SMU Guildhall Graduate Catalog Spring 2018 — Cohort 26 | Page 34

Sam Adlis Level Design « Reducing Cognitive Load and Increasing Excitement to Increase StarCraft II’s Accessibility My goal in this project was to create a I chose to create a more accessible easy to learn, and is still fun and strategic. to see if I could make one of the most mod of StarCraft II that is easy to play, I boiled the process down to two large pillars: reducing cognitive load and increasing excitement. While each pillar had many subparts, the overall goal was to simplify the game to make it easier to process, and then offset the negative effects of simplification by increasing excitement and player engagement. My artifact was a success because both StarCraft II veterans and players who were completely new to the genre were able to learn the game quickly and had fun. 34 LEVEL DESIGN version of StarCraft II because I wanted hardcore games playable by a much wider audience. I greatly admire Blizzard Entertainment and how they have repeatedly created games that are easy to play and learn within difficult game genres. The artifact took four mon ths to make with about three months of research and design beforehand.