WTA-23: SETting the Example

Date: Saturday, January 7th, 2012, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (PST)

Attendees:
Anuradha, Ajay Balamurugadas, Bharani, Steveland Daniels, Robert Donahue, Shmuel Gershon, Michael Larsen, Gabriel Loo, Scott Seltzer, Wade Wachs, Eugenia Yakhnin, Susan Yin

The session today was based around playing the game of SET. We used two examples of the game to help familiarize the participants. The first game was a single player game, where the users has the ability to select six sets that were guaranteed to be in each section of cards. This was used as an opportunity to teach the game and give some understanding as to how sets are constructed. The 2nd site, and our area to test, was an online multi-play version of the game.

The session details are as follows:

The site we are testing is http://gamepixies.com/set/
This is a multi-player version of the game of SET, and there are rooms to join to set up games and play. There are spaces for Anonymous players, but to actually see who you are, you need an account, so create one. The mission is simple. Play it, explore it, break it .

From there, we took over a few of the game rooms and set up several games. We were able to spot a number of inconsistencies and some issues that needed to be addressed (incorrect sets being labeled as not scored because the user ran out of time, hitting the space bar repeatedly locking players out of the game indefinitely, scores not updating unless the users left the room and returned to it. There were also various different experiences bepending on the browser and the operating system being used by the participants.

Some of the participants felt that, while the first SET site gave players the ability to understand how to play the game, they felt that seeing that version of the game biased their opinion of the implementation of the multi-player version of the game. Note to self: next time, just one site.

Full transcript can be seen here.