GameBus & SugarVita (Concepting)

How can I use GameBus as a platform to connect SugarVita players?

SugarVita and GameBus are supposed benefit from each other. I need to find a way to connect these two. In this entry, I'll talk about how I tackled this problem.

Research Methods

Library

• Product analysis

The first thing I did was to have a look at how GameBus works. What I found in GameBus included the following:

• you have the opportunity to create or join circles. 
• Circles are this collection of people who can relate in one or more things. This can be lifestyle - or decease related. 
• You can make a circle join a challenge. 
• You get points for completing a challenge 

Field

• Observation + Stakeholder analysis

The most important thing is that both Pieter and Harm would be happy with the way SugarVita and GameBus are connected. I get the feeling Harm wants SugarVita to be something a lot of diabetes patients would play and learn from and Pieter wants SugarVita to be "just another challenge" within GameBus.

• Explore user requirements

Another important thing is what the user would want. After talking to Harm it became apparent that his view of the game is that diabetes patients would play the game to learn more about what consequences their real life actions have, but also to experiment with different lifestyles in order to see what effects these changes would have. On top of that, a lot of patients find it interesting how others cope with their sickness. Summarized, the main elements that would have to be possible after the cooperation are:

1. Player can simulate their own daily live and reflect on it.
2. Player can experiment for him/herself to see what consequences it has.
3. Player can save their playthrough on the GameBus servers.
4. Player can play against their own or other players recorded data

Results & Validation

The result is a plan of action on how to combine SugarVita and GameBus into a fully functional cooperation. The flow goes as follows

1. A diabetes patient gets told about the existence of SugarVita.
2. The patient will have to create a GameBus account
3. Patient will use the GameBus account to login at SugarVita and automatically join a circle if they haven't already.
4. The circle will have a challenge to play SugarVita.
5. Patient will automatically connect with the SugarVita data provider in GameBus
6. Patient will play through the game.
7. Patient will save their game on the GameBus servers and he/she will get rewarded with point within GameBus, because a challenge is completed.
8. Everyone will be able to play against the recorded game and can learn how the patient copes with his/her sickness (patient could play against his own recorded games).

This list was finalized after I visited Vadym Markelov. We looked at the possibilities together and came to this conclusion. This was also immediately my validation to see if it would be a good idea as he knows more about the GameBus backend and its possibilities. He had multiple meetings with Pieter to discuss what would be possible privacy wise as well.

Usage

The plan gets used as a soil for the works in the next devlog entries: Saving Data to GameBus and Fetching Data from GameBus.

Sources 

• GameBus App. (n.d.). GameBus. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://app.gamebus.eu/