Shahbazee
"Game of Kings"

A board game created based off of research into the games played by the elderly. Made entirely of wood to better resemble the quality of game they are used to and better resonate with the target audience, it became very popular among users and a number of copies were produced for private use.

Technically, the title of the game should be "Bazeeye Shah" if we were following Farsi grammar rules, but Shahbazee sounds better phonetically in English and still means the same thing.

Research

One of my grandfather's high quality backgammon boards

Example of a high quality Chess set which uses wooden pieces and a stone board

An extremely high quality Mahjong set, made of marble with gold inlays

I began the project by doing extensive research on game preferences of the elderly, which involved:

• Speaking with my own grandparents and those of friends, asking them to show me or describe their favorite games and why they enjoyed them.
• Visiting multiple retirement homes in the King County area, asking employees what the most popular games were, and asking residents why they enjoyed those games.
• Analyzed the results and found that the most popular games had a few things in common:
  • They were made of high quality material (except for Checkers, which was an outlier).
    • "High quality material" always meant either wood or stone. Though participants generally agreed that metal was also a higher quality material than plastic or cardboard, participants universally agreed that metal was a poor choice for game boards.
    • Participants agreed that it was worth spending extra money for high quality materials when it came to games.
    • In the case of card games, higher quality cards were always preferred, but many also mentioned that they liked when the cards were well used.
  • They had existed since the participant was a child, and often for generations beforehand
  • They had strong cultural significance and were often taught to the participant by a respected elder (such as a blood relative or mentor)
    • Participants also mentioned that they enjoyed teaching the games to young people, regardless of whether said young person was related to them by blood
      • Any time I hadn't heard of a game during my research, the participant would without fail offer to teach it to me
  • They were extremely replayable and highly competitive
    • Participants told stories about playing their game of choice for hours at a time with their good friends, meeting new friends by finding others in their community who were at or near their level of skill, and betting money (usually small amounts) on the outcome of each game
  • They featured some degree of randomness
    • Even participants with Chess as their favorite game mentioned the thrill of rolling doubles or drawing a high card when asked about what they enjoyed when playing games

In addition to my in-person research, I also looked into what video games had been created recently which were specifically targeted at the elderly demographic. Ignoring all of the various perfect copies of board games which had been created (which all of my participants said they liked far less than their physical counterparts), I found that nearly all of the games were marketed as "brain games;" games which were supposedly capable of increasing IQ and denying the onset of Alzheimer's, dementia, and other mental illnesses primarily experienced by the elderly. Though I am skeptical of most of their claims, the number of downloads shown by the various app stores I visited proved that the marketing was extremely successful.

Design

Before I could begin physical construction, I had to design a game which would best appeal to my target demographic.

Based on my research, my game had to have the following traits:

• Made of high quality material
• Had been playable for generations
• Had deep cultural significance
• Could be easily understood and taught to a younger audience
• Competitive and replayable
• Had some degree of randomness
• Stimulated the mind

Unfortunately, there were a couple of caveats which I had to impose on the previous list:

• I lacked the tools and knowledge to do any stonework, so the game would have to be made of wood
• I do not have access to a time machine, so playable for generations and deep cultural significance were impossible

Everything else was perfectly within my reach, however. Even for the traits which I could not physically achieve (playable for generations and deep cultural significance), it would still be possible to fake them with some clever branding.

Applying my Persian heritage to the game's design definitely made it seem as if it did indeed possess them! Before I even began on the actual gameplay, I used my research to give the game a dramatic title in both English and Farsi which implied that the game had been played by the ancient Kings of Persia. Additionally, I used the image of Ahura Mazda, the symbol of Persian mythology and philosophy, as the game's logo to further cement in the user's mind that this game had existed for a long, long time. I'll talk about the success of this in more detail a little later, under the "Testing" section.

Ahura Mazda, the symbol of ancient Persian mythology

After deciding on a theme for my game, I created a few game pillars which I would need to stick to (and did stick to) throughout the design of the game:

• Highly competitive and replayable
• Culturally rich aesthetic
• High quality materials
• Intense mental exercise

Iteration

To test my game, I worked with a number of different demographics in order to make sure it had widespread appeal to an audience broader than just my target. The first tests I conducted were with my peers and professors at DigiPen. At this point, the game was in its most primal state, and I used the feedback I gathered to iterate on my original design. Due to the amount of labor required to actually produce a wooden board and player pieces, I was unfortunately unable to test the UX of the project at this point and was forced to use purely paper prototyping. Thankfully, they weren't my target audience and their opinion of the game's UX was less important to me than that of the participants I would test with later. Hopefully that doesn't sound too callous.

The final iteration of the game board and player initial positions

The box the player pieces shipped in. The inscription reads "The Warriors"

Many changes were made during this time, and the product I ended up with after this round of testing was nearly unrecognizable from the original game. Some of the various alterations I made and the reasons for them included:

• Shrinking the board from 15x11 to 9x7
  • The initial game had widely varying play times because of the size of the board. Additionally, the metagame that developed was a lot more defensive than I wanted for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the king pieces had too much room to run away and evade the enemy warriors. Second, it was difficult to move in and out of combat quickly; this meant that if a piece were sent in to battle that the piece was pretty much guaranteed to be forfeit. This led to players either trading pieces back and forth until the board was almost empty within the first few turns of the game, or holding back their pieces and fortifying their position.
• Reducing the number of warriors from 22 to 9
  • This was in part a direct result of reducing the board size, but it still bears mentioning because it was very important for a number of reasons. Initially, the game's starting piece layout was much more similar to chess, in that the first two rows of each player's side were completely filled with warriors. This had the unwanted effect of dramatically increasing playtime of the game, which would often leave players feeling bored and disinterested. Additionally, the sheer number of warriors at their disposal made players feel that each individual warrior was basically cannon fodder.  By reducing the number of warriors, I sped up game time AND made players hold their warriors in higher regard!
• Added a second option for when the player rolls doubles
  • I noticed during my testing that on occasion there were certain gamestates where the  doubles bonus (getting to take a second turn) wasn't actually very useful. Rolling doubles was meant to be a major spike in engagement for my game, yet in these situations it was very underwhelming. By affording players the ability to choose between two separate options, I pulled closer to my design pillars while simultaneously eliminating gamestates where players were not excited by rolling doubles.

Building

I'd be lying if I said this part of the game's production wasn't a ton of fun. I've always had a soft spot for craft projects, so this was right up my alley.

The King. In addition to the wood stain it shares with the other pieces, each King has its top painted with gold paint and features a unique symbol burned into its center

Before I began on the board, I bought a 3/4" wide oak dowel from Home Depot. I chose this size after playing my game with an elderly couple in the mall. The wife had arthritis and had a lot of trouble grasping the small pieces I used for my original prototype. As my target demographic no doubt included many people afflicted with the same condition, I wanted my game to be accessible by everyone. I cut each piece to be 1" in height and stained them to be two very distinct colors reminiscent of Backgammon and Chess sets.

I started with a plank of pine and cut it down to the size of 13x9 inches. Next, I spent a few hours sanding the wood until it was smooth on all sides. I also smoothed down the corners at this point to make the game more child-friendly.

I began work on the reverse side, for no other reason than that I thought it would be more fun. Using my necklace as a reference, I created a freehand sketch of Ahura Mazda. I actually got my aunt to text me a picture of how she would write the title in Nastaliq script (Farsi calligraphy), as my own handwriting is atrocious. Finally, I researched how movies and games had "Persianized" English handwriting and eventually created the font for the English subheading. 

Using my Dremel's calligraphy head, I slowly carved my drawing into the wood. It took a few hours, but the result was definitely worth it. Once complete, I stained the entirety of the back side black and then poured a wash I had created using gold acrylic paint, iridescent medium, and water into the indentations. Once dry, this created the appearance of gold leafing. Finally, I poured a layer of epoxy resin over the top to create a scratch resistant gloss surface.

On the other side, I used my wood burning tool to carve spaces to create the playing area of the board after using a pencil and ruler to draw guidelines. I then attached the calligraphy head to my Dremel and smoothed out the edges of the lines to make them a bit more even. After a quick sanding, I mixed together an epoxy resin solution with black acrylic paint and poured it into the lines I had carved.

Once it dried, I sanded the board smooth again then used painter's tape and a foam brush to apply wood stain to the board. Wood stain doesn't stick readily to epoxy resin, so as it dried, only the wood took on its color. This left me with a perfectly flat surface without breaks which transitioned seamlessly from one color to another. After painting the remainder of the board with a combination of acrylic paint and wood stain, I used a foam brush to cover the surface with a thin layer of clear-coating to give the board a smooth and glossy finish.

My Ahura Mazda necklace

The back of the board before the epoxy resin coat

Testing

Diagram showing every move a single piece can make given the roll at the top-left

At the first retirement community I visited, a couple of my participants confided in me that they were having difficulty understanding all the various options a single piece could make. Because of this, one of them believed that the game was far more simplistic in strategy than it was in reality and couldn't comprehend why they kept losing. Before he grew frustrated, I drew a diagram for him which he responded to extremely positively. After a few more games (during which he used the diagram extensively), he asked if he could buy a copy of the game. I was speechless. I stammered out a yes after a few attempts to find my voice.

Once my pulse stopped racing, I had to ask what made him want to have his own copy, what was it that inspired that desire in him? At first he wasn't sure exactly why, he just thought it was a lot of fun. I wrote down the response and exchanged contact information so that I could eventually get a copy to him. Later on that day while I was conducting some more tests, he came back with another answer for me. He told me a story about how him, his siblings, and his parents used to live with their grandparents back in Oman, and that one of their great joys was trying to beat their grandpa in Backgammon. My game reminded him of the feelings he associated with that time in his life. He wanted his own grandkids to have those same kinds of memories with him, and thought that my game was good enough for that.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up a little at this point.

The testing otherwise went very well. Participants responded very positively to the game's feel as well as to the gameplay itself. People in the retirement homes were much more honest than I was used to, which was a very refreshing change. My peers and people I tested with at the mall have a tendency to "pull their punches," whether their response be positive or negative. The residents, however were very open about when they thought something was bad, if they didn't understand something, or if they really liked something. Many of them initially believed that the game actually was from ancient Persia, and that I had merely created the board.

All in all it was an extremely enriching and rewarding experience from which I learned quite a lot from. Which takes me to my next section...

What did I learn?

The biggest thing I learned from this project was that I should never again promise to make multiple copies of a quality wooden board game during the school year.

On a more serious note, I found how incredibly powerful good user research is when it comes to developing a product for a target audience. Without my initial interviews and web research, there is absolutely no way my end product would have resonated with my participants in the ways that it did.

Finally, I believe that I found my calling while creating this project. I know it's kind of a meme thing to say, but UX design truly is my passion. I originally decided to become a video game designer because I wanted to make people happy.

With this project, I saw the wonder of a child in the eyes of my participants as they first beheld the game and touched the pieces.

I beheld the gears turning in the mind of a master engineer while they meticulously considered every piece on the board and ruminated over their myriad of options.

I was witness to the profound, unfathomable joy of someone who had decided that they had experienced everything life had to offer discovering that they loved something new.

Any of these reactions alone would have been reward enough for this entire project. All of them together was all the affirmation I will ever need for joining this industry.

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