Museum of Mechanics: Fishing (MoM:F)
OVERVIEW:
This project was a joint independent study conducted at UC Santa Cruz's Games and Playable Media Masters program. It was spearheaded by former Program Director Michael "MJ" John (Toys for Bob) and inspired by Johnnemann Nordhagen's interactive game: Museum of Mechanics - Lockpicking.
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The Goal:
The project goal was to create a digital museum where players could play and experience fishing mechanics across games history.
My Role:
I joined the project at its inception as a User Experience researcher and designer. I worked on this project for a total of 9 months, totaling 3 academic quarters. As part of the first class of students on this project, my work served as the foundation that following students built upon.
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What I Learned:
This was my first time working with other researchers on a shared group project. There was some team friction since we hadn't worked together before and we were dealing with Covid lockdown stress, and the experience taught me how to better communicate my thoughts with a team, how to properly advocate for myself and my ideas, and how to compromise when arguments arise.
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Leading this team also let me practice the time management skills I learned during my time on End of the Line: New Age, allowing me to me plan play sessions at times that worked best for my teammates. I also gained substantial experience with OBS and Zoom, as the pace of the program had me learn both on the fly for file sharing and archival purposes.
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I also experienced the joy of a successful group research project for the first time, which was amazing!
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I've listed my contributions in order of impact and skill demonstration below, but you can CLICK THE BUTTONS BELOW to travel to specific sections.
01 Heuristic Analysis
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)
Overview
I lead a close Heuristic Analysis into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) to explore how it's fishing system and mini game functioned, with the end goal of identifying how we could recreate it as an interactive exhibit.
The Legend of Zelda: Orcarina of Time
Heuristic Analysis Findings
​​​What I Did:
I organized and conducted a research study session alongside two other student researchers. I was responsible for coordinating the event between our classes, troubleshooting the proper apps and software to minimize any tech hiccups, and keeping our schedule to ensure we collected as much salient data as quickly as possible.
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Due to Covid quarantine this research was done remotely. We all communicated through Zoom, rotated control of the game via PARSEC, and recorded our video findings through a combination of OBS and Zoom, with the latter functioning as backups in case the OBS recording failed.
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During the session we noted specific details of the fishing mechanics, such as how the camera targeted fish, the behavior of different kinds of fish, how the camera and player turn radius changes when locked onto a fish, casting and reel speed, and more factors on a shared Google Sheets file. The completed file can be seen above.
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My Impact:
My work is currently serving as a guideline for future students working on the project and was instrumental in the program's recreation of this specific fishing minigame.
02 Heuristic Analysis
Black Bass Fishing: Close Analysis and Technical Design Doc
Overview
Black Bass Fishing was one of the first games we decided to recreate in the museum. I conducted a close Heuristic Research Analysis to explore the fishing mechanics present in Black Bass Fishing so our team and our programmers had a simple, easy to understand blueprint for the systems and mechanics they would be recreating.
Black Bass FIshing
Close Heuristic Analysis Design Doc
​​​What I Did:
I conducted a study of Black Bass Fishing alongside another programmer and researcher. I played through an online version of Black Bass Fishing and noting key details of the game, such as the pixel width of the main fishing area, the turn radius of the character controller, various fish behavior, the win screen presentation and text, and various other systems.
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We used our findings to create the technical design document above, which we then shared with the team.
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My Impact:
My findings and creation of this project helped the programmers understand the exact mechanics they would be recreating in black bass fishing, which guided production on that game for the following three academic quarters and ultimately shaped the final project. ​​
03 Pre-Production Research
Research Category Rubric
Overview
Early on in the project the team conducted research into fishing games across gaming history and consoles. I realized we were cataloging fishing games by console and release year, but we didn't have a criteria for sorting the fishing mechanics themselves. I brought this up to the project lead and created this metric for sorting our data.
Fishing Game Research
Database Rubric
​​​What I Did:
I created a rubric for sorting the fishing mechanics of all collected and future games in our archive. I did this by conducting a small heuristic analysis on the games we had logged up until that point, along with a few other games that were tentative additions to the archive.​​
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My Impact:
My research resulted in the sorting of the hundreds of fishing games we researched into 3 simple categories (Core, Side, and Micro Fishing Games) based on common systems and mechanics found in multiple games across several console generations. Details on this criteria can be read in the PDF above.
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My findings were instrumental in narrowing down our final project's scope, as we decided on researching on Core, Side and Micro game for the rest of the quarter, with the end goal of creating one of each for the final project. ​​​
04 Pre Production
Research Catalogue
Overview:
This was research I conducted in the early weeks of the project to create a browsable catalogue of fishing mechanics and fishing games across gaming history.
Fishing Game Research
Catalogued Games
​​What I Did:
I researched fishing systems and mechanics from games on the Nintendo Wii, PC, and multiple VR consoles by finding online guides, Lets Plays, and reviews; and cataloged all my findings on a shared spreadsheet.
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My Impact: ​
My research helped paint the initial picture of fishing games across gaming history. This, combined with the metric I created, was instrumental in narrowing the focus of the original project, and led us to deciding the final games we wanted to recreate. ​​
05 Additonal Design Docs
Golden Path
Overview:
Once we were more certain about the game's design and key features, I wrote a wireframe for a user "Golden Path" - basically how we believed the average user would explore the Museum.
MoM Design Doc
Golden Path
​​​What I Did:
I created a detailed description of how the end user would play through the Museum, with the end goal of solidifying key game elements and clearing out confusion and miscommunication across the development teams. This involved me tracking down design ideas scattered across several meeting notes, and a handful of meeitngs with the project lead.
My Impact:
My work resulted in reduced team confusion, clarified several details of the project that were still nebulous, and helped unify the design vision in its early stages. It was instrumental in helping us get our bearings before we started researching specific games.
06 Additional Design Docs:
Research Display Wireframe
Overview
This was another doc I created a few weeks into the project, after we had gathered a substantial ammount of fishing game information. This doc was meant ot convey how we would present this data in the game, specifically as a wireframe of an exhibit plaque.
MoM Wireframe
Museum Display Plaque
​​​What I Did:
I created a wireframe for how our research would be presented in game, based on the idea of a museum information plaque. I focused on giving context to the specific mechanic's history by highlighting the core game loop, the development studio, any key engineers if their names were available, and the game's influence on in the history of fishing games.
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My Impact:
My work is currently serving as a guideline for future students working on the project.
