We have crossed the finish line!
about 5 years ago – Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 11:31:08 PM

We have come to the end of the campaign and are so excited to have funded the print run and to have met two stretch goals - including the two-player, two-hour version of the game which funded with only an hour to spare.

Tonight I just want to make a quick post to say thank you to all of you for your support!

Jess and I will be posting in the next few days to share the next steps of the project and share our gratitude and reflections about the campaign. 

Thank you for making resistance possible!

Love from Jess, Mo & the whole team.

Companion Funded + New Stretch Goals Announced!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 12:54:06 PM

Hello folks....

And we're in the FINAL STRETCH of the campaign!

We're incredibly thrilled to have the Rosenstrasse Companion stretch goal yesterday, and today we are revealing two new stretch goals we hope to make in the final push. 

At $27,500 we will be including a collector enamel pin with our key takeaway from the campaign: Resistance Is Possible. This pin is currently planned to look like the following mock-up, with the text and the Rosenstrasse female silhouette on a black metal background with raised lettering and border. This text honors the idea that active resistance against antisemitism, bigotry, and xenophobia in all its forms is possible - and that we must never again let that kind of hate and injustice take hold of our world.

At 500 Backers, we will be also be including a second enamel pin as a companion to the first! On this one, the male silhouette is featured on a black metal background with raised lettering that reads "Continuity Is Resistance". This text honors the idea that the descendants of survivors of the Holocaust continue to live, and celebrates Jewish lives everywhere. Waking up every day as a Jew, and continuing to survive and thrive, is a type of resistance all its own.

 We hope to make it through both of these stretch goals before we hit the end of the campaign - if existing backers would like to see that happen, please help us out by resharing the campaign and letting people know why you chose to back us!

To anyone in the Toronto area going to Breakout Con, I will be a guest of the con and running two War Birds games - Rosenstrasse and the not-yet-released game Lumberjills about women of the Timber Corps finding confidence, autonomy and romance in the forestry camps of Scotland during WWII. 

Stop by to say hi if you'll be in attendance!

Resistance is Possible,

~Mo

Rosenstrasse, research, and the iterative design process
about 5 years ago – Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 02:05:32 PM

Hello friends,

Today I wanted to tell you a little bit about our process for designing and iterating Rosenstrasse. Since the game deals with sensitive and difficult subject matter, we wanted to make sure we were doing it justice. We also needed to design an experience that was meaningful for our players, and that supported the larger goals of our game. As I tell my game design students, designing a transformational game is more than twice as hard as designing a good transformational experience plus a good game - and that's without the Holocaust in the mix.

To address these issues, Mo and I used a range of different research and design processes. The very first thing we did was make sure we were on the same page about our vision and goals. While the superb Transformational Framework was not yet released, we used many of the same techniques to develop a vision that we could iteratively work towards. We didn't get everything right the first time - most memorably, we hadn't considered that descendants of Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators might play our game - but we were able to continue iterating our vision together as we went along.

To make sure we were honoring our subject matter, we worked with experts and other stakeholders. We started by hitting the books (in particular Nathan Stoltzfus's Resistance of the Heart) and making some early prototypes. Because people have strong preconceptions about what games can do, we wanted to give our experts something concrete to react to instead of a theoretical idea. Once we had a playable prototype, we set up interviews with historians, Holocaust educators, and other experts. We also made sure to include stakeholders, in particular the descendants of Holocaust survivors, in our playtesting.

To understand player experience, we playtested, playtested, and playtested some more. For our early playtests, Mo would run the game while I sat there frantically scribbling notes, and then we'd talk to our players for hours afterward. As we iterated toward a more final prototype, we split up playtesting (doubly necessary because we live in different cities!) and relied on our players' patience to take quick notes during the game. Eventually we got to the point where we were training facilitators to run the game without us; our amazing facilitators would send us pages and pages of notes about places where they had trouble or situations that we hadn't expected to encounter. 

(If you're interested in some of the methods I use for playtesting and peer feedback, you can watch the talk I gave at GDC 2018 here. My talk is the second half of the video and picks up from Martin's focus on instructor-led feedback.)

We made some pretty major changes based on playtesting, including almost completely rewriting one character's storyline! Our playtests also helped us see where facilitators would need extra support both with helping players engage, and with correcting particular historical misconceptions.

Finally, we could see from playtesting that we were affecting players in profound ways, but we didn't fully understand how. Asking a "how" or a "why" question typically brings things into the realm of human subjects research, which means getting ethics approval to run the study. Working with Nathan Leblanc, a masters student with expertise in anthropology, we developed a study that (we hoped!) would let us understand how players were connecting their play experiences to history and activism. Our research protocol combined observing players during play, recording play decisions, and an extensive post-game interview and debrief process. After getting approved to run the study, we collected data from 18 players and analyzed it using a grounded theory process. You can read all about what we learned here.

We know that doing this kind of iterative design and research doesn't magically prevent people from misunderstanding or misusing our game. That's one of the risks you take when you ask anyone to play your game when you aren't in the room! But we hope that by inclusively, rigorously, and persistently iterating Rosenstrasse, using a range of playtest techniques to address different design goals, we have done our absolute best to honor our material and our players. The rest is up to you.

Resistance is possible,

Jess

Halfway there - and 96% funded!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 04:44:19 AM

Hello everyone,

We're now halfway through our campaign, and we are 96% funded! Thank you all so much for your support to date. We are so close to funded that we can taste it!

Today, we wanted to share a bit about the physical components of the game. In the video below, I show you the different game elements and explain how they work.

We designed these materials very deliberately, building on instructional design principles, to make the game as easy as possible to play. In particular, we thought a lot about the concept of cognitive load. Cognitive load theory argues that people have a limited amount of mental capacity (e.g. attention, working memory). The lesson for game designers is that any mental capacity that is directed at irrelevant or extraneous things isn't available for the core activities of play. 

In Rosenstrasse, we needed to consider cognitive load for both players and facilitators. For players, we wanted them to focus on the human experience of the characters, since that's the lens through which they engage the history. For facilitators, we wanted them to focus on helping players explore each scene, such as by asking questions that elicit thoughtful responses.

One way we support this goal is by having scenarios printed both on cards and in the facilitator's guidebook. Each scenario includes a description of the situation, followed by a prompt. While the prompt is being played out, players and/or the facilitator might need to reference back to the situation. If there were just one copy of the scenario, then either the players or the facilitator would have to remember what was going on, or they'd have to pass it back and forth to reference. Either way, that would create unnecessary cognitive load and distract participants from the central activities of play. So, the facilitator has each scenario printed in their book, and the players also have a copy printed on a card. 

While we originally made decisions like this for instructional design reasons, we've found that they have lots of other benefits. For example, we've found that facilitators develop their own styles for running scenes. Some facilitators like to read the situation to the players, because they get to emphasize the core themes of the scene in how they perform the reading. Other facilitators hand over the card and make the players read it themselves; when two players have to bend over one card and read it together, it can make them feel connected to one another. Having scenarios both in the book and in the card deck makes this flexibility possible.

In our playtesting, we've found that our materials help participants engage with the core game activities, and not get distracted by other things. In particular, we've looked at how the game supports people who have never role-played before, and people who don't have much background with the history. Players from both groups are able to connect deeply with the game. First-time facilitators do well, too, but we're always looking for ways to make the game easier to run. For example, in the Kickstarter edition we're including some simple exercises that help develop the skill of cutting scenes. We're also doing a visual redesign to make the look and feel of our materials more consistent.

We're looking forward to sharing our work with you. Onward and upward!

Resistance is possible,

Jess

Rosenstrasse is funded!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 04:44:11 AM

We made it! 

As of 3:52 this afternoon, Rosenstrasse is fully funded - we are jumping for joy at War Birds HQ!

It is especially meaningful that we crossed the funding line today of all days as it it is the 76th Anniversary of the conclusion of the Rosenstrasse protest! 

THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of our backers and signal boosters for your support- we could never make Rosenstrasse without you. We have been holding our breath for the last few days waiting for this moment, and now that it has arrived, we are filled with gratitude for all of you who backing and signal boosted the campaign to get us here. 

What's next?

We keep going! With 11 days left in the campaign, we're still happily moving forward on towards the stretch goal we would most like to see realized. 

The companion is jam-packed with brilliant minds adding breadth and depth to the conversation that Rosenstrasse aims to start, and we really hope we get to share it with you. 

Beyond that horizon, the two player version will bring new options for play. With a smaller player count and a shorter time commitment,  we hope this version will allow more players access to the game, and bring higher use value and flexibility for our educational and cultural partners. 

Once again, thank you all so much. We are ecstatic to have reached our goal and honoured by your commitment to us and the project.

Love,

Mo & Jess and the whole Rosenstrasse team. <3