a University project by [ Nebulaware ] group

promoted by [ PONG ]

[ PC ] [ Mac ]

Archibots is a MMO game that lies its foundation in player cooperation, resource management and space exploration. Players embody small robots sent into outer space to terraform alien planets, in order to make them suitable for human life. Players will need to cooperate to gather resources and build structure, according to given quests, to change the surface of each planet, paving the way for the upcoming human arrival.

> Character and structure customization;

> Collaborative construction and resource gathering;

> Automatic quest generation system;

> Achievements.

This was a student project aimed to design a MMO game, and was partly implemented in a playable prototype.

I contributed to the project as a Game Designer, UI Designer and Gameplay programmer.

Archibots was designed and developed during the Online Game Design course in the University of Milan. Instructions were to design a Massively Multiplayer Online game with a persistent world where players could meet, interact, and somehow change their surroundings. We ended up with a concept where cooperation and mutual aid were part of the core experience; we wanted players to feel free to express themselves by generating content that may enrich the game world.

Most of my efforts in terms of game design were to define a consistent game objective that could foster collaboration among players without turning down personal fun, exploration, or expectation towards a clear goal. To do so, we designed a flexible game rooms system, where each player is able to create her own Worlds (i.e. a game instance) and manage its join policy (whether allowing every player to visit it or restricting access solely to friends). Each World is provided with a so-called “Quest”, a randomly-generated list of structures and facilities that players need to build, being a collective objective for each planet visitor. Quests, as mentioned early, need to be completed to allow the arrival of human fleet, which is the ultimate goal for each game instance.

Since cooperation was one of our main user goals, the team spent a lot of time designing and polishing procedures and patterns related to player-to-player interactions. While basical mechanics and dynamics require the presence of two or more characters to work, additional procedures were added to extend players possibilities of play (such as healing injuried robots or requiring assistance to gather some resource types).

The game was also designed to contain a customization system to modify physical features of both characters and structures, allowing players to express their tastes while feeling more involved with their in-game assets (which appeared different and, therefore, more personal).

UI were swiftly designed in the most direct and simple way, since there was no time to iterate or to produce different proposals for user testing. Being a prototype, our goal was to show all information rather than to focus on User Experience, which was a task somehow outside the project scope.

The team I worked with:

[ Andrea Scambia ]. Game designer, UI designer and Gameplay programmer.

[ Eraldo Zanon ]. Software engineer and Server programmer.

[ Francesco Alessandrini ]. 3D Artist.

[ Roberto Giordano ]. 3D Artist.

The original prototype was useful to test core mechanics and features feasibility, and allowed the team to collect some feedback on both gameplay and User Experience.

Since the game could be enhanced and polished under many perspectives, I recently designed a new look for Archibots main user interfaces. Menus, game lobbies, configuration screens and gameplay UI were redesigned to foster a better UX, thanks to an updated benchmark (which included newer and more successful titles).

This task was made solely as a personal exercise and the result was not implemented in the game.

The [ Lens of Essential Experience ] and the [ Lens of Cooperation ] are the best suited to describe the main issues faced during the design process.