Development and evaluation of the collaborative three-player game ZooBreak based on game-design theory

Sammanfattning

Video games are an important part of society, providing leisure, social connections,and improved problem solving skills. Video games have traditionally focused oncompetition, but there is a growing demand for collaboration: games where playerswork together towards a shared goal. This thesis looks at the design challenges of collaborative play between three players. A player count of three adds more complexitycompared to two-player games and remains mostly un-explored in existing research.The purpose of this project is to analyze collaborative game design for three players using a research-through-design approach. An original game titled ZooBreakwas developed, building on a theoretical foundation of game design patterns. Thegame’s levels are based around several collaborative game patterns, notably asymmetric roles, concurrency, and asymmetric information. The game was evaluatedthrough playtesting, where qualitative data is gathered via direct observations andsemi-structured interviews with participants. A thematic analysis of the data showshow different design choices affect communication and collaboration. The studythen concludes that the implementation of asymmetric roles and concurrency arehighly effective for engaging three players, while other patterns, such as separationgates, should be used with caution to avoid player frustration. These findings offer design recommendations for the future development of three-player collaborativevideo games.