Feedback - HPO alpha3.0 (Mozilla)

= In-game comments=

The comments about the game submitted at the end of the mission (thanks Vlad, the reports really helped here):
 * That was fun.
 * Cute.
 * Fix the browser
 * it was good
 * fun.
 * it was good
 * cool
 * I think it was fun to do the task.
 * the internet searches were a bit easy
 * very interesting
 * fine
 * easy!
 * cool
 * I thoroughly enjoyed it. I do not enjoy the way the handler makes typoes and undoes them.
 * The spelling mistakes in this window are a bit strange. The hacking mini game needs improvement, but otherwise very interesting
 * Very interesting, the hacking mini game isn't great. But I am intrigued, I want to see what the rest of this game is like.
 * was nice
 * fun, not too scripted but a good tutorial
 * fun
 * Hacking was kind of difficult to control
 * Ok
 * boring
 * I like your AI. Don't like the Hack-It game with the boxes
 * thrilling
 * pretty interesting
 * Intriuging
 * Interesting.
 * alright
 * good
 * yay
 * it's ok
 * good
 * easy
 * ok
 * the hacking mini-game need to be improved
 * It's fun to use internet to resolve problems ! Good game.
 * it was fun
 * why didnt you look it up?
 * Unexpectedly identical to the last such mission; I expected different circumstances, not the same lost agent.
 * Not bad, but I'd like more opportunity to apply my technical skills to hacking a potentially unaware adversary, rather than quick reactions against a hostile one.
 * stressfull
 * It's a nice game, looks real, especially with the real browsw
 * of course
 * Good
 * ok
 * no complaints
 * thank you
 * Great! I want more!
 * Interesting
 * great
 * Good balance of difficulty. Hated all the clicking back and forth, would have prefered typing.
 * good
 * fun
 * curious
 * it was not easy and quite confusing.
 * Twas fun!
 * it was really cool task. i liked it. Kudos
 * Freaking great game! really innovative and different! Never had this kind of experience before!
 * Yes, really nice to work like this,iam really interested on this kind of work.
 * awesome
 * could not understand what we were trying to achieve here
 * it was cool
 * je jf^spdiojfdsjf
 * it was very interesting and fun

= Ideas box =

Cf http://feedback.farsides.com/

= Live test sessions & feedback =

Case

 * Need to think of asking less from the player - didn't want to have to type in the chat, would rather just click by selecting one option among 2-3.
 * Same thing about finding stuff on the internet - don't want to have to type the name of the painter, would rather have the game scanning the content of the page he's on, and detect that the step has been completed automatically
 * The loading was veeeeeery slow

Stephanie

 * Loved the game, especially the puzzle solving part. Even said she would definitely pay for the game, and asked if she could donate already ;p
 * Had troubles with the painting name - entered it in French since it's the original name, but had to translate it to English to get it recognized by the game

Olivier

 * Mostly trolled about one thing: the danger of putting a too big emphasis about realization. The remark was about the videosurveillance minigame - he thinks we should have tested more the gameplay more, replacing the videos by an image for example. The warning is good (it's something to be careful about).

Misc (from Sprint, various comments I didn't note the author, and comments made by several people at once)

 * Google is in French in the browser - should be English
 * Fonts are too big in the mission menu and chat button under Safari
 * Opera - immediately sent back
 * Hard to find the custom button
 * Window that appears during the loading of the game (should either show a progress bar or not be shown at all)
 * IMDB doesn't work (useful for end of time mission)
 * Selecting a new mission in the menu sometimes falsely warns about losing the current mission progress (when it's finished)
 * Text sometimes becomes garbled when we reply too fast in the chat
 * Missing back/forward/history in browser
 * Missing sound atmosphere/fx
 * Less linear missions (Game book style?)
 * Doesn't always recognize all the answers (variations of "yes", "no" insults, help...)

= Emails from players =

Pit
First visitor screening:
 * some .png files are too big in term of memory : earth is 2mo, target is 600Ko.
 * "go to the agencie remote desktop" should be bigger than the rest as we want the player ton click on it

First chat with EagleEye:
 * This guy as really big problems with the keyboard ! Could we reduce the number of keyboard failures he does ? This is quickly boring
 * unclear sentence: "What does the message mean and where was he when he sent it?". The "he" refers to the missing agent, but in the previous sentence we spoke about a painter. Should be split in 2 questions: "What does the message mean? where was _the agent_ when he sent it?"

Some link 404 not found (firebug detected):
 * http://proxy.hackit.farsides-dev/images/srpr/nav_logo27.png
 * some external_js

Tools window:
 * Mistake in sentence: "This tab provides you with information about…" should be "provides you informations".

Hacking mini-game:
 * some js errors detected by firebug

Login/create account window:
 * From the tools windows, clicking on "login", the login pops, but at the bottom layer. So it is hidden by the other windows, preventing the user to log in. This shloud be at the top layer instead, or better in a window like the chat/tools/browser window.
 * The font for "register" / "cancel" is too small.
 * I don't like the leetspeak as default content, it's unclear and makes me feel nerdy whereas I'm a gentleman.
 * The fields should have a label around, and not only default value inside: "email:, "password:", like normal forms on standard websites.

Geoffrey
As for the Humanity Project, I enjoyed what little I played of it, sadly however my exposure was limited. I found the game ran unfortunately slow which reduced my play time somewhat. (I run the latest Firefox beta, and have a fairly beefy machine behind it, so I think it's a sad combination of html5, and attempting to run the game at 2560x1600 resolutions :).)

Beyond that, the idea was certainly interesting and I'd definitely be interested in seeing the project expand. If there is something I would like to see specifically; it's an expansion of the 'hacking' gameplay. Perhaps several mini-games, rather than just the one. Options for a more 'strategic hack' games that are not time-sensitive would certainly improve things I feel, while also helping to reduce performance issues interfering with gameplay.

Manu
The game is really good. I love the gameplay in that it is quite unique from other games which try to mimic old games in the browser. But the windowing system you use feels really cramped up. Also, it would be better if the default site in the game's browser is the localized Google site (English - google.com in my case) and not French by default.

BTW, the instructor "Bill" of EagleOne is awesome.

Josh
I found the game via the Mozilla "Game On" project. I found the premise fairly interesting at first. Made me think of a modern alternate-reality "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego".

A few notable issues that jumped out at me:


 * You can play exactly the same mission over again. When I saw the mission description I assumed that meant I could play a variation of   that mission (such as with different information needed to track down the agent).  I found it disappointing when the mission played out identically.  I'd suggest changing it to an explicit "Replay Mission" action for people who want to play the same thing over again. Meanwhile, adding variations on a theme would improve replay value.


 * The mission that required classifying webpages based on whether they described a given topic set off a lot of alarm bells for me. It struck me as "evil spammers trying to get me to classify pages for them", and it felt like work.  Perhaps you just want to do something like Google's "Image Labeler" game, but the way you presented it just didn't feel like a game to me at all, nor did it seem to fit the "secret agent" theme.


 * Critical: your site at farsides.com rips off content from Ubuntu's home page and stubs out the links. At the bottom of the page, you have a green box with a collection of links that precisely match those at the bottom of ubuntu.com, except all the links lead to "#".  At best I'd guess you or your designer copied Ubuntu's homepage as a template; at worst this suggests some kind of evil SEO keyword matching.  Either way you need to fix this immediately, and track down why it happened in the first place so you can prevent it from ever happening again.

= Churn =

A graph showing where the players stopped playing the most (in red) and how many were remaining (in blue) in the sessions I've seen:



Aside from the bounce (which is surprisingly low at 40%), the three main blockers seem to be:
 * Typing something in the chat (the laziness to type mentioned by case?)
 * Searching an answer on Google (the concept of those missions)
 * Clicking on the "hack" or "submit" buttons (issues with: finding the button, finding the right page for both hack and submit, also performance/interest for minigame?).

= In-game observation (game sessions logs) =


 * Those who really try to play usually succeed at finding painter+painting+pushkin. Giving help when the player types the wrong answer works well with those who really play the game http://humanityprojectonline.com/admin/sessions/session?id=6a3fd899e082886ec0b8fc6dc9f236f9
 * Really need to have more emails from players, to recontact them afterwards
 * Lots of improvements to make for detecting answers (cf tool from Vlad), especially variations of "yes" (+handle swearing => propose an alternate activity to the frustrated player)
 * List URLs from Planet Watch mission + results
 * Lots of funny answers - players like to play with the understanding of the agent => need to find a way to play with that
 * Players usually click or do something, even if they don't reply in the chat - the desktop interface seems to be intriguing for them
 * Very few players go past the first mission, even when they successfully completed the first one => find way to draw them back to the game.
 * Seen quite a few who start the second mission but immediately quit the game. Maybe also need to find an interest, a tension, something they would want to check again. (make fun? progression? unlocking new stuff? ...?)
 * Maybe asking "are you ready" twice at the beginning is too much - since players usually test the bot on the first answer, they get a lot of repeats from the first question - maybe it makes it look like "yes" is still not good enough.
 * Wondering if some of the sites entered by players in "Planet Watch" mission didn't scare off some players - cf http://humanityprojectonline.com/admin/sessions/session?id=572b5498c92b0c4392decea784ebdb1c => seemed really enthusiat about the game, but then dropped when he was asked to confirm its first site

Examples of interesting sessions

 * Give good answers, but stuck by button http://humanityprojectonline.com/admin/sessions/session?id=4edbe4c41e98d82ba3b1485aed4f0294
 * Issues with the LinkedIn page - quite a few players ended up on a different page than the one intended for the mission (maybe they clicked in the window?) cf http://humanityprojectonline.com/admin/sessions/session?id=ca8eea26e0afffa69386b7c6c461137a
 * Pb with concept of searching google "Not interested" http://humanityprojectonline.com/admin/sessions/session?id=5dcfdf834aaa0cc64c5279ea1942f779