Back to the drawing board?

After the reviews we got from the paper version, we now have a better look at our concept. It seems the concept isn't very clear for the users. Not all the reviewers seem to understand the point of the game.
This leaves us with a tough choice. Do we have to keep to our current concept of mining with a tree-structure or do we have to change to yet another idea?

What are the pros and the cons of our current idea?

• We saw the tree-structure as a way to unlock better news and more refined categories later in the game. This can however also be seen as annoying the user with stuff they don't want to read in the beginning. Only later on in the game they will be able to get the refined news they are looking for. The user will never get there, as we scare them away in the beginning of the game. For us it was clear that the user can work towards the news he likes, but apparently not all users see it this way.
• We had money in the game, but the money had no use except the highscores. This was very confusing for the users, because they expect to be able to buy something with the money.
• It seems that the rollovers were not clear enough in our paper version. Users got lost in the UI and didn't know what to do, because the information was in the rollovers. Some users also didn't know how to get out of certain menus, as there was no cross to close it. Both these things can be related to the fact that it is only a paper version, where a rollover is hard to simulate and that a paper isn't always the same as a window. We don't know this for sure, the only way to find out is by testing it in a real version. 

If we want to continue with our current idea, we should find solutions for these problems.
Now, why would we stick to our current concept?

• Some of the test-users liked the concept, even though it can use some refinement.
• We already worked out this concept. Although this should not make our decision, unwillingly it will play a role.
• The idea of badges and highscores will make the players come back to our application.

What next?

One of our test subjects (E.D.) suggested to give the articles a value based on the opinions of friends on that article. In this vision, you will rate articles which will increase their value. This could be globally or for your friends. We should decide what the meaning of the depth is. This could be refinement of categories, value of the articles found or even nothing. We had the feeling we did this, but apparently it wasn't clear enough.

We thought we could give more articles of a specific category based on what the user and his friends liked. So every category starts with the same likelihood to be digged at the surface, but the deeper you mine, the more you get articles that match the interests of your friend group. You are also able to go back up to get some more varied news. If you want to read something totally unrelated to what your friends like, you won't find it if you mine too deep. However, articles that match the interests of your friends will be worth more. To keep this system working, a user would be obligated to press like or dislike. That way no news stays unrated.

Similar to this idea, and merged with an idea of E.D., we can make a user walk around underground, indicating where articles are. These articles would be represented by mud, rocks, diamonds,... The value of the mineral indicates how much the article was rated by the friends of the user. If it receives a negative rating, its mud, a neutral or no rating makes it a stone and a positive rating makes it gold or diamonds. If a user mines a rock, and finds it iteresting he gives it a good rating and the article raises in value. If afterwards the value rises, the user gets extra points. If however others dislike it and the value decreases, the user that gave it a good rating gets penalized. In this solution the mining depth would have no use or value. The value will depend on the icon representing the article.

The problem with these new ideas is that we don't know if they will solve the problems we have with our current design. It could be that our users think they are even worse than our original idea.

We are leaning towards the last idea we described here. We will work this out in more detail and try if users prefer the paper version of that idea. Depending on the comments we get from the users, we will decide with what idea we should continue. We won't make a final decision at this moment.

Any thoughts on the new concept we chose to work out, the other concepts we described or new concepts are welcome.