Narrative Design Process: A Reflection

I am a fairly confident writer and earned an English minor in undergrad; so when I approached this assignment, I naïvely wondered “What could be so hard about putting together a little story for a game?” A lot. Actually, a whole lot.

The Process

I was fairly comfortable with ideation techniques and refinement. I’ve taken the rapid development class and also use iterative processes at work, so that was great background for this activity. Using the resources we were given to generate story ideas was helpful! Playing Rapid Fire was fun, but the Idea Cards technique left me confused, and after a few tries I gave up on that one. In the end I combined what I had from Rapid Fire with the What If Scenarios that highlighted training needs at work.

Figure 1. Freytag's Pyramid story arc

Planning the story was a matter of art imitating life. We’ve recently had several new hires at work, and training customer service personnel for the small e-commerce meal delivery company I work for seemed like a good fit for this game.

Initially I had the wrong idea, or maybe it was the right idea but the wrong approach. On my first take, I'd planned to allow

players to view live materials outside the game, then have them advance through the game with their new knowledge. This isn’t a terrible idea, but the effect was more that of a fun quiz rather than a learning game. Even if the objectives are the same, the path to achieve those objectives in a game is likely less direct than it would be in a module-type quiz.

The Product

Revisions

Based on further reflection and solid feedback from my gaming guide, I am making quite a few revisions to my first draft. When I initially set up my game, it was less of a ‘game’ and more of a ‘look-over-these-materials-and-take-this-quiz-disguised-as-a-game.’ So! Back to the drawing board! In this second iteration, I have narrowed the scope of the game. While it’s true the game is still part of the onboarding process for new customer service team members, it’s now primarily focused on a specific topic of product-knowledge acquisition and secondarily on why this information matters, as well as how a given scenario may play out within the context of speaking with customers. There are two levels of gameplay. Returing voicemails is a lower level because the learner has more notice of the topic the customer wants help with, and a little more time to think before responding. Taking inbound calls is faster paced and more challenging. I’ve begun revamping from true/false type questions into better/best risk-reward decisions that (hopefully) cause the player to think more deeply and allow them to advance with more agency and greater nuance. (For example, instead of the NPC customer asking “I’m gluten free and need a low sodium diet. Is this plan a good fit for me?” they might ask “I’m gluten free and need a low sodium diet. How would this plan work for for me?”) Additionally, it’s also my intent to strengthen the role of NPC ‘customers’ and ‘co-worker’ to be more present, offering feedback to indicate a win-state (or not)! After our Twine workshop, I’m also giving a lot more thought to where I can re-use content in the game without redundancy, to both to streamline and to prevent content bloat.

Mager Learning Objectives

As alluded to in the above paragraph, objectives have been streamlined into two parts: building or deepening product knowledge and garnering awareness of how presenting information to a customer impacts their decision making. Looking at this from Mager’s perspective, it would sound like this:

Learning Objective 1: New CS Team members [audience] will accurately describe the company’s value propositions [behavior] using ‘the company website,’ ‘social media posts’ and ‘help from a co-worker,’ as needed [condition], with 80% accuracy by ‘the end of the day’ [degree].

*Accuracy is pass/fail and measured by a thumbs’ up from the NPC co-worker. The ‘end of the day’ is the game’s conclusion.

Learning Objective 2: New CS Team members [audience] will address customer concerns to the callers’ satisfaction [behavior] in at least five voice mails or inbound calls [condition] and earn a 4-5 star rating by the ‘end of the day’ [degree].

*Customers offer a star rating immediately after the call ends based on accuracy. The ‘end of the day’ is the game’s conclusion.

Gameplay and Story Arc

CompanyName is a a small e-commerce firm that crafts high-quality, fully prepared and macro-balanced meals, shipped directly to customers’ doorsteps. This full-service meal delivery company has been in business for 15 years, serving customers who want or need the convenience of restaurant quality entrees free of gluten and soy. Meals are made with clean whole foods and premium proteins. No seed oils are used, and menu options never contain artificial ingredients or preservatives. Price per meal is similar to the cost of fast casual dining and price isn’t an impediment to long-term customers.

Because the business is doing well and growing, the company needs to hire some new customer service team members. Your background seemed like a good fit, so you applied. Congratulations, Alex— you got the job! As a new hire at CompanyName, you need to get up to speed quickly to start taking customer calls! (Figure 1.) Here’s a refresh on what the job entails:

• Deliver above and beyond customer service through phone, email, live chat and social media.
• Answer customer calls and reply to email inquiries in a fast-paced environment.
• Actively sell and promote CompanyName products and services through new and existing sales channels.
• Develop positive relationships and handle customers' specific needs.
• Assist with identifying creative ways to improve customer relationships.
• Communicate with appropriate team regarding last minute customer requests.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

It’s 8:50am, and you just sat down at your desk in the office for your second day at on the job. Waiting for your trainer to arrive, you decide to log in to the customer service portal. Your new manager hurries over and introduces herself. “It seems a few of our CS Team members are out today! Can you jump in and help us get some customers handled? Just look over our website and social media so you’re ready to get going… our phones start ringing at 9:00am!” You feel a little nervous, but they obviously trust you. Would you rather work through some voicemails that came in last night, or do you feel ready to try taking some calls? These customer have a lot of questions. Are you able to keep your cool and find them the answer they need? Do you put them on hold and ask your trainer for some help? Or do you risk try answering while you re-read the website? Are they a good fit for this meal service or will they hang up unsatisfied? You’d like to earn a five star rating from all your customers, and you don’t want to distract your trainer from taking his own calls any more than necessary. Can you do it?

• Beginning:
• Exposition: Getting hired
• Conflict: Needing to help immediately
• Middle: 
• Rising Action: Choosing easy/VM or hard/Inbound Calls
• Climax: Answering questions
• End: 
• Falling Action: Day is winding down
• Resolution: one of two (or three or four?)endings

Types of Information or Learning Materials

Figure 2. Sample CS Team resource

Learning materials to be made available to the player in the game Food for Thought will include access to selected “pages” on the CompanyName’s website— likely the home page, the meal picker page, and the FAQs. Additionally there are plans to include access to a social media page with company issued responses to customers’ posted questions. For the purpose of the game, pages will be curated abstractions of reality, although very similar in tone and style to the company’s actual site. It would also be nice to include a count-up timer in the game so the player has some sense of how long they’re working on a call, both because the phones at desks in the company office have a call duration timer and because we all know customers appreciate accuracy and speed. Figure 2 is a sample homepage similar to one that could be used in gameplay. Players/learners also need to be presented with a log of voicemails and access to a phone, so they’re able to take calls live.

Decision Types

The More interesting decision type is primarily Risk/Reward. Players must decide whether to return voicemails (where they know the general topic but it’s harder to earn a five star rating) or take live calls (with the chance for higher ratings but more uncertainty about what the customer might ask). Less interesting decision types will include Blind decision types (initially) and also perhaps some Hobson’s Choices.

It makes sense to me that the game could have a few different endings. One ending stems from an almost immediate Handcuffing decision: “Take calls when I’ve been here for A DAY? No thanks. I quit.” A second ending and the best case win-state is “Congrats— you’re ready to handle calls on your own tomorrow!” Achieving the high customer service score needed to do this is what Bartle would call an Achiever player-type (Kapp, 2012). A third ending based on slightly lower customer ratings could be "Nice work! Tomorrow we’ll dive in to more training calls!” And if I wanted to appeal to those who exhibit a Killer player-type, I could also end the game with “We’re not sure this job is a good fit for you. We may need to revisit your future with CompanyName.”

Conclusion

I’m wiling to suspend disbelief in my current novice state and cause myself to remember this is a learning experience and I don’t have to know how to do all the things on my first go-round. I'm looking forward to peer feedback, although I don't yet have any to report from either the first or this second iteration. While I'm working to build the basic functionality of this narrative game in Twine, I am curious about what I need to learn to make the game engine reflect the type of star-rating point tallying and phone call timers that I'm imagining. I enjoy learning new things. I don’t enjoy that I can’t immediately and fully process those new things into a finished product. Repeating this game storming and narratology process for future games will be easier. Practical experience and a connected skillset is one of the differences that separates novices from experts. And while I certainly won’t be expert as I put together a second and third game, learning— just like gamestorming— is an iterative process.

References

Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: Game-based methods and strategies for training and education. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.