3.4 On the Question of Impact: Evaluating Jocoi

Abstract

How can a game about grief be evaluated? What should be the ‘impact’ of play? This chapter discusses playtesting, and what playing Jocoi with the bereaved can mean for the future design of games about grief. The chapter is structured into three parts, each of which addresses a step within the iterative development process. When it comes to the first prototype, our main concern was whether players understood what actions are possible in the game. This concern can be split into questions of usability and user experience (UX). While usability asks for functionality, whether “players can use the controls and make the game progress” (Fullerton 2008: 270), UX tests whether the intended play experience occurs (Bargas-Avila/Hornbæk 2011). The latter is necessarily elusive and vague: Did Jocoi evoke a sense of mother-child bonding and subsequent loss in our players? Based on early player feedback, we devised a second iteration of Jocoi which was part of a cultural probe package (Gaver et al. 1999) which the women received to evaluate their involvement in the project. As a method carried out mid-term, the cultural probe package was intended to provide inspiration for refining the game feel1. Although functionality remained a concern, we focused more directly on the women’s