During the last week of class, we were able to play the game When Rivers Were Trails. This game took us through the journey of Indigenous people as they interacted with each other and white men while navigating their ever-shrinking lands. The game mechanics are very simple and allow the player to really focus on the message and educational opportunity that the game provides. This game was developed to be used as an educational tool for younger audiences and that can be felt in the simplicity of the gameplay. Also mentioned during class was the game Oregon Trail. While both games occur at the same time, they show vastly different perspectives on life in the West. Both of these games, by themselves, are great educational tools that let people learn about history in a very hands-on approach. These two games together can provide a full picture of the time period and are a great lesson on how your circumstances can greatly impact your view of the world and how two different perspectives can view the same event. Using games like these are a great way to supplement traditional education.

Sources:LaPensée, Elizabeth, director. When Rivers Were Trails. Vimeo, 28 Apr. 2020, vimeo.com/340980168/e2ab19649e

Last week we discussed accessibility in gaming. We discussed accessibility not only in the context of the availability of the game to different consumers but also in the context of people with disabilities. We discussed physical access to games while playing jackbox games. I had actually played jackbox games for the first time the week prior. It has become a favourite of my family during this time because we can play remotely with each other. We get on zoom and the person hosting the game shares their screen and everyone else can play remotely on their phone. This game is very accessible for us to play. Physical accessibility can also come in the context of affordability. Some games can coat $5 and are generally affordable to people. Many console games are upwards of $60 and also require the purchase of an expensive console. This can be hard for some people to afford.

Accessibility in games needs to also be thought of in the context of game design and playability for people with a large range of physical capabilities. Last week we looked at the commercial for an Xbox remote for people with physical disabilities. Although this remote did help people play there is also the problem with affordability. We also played the game Blindscape. This was a game that tackled the idea of accessibility in the concept of the game itself.

This past week we discussed balance in games. This is an aspect of games that I have not put much thought into since I mainly play single-person games that generally revolve around world-building rather than combat, where balance is a more obvious issue. Although balance is less obvious in the games I usually play, after learning about it in class this past week I have started to see where balance is very important. Balance in item spawn rate, random interaction rate, character temperament compatibility, and more are integral to the enjoyability of the game. If it is hard to get certain items you want or if your character has a lot of compatibility issues with the computer-controlled characters this could lead to a lot of issues in progressing with the game. Again I will talk about Animal Crossing. During the Easter event, many people complained about the balance of the spawn rate of eggs. The water egg was found when you went fishing. Many people were upset because when you went fishing a disproportionate amount of what you caught while fishing was eggs, making it basically impossible to get fish. Before last week I never really thought about this as a balance just an annoying part of the game. I also, over the course of last week’s classes, developed a respect for those tasked with keeping games balanced. I can easily see how this job is one of the most thankless. Many players would interpret this job ass fixing things that should have already been fixed or changing things that some players liked because they knew how to take advantage of the imbalance.

Sources

“Balancing League of Legends for Every Player, from Bronze to Bengi.” Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii_Q4OCoHvU.

Last week we playtested our group games in class. This was a very interesting process as my team had decided to make an analog game before physical classes were stopped. We decided to keep the analog idea even though we would be doing all the work remotely and this led to a lot of creativity, on our part, for visualizing gameplay and allowing people to playtest our game. I give a lot of credit to Jackson, one of my group members, for running the gameplay for the testers. He printed out the physical cards and was able to work with the playtesters so that he was moving the cards for them and they could fully be able to visualize and interact with the game. This allowed us to receive more detailed and accurate feedback than if we had just sent them the rules and had them visualize it themselves. We were able to get some good feedback from our participants and were able to incorporate that feedback into the final version of our game. Although we had many of the same issues playtesting as we did doing the project, communication, we were able to overcome this and produce a good final game. 

Although our playtesting was unconventional we were able to follow a lot of the guidelines from Fullerton. The playtesters were of our target audience. We had aimed for the game to be played by young adults, which our classmates are. We were able to write down questions beforehand and make sure they were not leading questions so that we could get true answers from our playtesters rather than an answer that we wanted to hear. We were able to leave ample time after we played two rounds of the game to collect some very good feedback.

Works Cited

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. CRC Press, 2019.

This week in class we discussed system dynamics and the information systems of games. I know I am going to beat a dead horse here but I am going to discuss these two topics in the context of Animal Crossing: New Horizons since that is what I have been playing the past week nonstop. It was really interesting to have discussions in class looking at other games and how system mechanics looked in each game. I had never really noticed how much information the system gives the player visually. In Animal Crossing the boundaries of the game are clearly defined in the beginning of the game. You are on an island and there is nowhere else you can go. As you progress through the game, the boundaries expand. An airport opens up on the island and you can now visit other islands that the game provides or you can visit other players, making the boundaries of the game virtually endless. The player in Animal Crossing is lead through the progression of the game through interactions with other characters, mainly Tom Nook. Nook will tell or hint at the player what they should do next to progress. If the player does not understand what the next step is they can simply ask Nook “What should I do now?” With his guidance, the player builds more and completes tasks to further their island. Along with the information gathered from interactions with Nook, the player can also gather a lot of information from their pocket and their Nookphone. In their pocket, they can see all the items they hold, some of these items allowing the player to perform certain actions like fishing or digging. In the Nookphone players can see many things such as what creatures they have already encountered and what goals they are working towards.

Although Animal Crossing is a relatively relaxed and predictable game, there are some elements of the game that are unexpected. As my group discussed in class on Thursday Animal Crossing supplies a few emergent elements. The biggest one we could think of was the wasps and tarantulas on the island. These are the only elements of the game that actively attack the player while the rest are neutral or helpful. Other emergent elements could be balloons that randomly appear that you can collect gifts from and interactions with other characters in the game where they offer up a gift to the player.

P.S. Tom Nook is a good man and I will die defending him

Works Cited

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo, 2020

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.

This past week we looked at the team dynamics of board games. On Tuesday I played Pandemic with a  group in class and on Thursday I observed a group of classmates play Overwatch together.

During our game of Pandemic, we observed the ways in which the games had us interacting with each other and with the game. Communication was a large part of this game. Each player had unique abilities that would help the group and players had cards that would help towards the goals of the games. By communicating with the other players we were able to plan out or moves 4 or 5 turns ahead of time. We left our cards face up on the table and were fully transparent with each other. It was very satisfying that our advanced planning was so good that we were able to survive two pandemic cards in a row and pull off a win. This gameplay was very different than the collaboration used within the team for Overwatch.  

Overwatch is a faster-paced game than Pandemic and requires more quick communication rather than planning out very far in advance. It was very interesting to hear other classmates discussing how they communicate with teams in online games when you do not have clear in-person communications. How certain moves and even what character you pick could indicate things to other players

Sources:

Pandemic, Z-MAN Games, 2007

Overwatch, Blizzard Entertainment, 2015

This week we discussed dramatic elements in games. Typically I always thought of plot and elements such as jumpscares as adding drama to games. While reading this chapter and discussing dramatic elements in class I learned that this is not always the case and that there are many other elements that could lead to the dramatics of a game. In the class playthrough of Virginia, it became very obvious to me that not only the inclusion of certain things lead to the drama of the game, but also the exclusion of certain elements. In Virginia there is no dialogue and, as pointed out in class, there is a lack of other characters similar to ours, female and POC. These exclusions lead to the game being very suspenseful and mysterious. It was a very interesting take on the dramatics in games.

We used more traditional dramatic elements during an in-class activity on Tuesday. We were assigned to bring in cards to class and make stories using them. My group was able to make a very thoroughly fleshed out story due in part to our cards having characters and plot elements in them. We took the characters on our cards and fit them into plot narratives we were familiar with. It was very interesting to hear the stories of other groups that worked with cards such as Uno cards or standard playing cards. Their plots were not as thorough as ours but they were able to make characters out of a basically blank slate.

“Working with Dramatic Elements .” Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, by Tracy Fullerton, CRC Press, 2019, pp. 97–127.

This week was very interesting as we read about and discussed different components of games and we participated in gameplay, of multiple games, in class. On Tuesday we discussed procedural rhetoric. This is how the rules and mechanics of games can hold meaning and sometimes teach the player a lesson. We broke up into groups to play and then discuss different games. Most of the other groups played games that had some kind of strategy, though many of them had some form f randomness. I played Chutes and Ladders where the procedural rhetoric of the game was pure randomness, sometimes things just happen. While I did not enjoy the pure randomness of Chutes and Ladders, I did enjoy the game mechanic of the chutes and the ladders and how they could dramatically change a player’s position in the game. I took inspiration from this mechanic when we brainstormed on Thursday and I developed the basic concept of my game idea during class.

The basic concept of my game follows a lot of the base rules of Chutes and Ladders though I added interaction between the players to add strategy and competitive components to the game. Players will have the opportunity to sabotage other players through the use of action cards. I look forward to developing my game more and being able to playtest it.

Class Discussion and Assigned Reading (Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. CRC Press, 2019)

On Tuesday we participated in a class discussion regarding Lorde’s, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” While the reading itself was very interesting on its own, it was also fascinating to discuss it in its relation to games. The reading discusses Lorde’s experiences of being part of multiple minority groups. She mentions not only the struggles she faced as a minority but also the issues she faced within her own minority group.

One of the issues mentioned is that Lorde’s belonging to the LGBTQ community caused some tension with those in the black community. How there was a general consensus on the correct way to be black and being a lesbian was not the correct way. One of my group members brought up an interesting parallel in the gaming community. In the gaming community, sometimes there is a determined “correct” way to play a game or there is the “normal” gamer and if you deviate you open yourself up to harassment and ostracization from the community. This has a large effect in the gaming community, for example, casual players feeling they have no place because they don’t dedicate more time to the games or they aren’t “real” gamers and also a lot of female gamers try and hid their female identity to fit in more with what a gamer should be. This reading, along with the class discussion on the mythical “normal,” lead to a very engaging class discussion.

Sources: Lorde, Audre. “Reading Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Sister Outsider, 1984. Pg 114-123