The Translation Game - Week 2 Of 2
- Alejandro L. Ruata
- Apr 10, 2018
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 17, 2020
Another week, another Game Brief to introduce. This time we humbly present a game created for the purpose of building a repository of complex phrases and their simple translation by the request of UMass. This is "Phrase to Phrase" a fun card game you can play that will do just that!
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Entity for Project 4
Your goal is to create a game that facilitates the creation of a large repository of translation pairs between complex phrases and their translations into simplified text that has been curated by human players.
The facts:
As game creators, you will be given two items in relation to one another. You do NOT gather these two items yourself.
One: a phrase in English. This will be sourced from Wikipedia and could be on any topic, but you could choose to get chunks of one particular topic though order would not be guaranteed.
Two: a second English phrase that represents what is believed to be a simplified translation of the first phrase.
They will come as a pair. This will be sourced from the matching entry in Simple Wikipedia.
The goal of the user is to, in some fashion determined by you as the game creator, indicate if and/or how accurate the two phrases work as translations. This could be a binary rating of 1 for works or 0 for does not work; or it could be on a likert scale from 0 to 5 or something similar, indicating how effective the translation is from 0 as not effective at all, 3 could be a decent or one viable translation, and 5 could be a good or most common translation.
The player will in any one sitting, provide ranking/scores for a number of pairs. While you probably do not want to repeat the pairs for the player in a single setting, if they receive repeats during replay sessions, this is not necessarily bad.
All users will pull from the same pool of pairs, and it is important that each pair is ranked/scored/reviewed by more than one player, so this is a good thing.
The game must store the given phrase pair and the score/ranking received.
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Game Title
“Phrase to Phrase” - A Game Brief
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Member Blog Links
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General and Specific Information
Genre: Card Game, Party Game
Audience: Our audience is the large and robust student communities that operate at (or are affiliated with) UMass. That said, the simplicity of the game’s mechanics, combined with its overarching objective of facilitating the creation of a large repository of translation pairs, mean that, the audience can expand across a great many communities of Proficient & Non-Proficient English-Speaking players. Ideally, this brings in people from walks of life that don’t normally interact with each other together for the purposes of fulfilling “Phrase to Phrase’s” ultimate objective.
Primary Objective: To fulfill the entities stated goal of facilitating the creation of a large repository of translation pairs for complex phrases and their simplified texts. To entertain players through a dynamic, engaging, and entertaining party game that is simple to pick up and play, invites friendly competition among players, and most importantly… allows the players themselves the freedom to create, curate, and expand on the repository how they see fit.
This is not to say we are giving players complete freedom to do whatever they want. On the contrary, they will be bound by game mechanics and developer decisions regarding translation pair options (expanded on below), however, they will have the freedom to make the final decisions on translation pairs (which simplified text goes best with the given phrase) through simple majority voting. Those votes are then tallied at the end of the game and put against votes other players took when playing the same round with the same phrases and simplified text options - majority decisions get added to the repository.
Players will have the ability to see the repository, to see how other players picked & voted in their games, and - since we’re giving freedom and control to the players here - the ability to contest odd/incorrect pairs. In doing this, we give the creation, curation, and expansion repository (the ultimate objective of this entity) to the players (in this sense, developers are like the producers of a game studio - they steer the ship in a general direction - and the players decide on the nitty gritty - the specifics, the fine details that turn an idea into a manifested product).
This freedom of choice is why we made our objective player input focused. Through fun music, dynamic aesthetics, online multiplayer, and engaging (not to mention challenging and relevant) phrases taking the place of regular trivia questions make this the most entertaining student run and student curated survey you’ll ever be asked to take.
Introduction to Game
- The game’s main mechanic that will capitalize on the objective is of the system where players compete for points by putting into the card pile what they feel is the best summarization of the Wikipedia phrase.
- Much like Evil Apple, the fact that it will be put to a judge who chooses the best possible answer is what drives it. Whereas in Apples to Apples, Evil Apple, and so on emphasizes on humor, the focus of the game will be on best possible summarization in order to reward points to players.
Game Control
PC Controls
- Mouse click: the users use the left mouse click to interact in the interface.
Mobile Device Controls
- Touchscreen: the users tap the screen when they are picking the answer.
Score/Objective/Winning/Losing/Competition
- Score: This game has a score point system. The points are based on the result of each round. At the end of the game, the points will convert to experience points.
- Objective: Each round, a player will become a judge, and he or she must place a complex phrase. While other players will pick the best translation from their hands.
- Winning: Like Evil Apple, the player will pick whose has the best translation for the complex phrase.
Interface/Information: The complex phrase card is placed on the top of the screen, and the translation cards are placed on the bottom of the screen. There a chat box located at the left corner of the screen, and a timer located at the right corner.
Main User Mechanics/Actions: The main mechanic consists of matching a main phrase with a simplistic phrase, and the player get to decide which translation is the best. The goal of the game is indicating which translation is the best or accurate translation of from the Wikipedia. Based on the result or the answer, the total number of players who choose the same answer indicate the best translation of the Wikipedia phrase.
Levels/Environment: The players will all place cards down and it is left up to the host to choose which one best applies to the description. Because of this style of gameplay, there isn’t much of a level setup, and the environment is a simple background with the look like that of a play table. The environment the cards will be placed in will look simple yet inviting in its simple background and color scheme.
Obstacles, interactive elements, enemies, collectibles, NPC’s, etc
- Timer: Depend on the difficulty setting, there is a timer which the player must pick a card before the time runs out.
- Trap card: When the player draws their cards, there’s a chance that these trap cards. These cards will affect the gameplay, but not the answer. For example, there could a card that affect the timer for certain player.
Sixty seconds of play: When the player enter the game, there’s a spinning wheel which it indicates the judge for the round. After a short animation of shuffling the deck, it will automatically give the cards to the non-judge players. In certain amount of time, the player will pick their answer, and the judge will pick the his or her choice. After the first pick, it goes back to beginning of the animation, and the pick a new judge for the next round.
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WHY OUR IDEA WORKS
Through the reward of the best summarization for a Wikipedia phrase, it will encourage players to choose the absolute best one possible. This will help to provide the system being trained with the best answers possible for several phrases per gaming session. Taking this judging system into account, it fits the entity for simplicity and ease of implementation of linking the system to the results taken from sessions. The idea of the game also fits the theme of optimization of summarizations done for the machine, providing it several highly positive results for each phrase due to several groups of players in the game, which in turn better achieves the objective.
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Reference
Link to video of similar gameplay:
[ The game mechanics style will be like ‘Evil Apple’, ‘Cards Against Humanity’, or ‘Apple to Apple’. We’re really looking to emulate the mechanics of the ‘Evil Apple’ mobile app (with the key difference being the content of the cards - we don’t wish for any of our content to be seen as inappropriate in the way some of the content in ‘Evil Apple’ can be perceived as. ]
Image of similar look/style:
[ The game with similar style will be The Jackbox Party Fibbage. We want the game to have simple UI and a colorful display. ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Production
Estimated number of Developers/Designers:
Designer: 3
Programmer: 2
Producer: 1
Any special licensing, expertise, or permissions needed:
Unity Collaborate
Estimated length of time for development in 3 phases:
Concept - 1 month
Pre-production - 6 months
Production - 5 months
Estimated cost for software/hardware:
Unity: Free
Estimated cost for phase 1 (Concept) production:
Total: $2,000
Estimated cost for phase 2 (Pre-Production) production:
Total: $10,000
Estimated cost for release and maintenance:
Total: $1,000
Plan for post release: During the post production phrase, our first goal is to find any minor bugs in the gameplay. After the fix, we will add new phrases into the game or change some the phrases that are already in the game. At the same time, we could come up new trap cards for the gameplay.
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