15 Key Elements to Good Game Design By Dr. David Chandross and Klaus Rubba Introduction Gamification is a term that has been bandied about since 2009, with a slight air of mystery, and much hype and promise. Yet in that time there really hasn’t been much progress, or rather, much useful progress in this space. There are easily still more examples of poorly done gamification than well done. We at Game and Train have put together a dynamic team to change that. This whitepaper talks about all the key elements of good game design, beyond just points, badges and leaderboards. While it is true that those items are present in just about every game, successful or not, no game owes its success to just those three things. To be successful, a game needs more. It needs to be engaging and immersive, to instill an urge in the player to come back and play just a little bit longer. We’ve compiled fifteen design elements to a game that contributes to success. The first paragraph under each design element was written by Dr. David Chandross, a researcher in gamification with a Ph.D. in advanced learning. This section talks about the research and psychology underpinning the game design element. After the first paragraph is some additional details and examples by Klaus Rubba, who brings five years mobile game development experience to the table. See the end of the document for their brief biographies. Stay Tuned! Note that while this document has all 15 elements defined by Dr. Chandross, the additional mobile/digital game design embellishments will be added to this document as they are posted on our blog at www.gameandtrain.com. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 1 1. Game Flow THIS DETERMINES ENGAGEMENT, FREQUENCY AND INTENSITY OF COGNITIVE LOAD The flow of a game is a combination of how motivated players are, how often they are challenged and rewarded and how simple it is to process. Games which have high engagement mean the players want to play more! Games with good pacing of challenges keep the player hooked, always looking for the next thing upcoming in the game. It’s like good jazz, half the notes should be predictable and half should be a pleasant surprise. Finally, cognitive load is the amount of mental energy a player must dedicate to the game. Too little and it becomes boring, too much and it’s exhausting. The right balance is key. Poor game flow can be seen in games where there is a lot of initial overhead. Either too many rules that need to be learned before game play can start, too many game mechanics introduced early on, or simply too many clicks to get into the actual game play. For example, mobile games that have a long, mandatory tutorial will see a large number of players simply quit and delete the game. One shouldn’t underestimate player’s familiarity with game mechanics, and at the very least accommodate those that already understand how to play so they can skip over the tutorial. If a game will have several different game mechanics, like different types of puzzles to solve or different weapons requiring different skills to master, don’t hit the player with too many of these mechanics right off the start. The game can seem too daunting and players can get discouraged. Instead, show the players the weapons that are yet to come to keep them excited, but don’t unlock them until some point by which they should have mastered the weapons they already have. 2. Game Agency and Opportunity THIS DETERMINES HOW MUCH CONTROL A PLAYER FEELS THEY HAVE. Game agency means how much a player feels they have some control of their actions in the game world. No player likes to be buffeted about by pure chance, they all like to feel that they can improve and do better over time through their own actions. This opens up in-game “opportunities” to advance and make the player increasingly more powerful over time. Think of a city building game where you can clear trees and rocks to open space in which to place your buildings, and even build walls to protect it, versus a game that has set locations for its buildings. Having the opportunity to customize your city any way you want in the first example gives the player a feeling of control and autonomy that is completely removed in the second example. Another great example of good game agency is tech or skill trees. For instance, as a casting class character might have a broad range of relatively weak spells at the start of a game. As they level up, they can choose to continue being a generalist, or maybe instead become a specialist in fire damage or pet conjuring. This type of availability of choice put’s the characters destiny in the player’s hand, essentially allowing the player to BE the character. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 2 3. Random and Chance Rewards, Challenges, Encounters CREATES GAME TENSION AND CONFLICT Random chances are the lifeblood of good games. No one likes to play a game where the outcome is known. Players do like to be surprised by a turn of events and they release adrenaline and endorphins when random chance game events test their skill. Good games are basically stories that the player helps write, all stories need conflict. The more a player is tested on their ability by random events, the more adaptable they become and the greater the feeling of reward. It is also nice to be pleasantly surprised, like discovering something new. The thrill of discovery is a basic human trait. Exploring behavior is all based on random chance encounters. You’ll see this in almost every game out there: kill a monster and you might get nothing, a couple copper pieces, or possibly an epic sword. Or when a game like candy crush drops random candies, which create patterns and chain reactions, sometimes obliterating half the screen and showering the player with rewards. Sometimes it’s less subtle, with games outright incorporating slot machines for a chance to win random prizes. If there’s a pattern to achieve a reward, players will figure it out, and play just enough to get it, or they bore of the task and don’t care enough to play on. But if it’s randomized, animal instinct will drive players to play just one more level, or just one more kill, in case the next one gives them the big score. This is such a well understood and researched aspect of gaming psychology (called the Skinner Box: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber ), that almost all games incorporate some element like it. Unfortunately some games are designed with the hope that such Skinner Box elements create more engagement, yet compulsion is not the same as engagement. In order for user training to be as effective as possible, users need to be intrinsically motivated to consume the learning material. The best way to achieve this is to design your gamified training system for maximum engagement, so users want to come back and use your application. Random rewards is just one design element to help achieve this, but isn’t enough on its own. 4. Avatar Identification CREATES IDENTIFICATION, NARRATIVE, GAME PROGRESS The avatar is the identity the player chooses in the game. It could be a fantasy like being a great sorcerer, or it could be real world, such as role-playing training situations. Research based out of Ryerson University showed that players embrace their avatar, wish to customize it and defend it, even in real life! The avatar is on a journey in a good game, the kind of journey Homer writes of in the Ilyad, or forms the plot of an Indiana Jones movie. The avatar grows in knowledge, skills and abilities over time and it is the avatar which progresses. It is important never to under-estimate the importance of the avatar in a game, no matter how complex or simple the design. The avatar is an expression of “who we want to be”, it represents our ideals, of “another” part of ourselves. The relationship between avatar development and game success runs very deep. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 3 In role playing games like World of Warcraft and Everquest, the entire game experience revolves around the players chosen Avatar, and part of the replay-ability in those games is the ability to have multiple Avatars. Each is a unique expression of self, exploring different personality types and skill trees, and often access to different content. And the motivation to keep playing comes from reaching the higher level skills to be more powerful and access more exciting content. In other games, the avatar concept may be more ephemeral, manifesting itself in the presence of skill points, badges, experience, levels, etc. These items are attributable to a single entity: the player. When the player increases his skill, he is developing the avatar of himself in the context of the game. It’s this sense of development and progress that really makes the avatar concept lead to long term engagement. Some people might think of an avatar as simply a digital, visual representation of their character in a game, but that is just a small part of it. Without the development and growth of their character, there is little reason to keep coming back and stay engaged with the game. If the game play is mostly just designing characters and showing them off, this might be fine. But for a serious game, not so much. In a gamified training application, the avatar should be the player themselves. They are developing and growing themselves, and the game elements within the application simply help to quantify that growth. For the training to be effective and for players to keep coming back, seeing a link between their actions (training, completing daily challenges), and the development of their persona is one key ingredient. 5. Hedonics GAME INTERFACE DESIGN, MATCHING OF REWARD TO EFFORT, COMPELLING ACTIONS Hedonic experiences are pleasurable experiences. The hedonics of game play are based on the interface, whether it is easy to use and is attractive. Sustained game pleasure, hedonic activity, results from matching rewards to effort. During effort-reward cycles, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to addiction and reward centers. This leads to “compelling” game play, a game that you want to keep playing! Matching reward to effort expended, not being too easy to obtain or too frustrating to achieve, is the key. A game you cannot put down is a successful game by any measure. A game which makes you say “one more turn!” instead of going to bed. While it seems obvious that successful game design requires a pleasurable experience, it’s surprising how many games out there fall short. And it’s not that these games are absolutely horrible, but often have small annoyances that can detract from the overall experience. For example, frequent dialogs that require scrolling to read just one more line, or a sequence of dialogs that can’t be skipped. Having to click or tap too many times to get into game play is another turn off. The user interface and menus are best kept simple and easy to understand, and not get in the way of what the user really wants: to play the game. Video games also make use of rich graphics to give that pleasurable experience. Compare a level up experience where a dialog pops up to announce your leveling up, interrupting game play, to one where a radiant beam of light and sparkles reaches down from the heavens and anoints the character. The DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 4 latter will trigger a much more satisfying emotional response that will leave the user with a warm glow and a desire to play more. In the game play itself, a good effort-reward cycle will be challenging enough that the user feels accomplished when they complete it, and satisfied with the reward. Killing 40 rats to collect 10 rat tails so you can turn it in for a small healing potion isn’t going to cut it. But make it too difficult and it can quickly lead to frustration, which can be about as bad or even worse. Corporate training and learning management systems can be quite dry, with uninspiring and even difficult to navigate interfaces. There tends to be little visual feedback on progress and nothing pleasurable about the experience in general. But if you want your learners to really engage in the content and develop deeper learning, you can’t ignore hedonics. 6. Balance NO KINGMAKER SYNDROMES, REWARD IS PROPORTIONATE TO EFFORT, REWARD IS WELL PACED , REWARD IS PROGRESSIVE Good game design ensures that no player can establish a lead that holds for the rest of the game, thus making competition worthless. When one player takes a lead and no one can ever catch up, you have what is called Kingmaker syndrome. This must be avoided at all costs. Instead, you need to design the strategy of the rule set such that last-minute changes can upset the game. However, these last minute changes in gameplay need to be linked to the proper amount of effort. If not, then taking the lead becomes trivial. Good game designers have a progressive reward system, with a good pace, which permits players who have mastered strategy to do well and does not punish those who are as of yet still mastering it. There is a reason great games like Chess and Go survive the ages. They have extraordinary depth of strategy but no player can command an unbreakable lead against a player of equal skill. There are a couple of ways that preventing kingmaker syndrome can be approach. One approach is to prevent a lead from getting too large. For example in Mario Kart they used rubber banding to prevent leaders from getting too far ahead, so that just a couple of wipe outs would give the laggards a chance to win. Another approach used in online multiplayer games is to prevent level mismatching in the first place. For example in Clash of Clans they used trophies to match up players in multiplayer combat based on a similar skill level. And many online player vs player type games use some form of skill based matching. When it comes to a straight up leaderboard, having a ‘King’ can be quite discouraging to new players who thrive on moving up the ranks. One solution to prevent this is to make the leaderboard rolling, so only the players points from the most recent period counts. This way players who reached the top and lost interest no longer impede new players from doing the same. Balance applies to more than just how your do against your competitors, it’s also about keeping players DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 5 engaged through balanced game play. Having a steady progression of complexity and challenges keeps the player from getting bored or overwhelmed. Many so called ‘gamification’ implementations simply add badges and leaderboards, but little else to keep players from quickly losing interest. If you want your learners to keep coming back, constantly reinforcing their training until they master the material, you need to pay attention to game balance to keep them interested. 7. Immersion SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF, PLAYER ENTERS THE GAME WORLD The ability for a good game to allow the player to suspend belief, that is, enter the game with so much attention that the outside world is shut off, is immersion. Immersion is a powerful neurological component of gamification. There are games used by burn patients that distract them from the pain of treatment, which work due to this quality. The greater the degree of immersion, the higher the level of engagement and the more powerful the game can be at changing behavior, whether it is dealing with terrible pain, or training to perform a jobs tasks well. At first blush one might correlate immersion with an immersive environment, as in rich graphics coupled with surround sound, maybe even virtual reality. And while those things certainly can help, they aren’t the end all be all of immersion, and they alone don’t guarantee an immersive experience. Think of the early video games that enjoyed huge success despite weak graphics and sound, like Bards Tale or even text based adventure games like Planetfall. Immersion is more of an abstract concept that comes out of many of the other game design elements we are discussing: having an avatar a user can identify with, a story line that helps the player project themselves into the game, good balance of actions and rewards, suspense, mystery, etc. Having those design elements are what really contributes to an immersive experience. When it comes to designing learning and development games, immersion plays multiple roles. Not only does it increase engagement, but by creating immersive simulations around the learning material itself, you get maximum retention of knowledge. 8. Narrative Fidelity HOW MUCH DOES THE GAME PLAY CONTRIBUTE TO THE STORY LINE? Throughout history the basic narrative of what psychologist Carl Jung called the “night sea journey” has been with us, since the time of the ancient Greeks and across civilizations. A good game is a story and the activities in the game must contribute to the story line. Every action in the game must teach the learner something and the sum of those efforts must be consistent with the story line. This is why simulation gaming has taken on such veracity. It is relatively easy to design a game about driving which teaches people to drive! Where the art lies is in creating in-game activities which contribute to a story line which is an abstraction of the training program. For example, having medical students play the part of an alchemist when prescribing medications in a simulation is good use of story line. It DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 6 departs from the stressful world of real clinical practice, but replaces the activity with one suited to the game which fosters engagement and long term story development. Too many of us think of games as simulations, that must realistically convey the “world” to players. However, game designers realize that there are core feelings and experiences that all people have, that of adventure and longing to see what lies beyond the next bend. Fundamental reading for all game designers is Homer's “Odyssey”, during which we see a great narrative, what Jung called the “night sea journey”. As the figure below depicts, one encounters rough seas, terrifying monsters and unfamiliar lands in such a voyage. You will survive such epics with the strength of a great crew and not only skill, but intelligence. The Indiana Jones movies, Star Wars and other great stories all depict this kind of encounter with the unknown. Crucial to enjoying such stories is the idea of having to summon all of your abilities to contend with, and defeat, dire circumstances. Not every narrative is this kind of thing; there are more comforting stories, those of discovering wonder in a magical forest, or travelling through time to live as our ancestors, or travelling through space to find new worlds. There are more everyday narratives, those of building your own company, your own city, your own character. There are tender stories of love, bereavement, longing, desire and wish fulfillment. Any of these human themes can be rendered into a game narrative. The limit is only the imagination. At Game and Train, when we produce a gamified training system for a client, we work with them to create a narrative which is compelling and will engage the user. It must be a story which the player enters, as though being cast in a film or play. Their avatar, their representation in the game, must grow in ability as it explores and is challenged. I recommend that any trainer interested in working with a gamification designer, read The Odyssey and learn about compelling narrative. Gamified training relies on narrative to separate the training from the everyday world of work. Simulations are for that. Simulations are not designed to engage. Simulating driving to work in rush hour is true to life, but not much fun. Simulating the real world of work is DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 7 generally as much fun as simulating rush hour. In order to engage learners, we need to really find out how to encourage them to train for the pure reward and pleasure in doing so, to become happy through learning. Learning is an inherent behavior which does make people happy, it is learning how to focus this behavior in a coherent direction that good training can do. Gamification is about going on a journey, and designing games with compelling story lines. This is one way of drawing the learner into the “game world” and rewarding them for learning, which in turn inspires them to continue. 9. Play Factor HOW OFTEN DO PLAYERS WISH TO PLAY AND WHAT GAME EXPERIENCES BRING PLEASURE ? Play is defined roughly as “exploration within boundaries”. The idea behind gamification is that learning can be a form of play, similar to ideas seen in Montessori teaching for children. We can learn through play, through controlled risk simulations, to competitive knowledge matches, to accumulating experience or in-game currency. Games which are high in “play value” encourage and reward exploration and achievement. Recent studies show that most players enter game worlds in training for achievement, followed by socialization. Play is achievement-based, even exploring what lies around the next bend on a long hike is a form of play. Play can take the form of delight, humor, relaxation, fascination, comfort or escape. Good games provide a measure of many of these traits. Poor games are rough simulations with nominal rewards that really are not any “fun” to pursue. Let your work be your passion! 10. Problem Solving Titration HOW MANY ATTEMPTS DO PLAYERS MAKE TO SOLVE GAME PROBLEMS? Problem difficulty can be defined along a continuum from easy to impossible. Good gamification provides the player with increasingly difficult problems which can not be solved the first time they are attempted. The research on video game benefits for young players, often called “millennials”, those under 25 years of age, shows that they learn that problems must be solved by repeat effort. Good games often have “bosses” or “challenges”, some involving whole teams of up to 40 players to complete. If the goal is achieved, ie, the “boss is slain” after one attempt, engagement is diminished. What games teach younger players is that by persistence and changing strategy, to overcome, improvise and adapt (to quote a Clint Eastwood movie”), victory can be achieved. Hence, good game design forces players to take on impressive challenges, to prepare for those challenges and not give up when they do not succeed at first. At the same time, challenges cannot be so great as to discourage players. Good game design is all about balance. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 8 11. Sensory Experience IMPACT OF S OUND , VIDEO, GUI, GRAPHICS , TRACKING INSTRUMENTS (SCORES ETC.) Game aesthetics are the artistic elements of the game, what does the computer or hand-held device screen look like? Is it easy to navigate? Is it easy to register, track achievements, set goals, monitor progress? Is the game, generally, a positive thing to interact with? Is it user-friendly, and equally important, does it contribute to immersion and/or simulation? There is a reason that highly successful games like World of Warcraft had over 10 million subscribers at launch and retain 5 million to this date. In a word, it is a beautiful game. Kids who play games often go on about the “graphics” and spend hundreds of dollars on video cards to play the game on “maximum detail”. Humans love design and artwork, these things have been with us since the earliest civilizations, the Sumerian cave paintings date back nearly 28,000 years! Design your game with aesthetics in mind, don't steamroll over this aspect with “training-think”. Think like a great story teller or a great artist and watch engagement swell! 12. Depth HOW MANY OPENING MOVES, MID GAME OPTIONS AND END GAME TACTICS EXIST? Strategic depth refers to the amount of options in a game for winning or participation and is key to a successful training game. Stephenson's Rocket, a rail-building game designed by strategic game design master Reiner Knizia, has over 100,000 possible opening moves. Simple games like checkers even have levels of strategy, tic tac toe less but still present. Not only do you want to provide players with the opportunity to amass knowledge, but you want them to become better at the game itself. A strategically-rich game permits players to engage in many ways, they can try various strategies, change tactics, learn new approaches to succeeding, all my changing their own choices in the game. A very good game has the player constantly saying to themselves “I have 3 choices. I wish I could do all 3! But I can only choose 1!”. This creates in-game tension, leads to high “replayability” and high engagement. 13. Reward Titration WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS CREATED FOR I MMEDIATE, DELAYED AND LONG-TERM REWARD? The reward system of all good games has to be carefully computed based on mathematical modeling. If I choose A, do I gain more resources now, but none later? If I choose B instead, do I gain less now, but will see rewards accrue regularly later in the game? These are questions we want the player to be asking themselves. However, reward systems run much deeper in this discussion, entire fields of psychology on risk and risk avoidance exist in which reward and effort are carefully studied. In strong gamification, each small reward is regularly provided during the game, these lead to medium rewards. Then there are the long-term game rewards which build upon the medium and small systems. Multiple reward systems lead to rich gameplay, high engagement and high replay value. Non-progressive reward systems, which are called “zero sum games” have one winner and one loser. Design games around rich, varied progressive reward systems, and avoid zero sum design like the plague. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 9 14. Replay Value DEPENDS ON DEPTH/REWARD TITRATION/AVATAR IDENTIFICATION/FLOW Replay value is the degree to which a game inspires most players to continue to play. It is one of the most important determinants of game success. If you play a training game once and then discard it, this is both cost inefficient (the design was only used once, then trashed) and works against engagement. Replay value can be conceived of as the game being a pot of stew! We have already described the ingredients for a good “game stew”, reward systems, storyline fulfillment, identification with the avatar and the general flow, or pacing and challenge of the game. If these are blended well, using beta tests and early player focus groups to “taste your recipe”, success cannot be far behind. A good training game should be hard to put down. Hold your training games to the same standard as commercial games designed for entertainment, do not let them “slip” into mundane exercises because they have an educational goal. A master game designer for learning creates compelling play in which as the player improves at the game itself, learning occurs. This is a high level of design and takes many years to refine. Any trainer is capable of doing this, but it takes considerable experience to create a truly elegant game. It helps, for one, if the trainer loves games themselves, has played a wide variety of games. It is absurd to ask someone to design a game system for training if they have no passion for gaming! Such games will seem perfunctory, clumsy, one-sided and ponderous. 15. Clear Rule Set SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE Lastly, the elegant game is one which has simple clear rules but almost infinite depth. This is a high benchmark to achieve. Games such as Go, Castle Wolfenstein, Monopoly, Halo, Chess or World of Warcraft survive over time and produce many “masters of the game” because the rules, though simple, lead to deep strategic options. There is something called “umame” (pronounced oo-mah-may) in Japanese cooking, it is often referred to as the 5th flavor, after sweet, sour, bitter or salty. Umame is the overall “goodness and blend” of flavors, that which causes a reviewer to describe it as delicious. The equivalent term in game design is “elegance”, the overall simplicity and power of the rule set. The Japanese game Go is simple, you surround your opponent's pieces with your own. However, the board size and number of pieces leads to a lifetime of mastery for the determined player. In fact, Go is a good example to cite here as a model for training game strategy, the game has no winner, it simply ends when one player concedes there is nothing more they can do to better their situation. So it should be in training games, we continue until we have mastered the experience. And this changes us fundamentally. At their heart, good gamification has us leave each encounter with the game as a changed person, who is more than they were when they began. Making It Happen DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 10 We at GameAndTrain.com have assembled a powerful team in making all of the above a reality. We’ve combined a PhD game designer with 30 years’ experience in higher education and neuroscience who understands how to get the most out of your content, with mobile game developers who understand what it takes to engage users in digital media. Contact us today to find out more! [email protected] DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 11 BIOS David Chandross, M.Sc., M.Ed., Ph.D. Dr. Chandross is curriculum designer specializing in gamification in the health professions. He holds a doctorate in medical education and a masters degree in cognitive neuroscience. He has worked in many educational institutions across Canada including Ryerson University, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. He developed his focus on gamification while teaching undergraduate health sciences students in medical, nursing and midwifery education and then went on to participate as a researcher in the 5-year, 3-million dollar SAGE study at Simon Fraser University under David Kaufman. His early work is documented in the February 2014 edition of the journal “University Affairs”. His current research focus is on game-based systems to increase social connectedness in seniors, higher education for seniors and the development of mastery-based systems for the improvement of cognitive performance and behavioral change in medicine. He is currently the Program Coordinator for the Learning Academy at the Baycrest Health Sciences Center with Ryerson University, providing university courses for long term care residents. He currently holds funding from the Canadian Association of University Continuing Education for research on learning in seniors and is the lead partner coordinating both Ryerson and Baycrest with the federally-funded Age Well, 5-Year Grant on Seniors and Social Connectedness through gamification. Current research and development projects include the production of classroom games for the CLRI/Baycrest in Sensory Observation Systems for geriatric health care professionals, production of clinical observation and decision making game systems for the iPad through SimOne, production of gamification modules in responsive behaviors for both the Baycrest and Ryerson University School of Nursing, studies in the use of serious games in seniors education and social connectedness and a study in the use of serious games in the management of adolescent addiction funded by the College of Family Physicians Danny Glazier grant. He also teaches courses in philosophy at the Chang School at Ryerson with specializations in metaphysics, aesthetics and the philosophy of health and illness. Klaus Rubba, B.Sc., MBA Klaus Rubba has been in the software industry since 1997, with an emphasis on enterprise level software development. In 2011 he joined mobile game development company Fluik Entertainment, where he played a senior role in the development of titles that saw downloads in the tens of millions across all popular device platforms. His current efforts are in helping companies realize the true potential of gamification. His experience in designing successful mobile games ties in with David’s research into gamification to deliver truly engaging gamified user experiences. DR. DAVID CHANDROSS, KLAUS RUBBA WWW.GAMEANDTRAIN.COM 12
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