Embedded Files
Are You Locked In?
Mentality for Gamers
About
This project is a scenario-based eLearning training module on esports mentality practices to inform esports players of how specific mentality practices can affect the outcomes of their games. The goal is to help players develop an understanding of pre-game, midgame, and postgame practices in order to improve their teamwork and individual player resiliency.
Audience: Next2Nu esports players
Responsibilities: Meet with stakeholders, conducting a needs analysis, instructional design, eLearning development, graphic design, implementation of product, and evaluation of efficacy with stakeholders
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Camtasia, ChatGPT, Powerpoint, Figma, Mindmeister, Google Docs
The Problem
Next2Nu esports, a Rocket League organization, expressed that their players were entering games distracted, failing to communicate and refocus mid game, and failing to debrief after games. As a result, players were not working cohesively and costing the teams wins. This was costing the organization money, and lessening their chances for high-ranking sponsorships, as well as reducing the likelihood of qualifying for events with large prize pools.
The Solution
After analysis with the subject matter experts, who included the owners and an esports mentality coach, I offered a few solutions, including a scenario-based eLearning module that would give players an overview of what a pre-game, midgame, and post game practice could look like. I proposed this solution because I found that the players were lacking knowledge of what pre/mid/post game practices were, as well as lacking skill as to how to implement them. The owners expressed concern that a training that was “homework”, or a direct knowledge transfer, would not engage players and therefore not impart any new knowledge to them. I recommended scenario-based training in order to engage players in the process of practicing the desired skills in a low-consequence situation.
Outcome
The desired outcome was to engage players in the process of developing a pre-game, mid-game, post-game, and post-series mentality practice to improve mentality and team morale. At this point, we are still in the process of piloting this module and collecting feedback. Some early take-aways of the pilot results included a promising start with 2 players stated they felt engaged, 4/5 likely to implement the behavior, 5/5 clear in its instructions, and they found the animations and feedback engaging. Some future iterations we are considering include re-analyzing the performance probelms while including more players in the process. This was offered as an idea in order to create more autonomy for the players to create their own practices.
My Process
I used the action mapping process with the Next2Nu owners, who acted as the Subject Matter Experts for the project. I used an action map in conjunction with meeting the SMEs to identify the weaknesses in their players, while also high-priority actions they hoped their players would demonstrate after training. I then used a text-based storyboard that led the learners toward the different pathways seen on the action map, designed visual mockups, developed a prototype, received feedback, delivered the product, and helped the Next2Nu owners implement it with their team.
Action Map
To identify the focus of the eLearning simulation, I worked with the organization’s owners. I conducted several informational interviews to understand the performance problems the organization was facing. Through this process, we identified a combination of a lack of skills and a lack of knowledge of pre game/midgame/post game practices as the main issues. During this process, I highlighted the desired outcome of a behavior change, rather than a knowledge transfer. Using the information of what the organization was looking for, we focused on the desired actions that could be easily identified by the owners. We identified the 3 highest priority actions and broke those actions up into smaller steps. Finally, we used MindMeister to create a visual representation of the action map, of which a portion is shown below.
Text-based Storyboard
The action map served as a blueprint for the text-based storyboard. I used the three highest priority actions from the action map while writing the immersive scenario, with the highest priority actions serving as the correct answer choices, and the common mistakes as the distractor questions. The highest priority actions fell into three categories: pregame practices, midgame practices, and post game debrief. Those categories included deep breathing exercises, game visualization, establishing a plan with teammates, positive feedback to teammates, accountability of mistakes, postgame review, and future goal setting. Other actions from the action map became contextual pieces for the scenario consequences. Throughout this process, the SMEs helped me identify what real-life consequences players would face based on the choices they made. Those questions and consequences became the story that drove the scenario. We used the successive approximation method (SAM) wherein I created a first draft of a scenario, the SMEs offered feedback, I made necessary changes, and we continued that process until we had the desired product.
We cultivated the mentor character using the action map to identify which actions the players needed information on. Throughout the scenario, the mentor character offered information on the new skills that the organization wanted to impart on their players. This approach stemmed from Cathy Moore’s (Map It, 2017), wherein she suggests that learning is both more meaningful and memorable when there is some productive struggle involved. By asking the players to solve real-life problems with potential solutions offered, we both recognize and utilize the prior knowledge they have, as well as offer them a sense of agency over their learning. Instead of pushing information, we allow learners to pull information in context and apply it immediately.
Once the style choices were solidified, I moved on creating wireframes and mockups of my slides. I used ChatGPT, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Freepik, and Canva to create a visually cohesive prototype of my slides. I created many of my visuals using a combination of ChatGPT, Freepik, and Photoshop. After creating a few different backgrounds to work with, I focused on the main templates of slides including the opening slides, prompts, questions, and mentor slides. By mocking up the slides and reviewing them with the stakeholders, we agreed on the visual layouts and flow of the project prior to proceeding with the interactive prototype.
Visual Mockups
After the text-based storyboard was approved, I created a mood board using Figma. I pulled screenshots, logos, fonts, and colors from the Rocket League website and the Next2Nu brand in order to create a visually appealing learning experience that would appeal to the intended audience. I organized the images into rough categories of the different assets we would need, such as typography, backgrounds, and characters. Using Adobe Photoshop, the Next2Nu owners and I created a custom car to act as the mentor “character” that reflected the schema of the Next2Nu brand. I discussed the mood board with the stakeholders, and from there, created a style guide that would serve the template for the style of the project.
Once the style choices were solidified, I moved on creating wireframes and mockups of my slides. I used ChatGPT, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Freepik, and Canva to create a visually cohesive prototype of my slides. I created many of my visuals using a combination of ChatGPT, Freepik, and Photoshop. After creating a few different backgrounds to work with, I focused on the main templates of slides including the opening slides, prompts, questions, and mentor slides. By mocking up the slides and reviewing them with the stakeholders, we agreed on the visual layouts and flow of the project prior to proceeding with the interactive prototype.
Mood Board
Mockups Sample
Interactive Prototype
Once I had the slides visually designed and the text-based storyboard approved by the company, I moved onto creating an interactive prototype in Articulate Storyline. This included several slides including the introduction through the first question. I sent that draft to the stakeholders and we met several times about changes we needed to make. Through that process, we further developed some of the visuals as we identified that there were repetitive slides. We also iterated on wording, feedback, and visual design. As we worked through the slides, I used more of Articulate’s features to create an immersive experience for the learner. We wanted to demonstrate to the learner both what their choices might look like, as well as the potential consequences of those choices.
The suggestions given by the mentor character were deliberately open-ended as we wanted the learner to look at many possibilities in their choices. This would allow the learner more agency in making their choices. Other additions we included in this process were a text-to-speech accessibility feature, and allowing the learner to self-select when they wanted to move onto future slides. Both decisions were made with the variable reading abilities of learners in mind.
Full Development
I developed the final project in Articulate Storyline using the storyboard and the custom visuals. Once the learner completes the scenario experience, there is an automatic email sent to the organization’s email.
Key Features
Custom Visuals: I used a combination of ChatGPT and Adobe Photoshop to create the visuals for this project. In order to create an immersive experience that was both in line with the organizations' brand and a gaming aesthetic, I iterated on different prompts for ChatGPT until I found ones that yielded the results I was looking for. I looked for photo-realistic AI generated images that resembled the visual aesthetic of the Rocket League cars. I was careful to keep the branding in line with the Next2Nu organization while creating an experience that would resonate with Rocket League players. That decision was made with the possibility of future mentality modules that were owned by Next2Nu, but were geared toward different video games.
Adobe Photoshop allowed me to edit the images to suit the exact needs of the project. I used Camtasia to create an introduction video that seamlessly transitions into the introduction slide. I designed that video to be captivating and exciting, in hopes that it would immerse the learner in the experience.
Auditory Feedback: I included automatic auditory feedback for a correct or incorrect answer. This mimicked the immediate auditory feedback of a video game and offered a multi-modal piece of feedback for the learner. Multimodal feedback is a key tenant of Universal Design for Learning.
Visual Feedback: With each decision made, the learner also gets visual feedback. That feedback includes the actions of their consequences. The visual feedback was meant to represent what actions learners could take and demonstrate possible outcomes of those decisions. Rather than a straightforward correct or incorrect answer, this type of feedback allowed the learner to see possible actions with possible consequences. I used this model in order to help the learner generate their own mental schema of what their pre-game, mid-game, post-game, and post-series actions could be. The choices also allowed the learner practice with the desired behaviors, such as when the scenario demonstrates square breathing. Having practice with a visual offered a multi-modal experience of the desired behaviors.
Mentor: The inclusion of a mentor character was to increase a sense of autonomy in the learner. Autonomy in learning is a crucial pillar of adult learning, and allows the learner to select what they might already know, while accessing optional help if they need it.
Optional Speech to Text: In order to increase accessibility for all learners, I added an optional speech-to-text button. This allowed the learner to select a read aloud option if they so desired, and offered the learner the option to read only if that was their preferred method.
Fully Developed Product:
Testing
I conducted testing with the organziation through two different steps. The first was by having the Next2Nu organization owners test the product and give me feedback. The second step was by testing the product with players for the organization. We formed a focus group of 5 players and had them go through the module. After they were done, we asked them 5 questions:
1. How did this module make you feel?
2. How likely on a scale of 1-5 (1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest) are you to implement the 3 actions outlined in the module?
3. On a scale of 1-5, (1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest), how clear did you find the instructions of the module?
4. What else would you need in order to develop a pre-game, mid-game, post-game, and post-series practice?
5. What do you think the strengths of this module are? What are some weaknesses?
This focus groups allowed us to make changes based on their responses.
Results
At this point, we are still in the process of piloting this module and collecting feedback. Some early take-aways of the pilot results included a promising start with 2 players stated they felt engaged, 4/5 likely to implement the behavior, 5/5 clear in its instructions, and they found the animations and feedback engaging. Some potential new directions arose during the pilot testing. Some players found the module "boring", and upon further investigation and analysis, I realized there is an opportunity for further autonomy within a module such as this one. When considering a personal and creative process like developing a mentality practice, the individuality of the learner must be of the utmost importance. A mentality practice is not necessarily a procedural task, and as such, including the learner in the development is important to the long-term adoption of the behaviors. In the next iteration of this project, myself and the owners will revisit the desired outcome of developing a gaming mentality practice, and re-create a module that further engages the learner to self-reflect on their own strengths and has choices about different practices they might want to add to their routines. In the meantime, the owners will be collecting data from the players who have taken the first iteration of the module and track whether they are implementing the recommended actions.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse