The poker game I am working on is basically texas hold em but with a twist: you must cheat in order to win! I'll admit that I'm not the first to this idea here. Some of you may know a very similar game titled "Texas Cheat 'Em". I haven't seen anything similar yet on iOS devices, and I thought it would be nice to see a game like that. The original idea was to make a plain old poker game; but with focus on multiplayer features. It was going to be focused on allowing several friends to get together and be able to play poker on their phones with each other without the need for a deck of cards and chips.
I may be getting a bit too far ahead here when I say this, but I am looking to possibly keep that multiplayer feature on top of the cheating factor of this game into it. I'm not sure how well or if it will even work out well. Just tossing it out there.
The game itself will be rather simple. In a typical offline game, the user will start by selecting 3 cheats. Cheats will include things such as: stealing another players chips, swapping cards with a random one from the deck, or changing community cards. I may make the entire list of cheats available in the future, but I won't for now.
Continuing onto the second portion of this post, I'm going to talk about the human-computer interaction of the game. It is based on the content discussed by professor Lennart Nacke in his video lecture found here.
When I started designing the game (and I'm still designing it now), I thought a lot about Scrabble for iOS. One feature I really loved was that for people with multiple iPods / iPhones and an iPad, the iPad can be turned into a board; which made the game more fun. I won't talk too much about that, but for those interested, you can find some more information here. I for one think it's an innovative way to make use of the iPad and think it could work out as well for my poker game. The iPad could serve as the table to display the community cards and other information while players' individual hands are displayed on their iPhones and iPods. Doing so could allow me to take advantage of some of the sensors on those devices. For example, the player could double-tap the screen to check; or they could do a flicking motion with the phone to fold.
After going through the video lecture, I've started thinking about how user-friendly the game would be. To be honest I'm not entirely sure it will even be user friendly. Although the game is basically texas hold em, and it is likely most people already know the rules, I'm not sure whether or not some of the phone motions will be easy to use and meaningful. I will probably try some of these motions in an early prototype in order to see whether or not they work out. Keep reading and I'll be sure to talk about that once I've done some testing on that.
When considering the 5 factors of usability, I think the game meets most of these evaluation criteria or will not have a hard time meeting them.
1. Time to Learn: Most people have played texas hold em already and are familiar with the rules. Those that aren't can always go online and easily find loads of resources and rules (not that I won't be providing instructions in game). The cheating component is not as complex as in Texas Cheat 'Em, where there were mini-games that served as challenges to determine whether or not the player was successful in cheating. Given the iPhone and iPod's small screen size, I think doing so will ruin the overall experience of the game. I've decided to keep it simple. The players' 3 chosen cheats are displayed on screen, and the players are able to tap a button and use their cheat when it is their turn. Below is a rough image to show what I am talking about:
2. Speed of Performance: I imagine that for many people their first couple of games might take a while as they are still trying to grab onto the ropes and learn how the game works. Once they understand how poker works and how the cheating element works, they simply select their cheat on the right side; no mini-game required.
3. Rate of Errors: As with many games, there are always situations where users are making mistakes and input the wrong action. Whether it is selecting the wrong cheat or not making the right call for the hand (fold, bet, check, raise, etc.) because the device did not register their action correctly, only time will tell. I will need to do some more testing on this in order to know what and where users are making their errors and how I can make the game better.
4. User Retention: Given that the game is fairly simple to pick up and play (assuming the player has a good grasp of the basic rules of poker), I believe the cheating element is what will be keeping the players coming back for more. Most often we see poker games that focus on social features or having a very realistic gambling experience and what not, but again, there really hasn't been anything quite like this for mobile devices yet.
5. User satisfaction: As the game will be available on the app store, I will most likely take advantage of the reviews people are putting there, along with online reviews, as well as adding an in-game feature to contact me to give feedback on the game. These will give me the information I need to know about whether or not I did my job right and made a fun game. Until then this blog and any comments I get will be the point-of-interaction I have with potential players for this game.
As for the game's usability, I imagine that players of all ages shouldn't have major issues with the game. Although it may take a while to understand the game and how it works, I think I've kept the game simple by having the cheat buttons available on the side so that they are readily available. I am trying to keep the interface as clean as possible so that every element on the screen makes sense and has a meaningful purpose for being on the screen. The only thing I am uncertain of again, is the user motions. Users will have to go through the instructions to learn them all, however, I will strive to make those motions meaningful so that users don't need to constantly go back and review what the gestures and motions are because they forgot.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be finishing up the design document for this game. Hopefully I will be able to get a prototype up and running quickly so that I can use that to test out features and do some usability testing. In the meantime, feel free to give me suggestions or comments about what you think.
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