Release: 2012
Platform: Xbox 360 & Kinect
Studio: Harmonix, Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft
dancecentral.com

By the third installment in the series, Dance Central had found its place as an excellent party guest.

With the introduction of multiplayer in Dance Central 2, many new players discovered the game in the company of friends.  We sought to capture this growing audience by including a variety of party modes, dance-lite minigames, and a super-easy level of difficulty.

As with Rock Band, we wanted to understand how things might play in the real world.  The research lab was arranged to resemble a living room— coffee table, sofa, chairs— and our playtesters were instructed to bring friends.  After pushing all of our furniture into the hallway, they settled in and began taking turns, just as they would in real life.

The biggest issue was how to determine who was playing and who was not.  Kinect would only detect two active players, but tended to struggle when a lot of folks were present.  We needed a distinct, simple gesture to distinguish the intended dancers, and the "High-Five to Join" feature was born. Any two people who stood in front of the camera and clapped hands instantly became players, and usually friends.


My contributions included...

• Evaluating new minigame mechanics and providing consultation for rapid iteration.
• Writing user stories for casual and novice players, from discovery to mastery.
• Designing and implementing methodologies to study realistic play scenarios.
• Researching and adjusting low difficulty thresholds with novice dancers.
• Connecting local and remote teams to plan milestones for evaluation.

Typical design questions

• How can we introduce minigame mechanics that require no onboarding?
• How much dancing does a shy person want to do?  Can we include them in other ways?
  
• Which moves can a brand new player perform comfortably, and how does complexity scale?
• How do we instruct Kinect which people to detect, which to ignore, and when to change focus?