s t n e t Con 5

INTRODUCTION

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THE GOAL OF STUDY THE GAME WORLD AND COMMUNITY

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SAMPLING METHODS

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DATA GATHERING

THE SESSION

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TOOLKIT DESIGN

DATA ANALYSIS: IMMERSION

CONCEPTUALIZATION

CLOSING

INTRODUCTION

Context Mapping

The Journey THE JOURNEY - SKY: CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT

photo credit: Thatgamecompany

The Journey - Sky: Children of the Light is a continuous research project from “Found Shelter- Sky: Children of the Light” porject. For the previous project, the main focus was to understand general experience within the game world of Sky and what kind of role the community has in that context. For this project, The Journey, main focus is to understand the gaming experience context of specific target group from the community, which is the group of veteran players. This project aims to understand the context and narratives behind veteran players from their experience with the game. Specifically, the project focuses on the seasonal events of Sky, which are the most major gaming content and events that the company hosts regularly. Through seasonal events, usually new areas, maps, items, and stories are added, which offer new experience for veteran players who are already accustomed and experienced with existing in-game materials. Acknowledging such importance of seasonal events in target group’s gaming context, the project mostly aims to understand the context behind veteran players’ exeperience with seasonal events in terms of their expectations, likes, dislikes, improvements, and references to their past experience. In this booklet, we will be discussing and showcasing the entire process of the project and deliverables made through the context mapping process.

The Journey

THE GOAL OF STUDY

THE GOAL OF S TUDY The study aims to understand the context of veteran Sky players’ experience within the world of Sky, specifically focused on their past experience with seasonal events. For which, important elements of seasonal events like newly added areas, maps, items, characters, and narratives will be mainly discussed and studied with the cooperartion from participants recruited based on certain criteria. The criteria is purely to judge if 6

Context Mapping

V E T E R A N S K Y P L AY E R S The criteria of veteran players was decided based on the project conductor’s subjective judgement based on their previous experience with both the game community and the game itself. However, the criteria was still carefully decided to make it as applicable as possible.

S T U DY TA R G E T G R O U P The study will target a focus group of veteran Sky players, in which the term “veteran” is defined based on the fact whether they have reached particular stages in game.

STUDY MAIN FOCUS The main focus of the study will be seasonal events in Sky and the impacts it has in terms of veteran players’ general experience throughout their time.

the participants are veteran players and also to make sure the study data will be genderly neutral. However, it is important to note that all of the participants came from Korean Sky community, which, even though Sky community as a whole has their own unique culture, the data may still be culturally biased.

S T U DY F I N A L D E S T I N AT I O N With understanding such context behind veteran players’ experience with seasonal events, the project eventually aims to design its own seasonal event with the participants as a team.

The Journey

GAME WORLD In the world of Sky: Children of the Light, there are core values that constantly appear in the game indirectly. Examples of those values are friendship and unity. Throughout the open world with beautiful graphics, players get to explore and experience in an ethereal envioronment. The world of Sky has background story that penetrates the entire gameplay as a whole, but players are free to play in whichever they want as the story does not affect the playthrough. In fact, the game never kindly explains the universe they have built in terms of narratives, so it is also a part of players’ freedom to explore and learn about the world of Sky and its hidden story followed by valuable messages. The maps in Sky represent different stage of life of a person; Sky tries to offer this beautiful portraiture of our real world while emphasizing important values we should never forget.

Context Mapping

COMMUNITY Online community of Sky is one of the most unique one may come across in game community. Due to the game’s distinct characterstics of open world game where cooperation between players is essential to solve certain puzzles or access hidden areas, communication is very important in Sky for both the online community and in-game. The methods of communication in Sky is very different from other game in terms of its limitation of words; players normally use incomprehensible noise and gestures to communicate with others rather than typing in actual words. This makes the communication happening from game sometimes more meaningful and memorable. These unique interactions from in-game experience transcend themselves to building of online community, resulting in this strongly founded, individualized with its own culture, and yet so diverse community.

The Journey

TO OLKIT DESIGN

Toolkit Design

FOR GROUP SESSION

Context Mapping

For the second session, participants discussed and explored their ideas about new seasonal event they designed as a team. From the perspectives of veteran players who each has certain level of affection to the game and from their past experiences with seasonal events already held in Sky, participants tried to think of their own season, which they aimed for it to provide a new, refreshing, and enjoyable experience for veteran players who are already very familiar to the level of boredom with

existing game materials of Sky. Toolkit was designed as guiding cards to work as both instructions when needed and inspirations to help more fluent discussion among the participants. Based on the secondary research conducted prior to the session and the data gathered from the first session, the cards were designed to show important elements and features to consider when designing new seasonal event. The cards each represent three major element to be considered when designing a season: backgrounds, items, and map. For the backgrounds, it covers theme of the season, new characters to be added and their roles, and general

story of the season, which should not be too far off from the already built universe of Sky world. Additional to the toolkit cards, participants were also provided with images to be used as visual triggers and inspirations at the same time. Toolkit caards were aslo distributed to the participants earlier than the session to give them more time to think over their ideation.

The Journey

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Context Mapping

s d o h t e m

For sampling methods, the project adopted both opportunity sampling and purposive sampling. Participants were recruited from Korean Sky community, which has 40 active members who regularly play Sky. The community is also where the project conductor is a member of, giving better access and opportunity to directly recruit suitable participants based on conductor’s judgements.

Purposive sampling was adopted since it was important for the participants to meet certain criteria as the project already had its target group of veteran players. To enhance communication among the participants, participants under the criteria of age in between 20 to 35 and current situation of residing in Korea were recruited. The gender ratio was also considered to be neutral.

FOCUS GROUP STUDY For research purposes, the conductor had to arbitrarily decide the definition of veteran players. To do this, simple observation and study on longer played users from online communities and in-game were conducted.

SECONDARY RESEARCH To understand the difference in context between veteran players and other players, observation and research were mainly done through online communities like official Sky Discord server and YouTube comments sections. S E A S O N M A P A N A LY S I S For better assessment of seasonal events and better design during the session, quick observation and analysis based on the data were made in the map of “Village of Dreams,” which is a new map added during the Season of Dreams.

Data Gathering

GROUP INTERVIEW SESSION Before the session with toolkit, participants gathered for an hour long discussion about their experience with past seasonal events. This session was also a part of immersion.

The Journey

THE SESSION

Context Mapping

n o i ss e S The 1 2 3 4 5

The session took place in in-game area where there are table and chairs objects for proper setting; the mood was considered as well for coziness. During the session, participants communicated through mainly Discord voicechat, but Discord server chat and Sky in-game chat were also used sometimes. There were total 7 participants: 5 originally recruited, 2 randomly joined in the last half of the session, resulting in provision of new perspectives. Participants first shared their initial ideas that they prepared before the session and later on, they picked one idea to develop following the toolkit cards. During the session, participants were encouraged to send any image they think is relevant to the discussion, which were later gathered together for conceptualization.

The Journey

DATA ANALYSIS

Immersion on Miro Board For the first session in which immersion event also took place, responses and data from the discussion were organized into visual display on Miro board. the images include screenshots taken by the participants during past seasonal events, photos they think that are relevant to the discussions, and additional images the conductor acquired during secondary research. With the visual display of the data, important analysis was made: By looking at the Miro board as its whole, it visually conveys general degree of participants’ interests towards certain seasons; for example, when comparing the Season of Dreams with Season of Assembly in terms of the data gathered, it is safe to assume that participants did not show equal amount of interests or recollections coming from their past experiences. It is also worth-mentioning that the visual display portrays grounding mood and atmosphere of the game itself throughout the time. The board also shows some elements that constantly reappeared in participants’ discussion: mentions of story, narratives, cosmetic items, and maps were constantly brought up by the participants, giving clear directions of where to start for the second session when they designed their own seasonal event.

Conceptu

MOODB

ualization

BOARD

CONCEPTUALIZ ATION

Sketches Rough sketches were made to visualize cosmetic concepts and ideas brought up during the session. For the cosemtics, the key elements are to convey the formality and elegance of orchestra theme and having modern look to it for something new that has not been tried in Sky yet. The instrument items were also chosen in consideration of avoiding already existing instruments while also considering its unison when played in harmony.

Context Mapping

Concept Illustrati on

The Journey

CONCEPTUALIZ ATION

Season of Harmony Mockup Trailer It will be the most magical melody you have ever heard

Context Mapping

The Journey

Context Mapping

g n i s o l C

As someone who has been playing Sky for long time with great attachment, it is always refreshing and inspiring to indulge myself into learning more about the community, people, and the game itself. Especially for this project, it was my first time recruiting participants to design something as a team. I think the experience definitely opened up a new perspective for me in terms of design research. It was also very enjoyable for me to be able to actively communicate with various types of user from community that I have studied a lot from and it was pleasantly surprising how sincere players can be when it comes to improving the game they feel attached to.

u o y k n a h T CREDITS

Especially for Sky community, it feels different and unique compared to other game communities in a sense that members are sharing this communal interests to keep the online space safe and sound for everyone and making sure that players are able to enjoy the game as it is. Due to this, hearing so much from the perspectives of players who have been within the Sky community for long time was very educational and provided the project such in-depth, rich resources. Lastly, I sincerly hope for the community to thrive by maintaining its core values and active communication between the members.

1 . To all participants who helped throughout the project 2 . All rights reserved for Thatgamecompany; none from this booklet is official publication from the company 3 . Credits and thanks to Sky: Children of the Light Wiki for photos, Thatgamecompany for in-game screenshots, thatskyfox for referential video, and issuu for the inDesign template

The Journey

The Journey PROJECT BLOG LINK PROJECT MIRO BOARD LINK

CONTEXT MAPPING IID