In class today, we did a playthrough of the game When Rivers Were Trails, which illustrates and explores the experiences of the indigenous community during the 1890s. According to the developer, Elizabeth LaPensee, the game is meant to be played within an educational environment. The game itself is a point-and-click adventure with mechanics similar to Oregon Trail. Some ways this game differs from Oregon trail is the increased emphasis on the representation of the indigenous cultures and the experiences of individual indigenous people. This in turn helps with putting into perspective the lives of the indigenous people in America during the time period of the 1890s. 

I think something very interesting that I learned was that developing games for an educational environment did not simply mean developing a game that repeats educational information to students that play it, but also how a game is structured as well. In LaPensee’s video presentation of the game, she states that the game’s structure was streamlined to be more linear in order to be better suited for an educational environment, which was in contrast to LaPensee’s usual preferences for game structures. This was something that I had never considered before in games developed in an educational context. The effort to make the game more linear makes it so that it is easier to have a complete playthrough be shown during class time. The linear structure also makes it so that a player can get all of the information they need to learn in a single playthrough, whereas a game with a more open story structure could mean that the player could possibly miss educational topics and facts because they had a choice to not to explore a certain part of the game. I think the design of the game’s aesthetics and gameplay also makes the game very appealing and interesting not only for teachers, but also players outside of the educational sphere. This makes it so that players can learn a lot about the experiences of the indigenous people in America without having to be in a classroom setting or museum. In doing so, I think LaPensee and her colleagues and collaborators made a very successful game.

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

In class, we discussed accessibility in video games. This semester, I am also taking a computer science class that focuses on human-computer interaction and the user experience, where we discuss accessibility a lot in terms of user interfaces, and had several lectures focused on making interfaces accessible to people who have disabilities. As a result, I found this week’s discussion on accessibility very interesting because a lot of things that were discussed this week I have experienced in the other class.

During our discussion of accessibility, we discussed the point that people with disabilities can be “invisible” to others, and that developers may design games and gaming consoles without having disabled people in mind. I experienced this problem in the other class, where there is a semester-long group project to design a website. During development, I made the mistake of sometimes displaying messages as red text on top of a green background, and I did not realize that this would make the text hard to read for colorblind users until someone in my group, who was colorblind, pointed it out. When I look back, I feel like I could also just as easily have made this mistake while developing a game. I think this goes to show that playtesting and including disabled people in playtests is very important to make sure that your game does not exclude people based on their disabilities, because many times we do not take into consideration struggles that others may have simply because we do not have those same struggles.

However, one key thing this discussion differs from my other class is the idea that not all games have to be completely accessible. Sometimes a game is trying to get a theme or message across that may require the game to exclude some accessibility features. One example is the game, Blindscape, that we played in class. This game allows the player to play through the experience of a blind person, such as triggering interactions through sounds and the feeling of anxiety of not knowing one’s surroundings. This game would not be 100% accessible to a deaf person because one of the themes of the game is to show how a blind person relies heavily on auditory cues. However, I think maybe for a deaf person, a game premise such as this could be expanded upon to include vibrations as part of the experience, as touch is a sense both blind and deaf people rely on.

Sources:

Brown, Gavin. “Blindscape.”

Michigan State University, “Accessibility and Gaming.” Accessible Learning Conference.

In class, we discussed the issues of game balancing. One particular problem with thinking about balancing during development is that developers may not consider a possible action that players may take. One of the examples brought up is in Fullerton’s example in Game Design Workshop, where a multiplayer first-person shooter game presents a problem where players are spawn killed by opposing players. I think a lot of this problem depends heavily on the objective of the game they are playing. 

The solutions illustrated may have their respective cons reduced or nullified based on the objective of the game. One of the solutions offers a way where areas that players spawn are protected, with one of the cons being that players can still wait further outside the protected areas to kill the recently spawned players. For example, in League of Legends, while not an FPS game, does have a solution against spawn killing in the early- and midgame, which is that the area in which the player spawns is so far removed and protected from the enemy players that there is no realistic way to spawn camp in the early- or mid-game without the risk of the attempted spawn killing player dying themselves with little to no reward. By the late-game, many of these protections may be destroyed, reducing the risk of spawn-killing. However, when the game comes to the point where the protections are destroyed to the point where players can effectively camp outside the spawn point, the team with its protections destroyed has already effectively lost the game in all other aspects besides kill scores, and has a very low chance of making a comeback.

In a video we watched, one of the developers at Riot Games talks about the struggle of balancing playable characters for both experienced and inexperienced players. I think this is a positive point of view to have, as it signals and effort in trying to avoid the gatekeeping of “noobs” in other games due to the learning curve and creates a community where professional “hardcore” gamers are overvalued, while players who do not fit that mold are looked down upon. 

Sources:

“Chapter 10.” Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, by Tracy Fullerton, CRC Press, 2019.

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

This week in class, we had our group projects playtested by another group, and gathered information from the play session. In our reading of Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop, it was emphasized that playtesting was not just to let others play our games and gather feedback at the end of our game development, but that it is a constant thing that must be performed throughout our game development. This is to make sure that our game meets goals and visions that the team has in mind with how the player experience should be while playing the game. The sample of playtesters to be used is also an important thing when playtesting our game. Fullerton discusses that the ideal playtesters would be people who are the target audience of our game, as we would get more meaningful feedback from people who would actually buy our game as opposed to people who would probably not bother playing our game outside of a playtesting environment.

During our playtesting, we were able to pick up some notable flaws in some of our rules, and opted to change them before our submission. One of the flaws we ran into was the fact that some of the cards did not respond to a lot of cards in the deck, but the number of these niche cards were disproportionately high in the deck. This caused players to have a lot of cards that they couldn’t play for several turns. As a result, we decreased the numbers of some of the niche cards, as well as expanded the functionality of some of them to allow them to react to more cards. Overall, the group that playtested our game liked the gameplay and the overall premise of the game.

However, because our game was an analog card game, we could not get a completely accurate reference for how our game would have done if we could allow the players to play the game in person. This is because we as developers had to constantly be part of the gameplay process, because we used video streaming to allow the players to “play” the game, and we had to constantly explain what each card does because the video quality made the description of the cards too blurry for the players to remember what each card does.

Sources:

Fullerton, Tracy, et al. Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games.

In Scott Benson’s presentation about the game Night in the Woods, where he discussed the process of design behind the game, he mentioned the use of nostalgia in its style and themes. The use of nostalgia has been proliferant in today’s culture, from decade-old references to utilizing art and aesthetics from a time period a few decades back. In games, a lot of games developed independently use a pixel art style both for the nostalgic value that reminds one of older games as well as the ease of use due to its limited nature. 

In his presentation on Night in the Woods, Benson mentions designing the game based on the punk culture that he was a part of, and how there were very few games around that type of culture. He also mentions the lack of games that have Western Pennsylvania as a setting. This brings to mind the fact that there are groups that are not represented in a lot of games, or are not the focus of the games’ story or themes. The decision to go against the age old grain to represent groups not frequently represented can be seen as a rejection of nostalgia at the same time. In Benson’s presentation, he also specifically mentions that the game addresses the dangers of nostalgia in spite of its allure. 

In the game Night in the Woods, the themes of nostalgia are present in how the story focuses on Mae returning to her hometown after being away in college, and seeing how the town has changed and stayed the same. Mae is treated with familiarity by residents of the town, and she often points out memories made from places and things that she encounters while back at her hometown. However, there is a darker undertone and a feeling of alienation, due to the fact that she has been away for some time. Nostalgia by itself is exclusionary, as it puts things from the past in a disproportionately positive light, and portrays things in the modern day as inferior to the past. This is obviously problematic, as no time period, past or present, can be seen as objectively 100% superior from one or the other.

Sources:

Benson, Scott, director. Nuke Possum Springs: A Night in the Woods Design Postmortem. Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzhe45Q8780.

In class, we discussed a lot about the dynamics of gameplay, and how changes and variances in game information and rules can affect a player’s playing experiences. For example, Wright brings up the concept of mapping, where players respond to boundaries either introduced by the game itself or by other players. While boundaries can be seen as limiting, these boundaries can also give emergence to a variety of strategies that players may come up with in order to work in tandem to these boundaries. Emergent gameplay, where new changes or possibilities are discovered within the game as the playtime progresses, also serve to keep players on their toes, giving them or taking away mechanics they can work with, and as a result springing forth new strategy possibilities. 

Having a game that can introduce changes into its system may create a more enjoyable gaming experience overall. In competition-driven games, this keeps the gameplay from becoming monotonous and forces the player to be alert and continue to adapt to the changing phases of the game. In story-driven games, this is useful in hammering in the stakes or weight of a scene or a consequence of a player’s choice within the story, and they can be useful in combination in adding to the surprise of a twist. 

I think in some games, the developers also strive to constantly change the feel of the gameplay and the strategy through consistent patches and introduction of new agents. This, I feel, is to prevent the game from falling into a state where players eventually only start playing the “best” strategy, making gameplay stale and invariant between games. In League of Legends, new characters are regularly introduced, as well as large yearly patches where new gameplay rules are introduced to throw off the mainstream strategies that were established in the past year.

Some games thrive on players actively seeking out all the possibilities that exist within the game. One particular game I can think of is Undertale, where a multitude of videos exist of players and fans documenting all the ways the game changes based on specific actions they take, some of which seem to be very specific and obscure.

I feel that I’ve learned a lot about how emergent gameplay works and can be utilized to create greater freedom and impactful actions for players. 

Sources:

Wright, Will, director. Dynamics for Designers. Vimeo, 2003, vimeo.com/193267720.

The use of dramatic elements in games serve to create emotional stakes between the player and the game. Both implicit and explicit elements may be used to convey drama within a game. 

In class, we used various playing cards to create a story merely through the pictures and descriptions displayed on the cards. However, the story is not created explicitly through the written word. Rather, our imaginations are used to craft the story implied through the way the cards are laid out. This kind of implicit storytelling can also be employed in other games, such as Monopoly, where one’s imagination can craft a story through the events of the game and the interaction with the other player. In cases like these, the dramatic elements are crafted through the players themselves. However, explicit elements are also present, shown through the different pictures and descriptions depicted on the cards that invoke reactions from players.

We also played through the game Virginia, which explicitly conveys a story of women of color characters working in a white male dominated workplace. Dramatic elements include the conveying of ambiguity through the lack of dialogue, sudden jump cuts, and dream sequences. These elements are crafted through the developers and conveyed to the players. Even so, because of the mystery conveyed through the elements introduced in the game, there are still some implicit dramatic elements created by the player themselves. The lack of dialogue and use of jump cuts serve to create vague moments that allow the players to interpret scenes and ponder on hidden meanings that the game might be trying to convey. Interpretations can vary wildly between different players, and these interpretations may make different players view different themes, messages, or characterizations from one another. As such, despite many events of the story being determined by the developers, some parts of the story still employ the use of the player’s interpretation to create implicit elements within the story.

Our exercises and observations of dramatic elements in games emphasized the use of player interpretation to add drama to games. Implications are created by the developer for the player to ponder about, and ultimately, the point of drama lies within the player’s own interpretation of the story and scenes presented to them.

Sources:

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

The design of narrative in games has always had a different feel for me than how narrative is designed for other fictional media. I feel that while other fictional mediums tend to put the story as the most important piece to tell, many games instead emphasize the setting as equally or more important than the story. Worldbuilding in games tend to follow different practices from traditional fictional media.

This seems to follow the idea of spatial stories and environmental storytelling, where the worldbuilding is more important than the narrative (Jenkins). In addition, the presentation of the worlds in these types of games tend to be more passive, where players need to actively talk to NPCs and interact with objects in the world in order to learn more about it. However, it is not necessary to interact with anything not essential to the story or to understand the world to reach the end of the game and essentially “beat the game.” Essentially, a large part of the worldbuilding serves to flavor the mechanics of the game. However, those who seek out to learn more of the world are rewarded by being active on their part. An example that I can think of is Pokemon, where the player’s main goal is to become the champion, and to defeat some of the evil teams along the way. However, there are also several side quests and post-game content that is not necessary for the player to control, but can if they so desire. A lot of the NPCs within the game also has some kind of unique dialogue that gives background to the settings in the game.

In some games with a more strictly linear narrative, they tend to feature only one path through the story, a lot of the background follows more traditional storytelling methods where the backgrounds are often given to the player. These seems to follow Jenkins’s idea of enacting stories, where the player can participate in performing and witnessing the story as if they were there. If it is a game where the player can move around in the world, the path that the player must take is largely fixed. However, the freedom that the player has in pacing out the reveal of story beats still gives a sense of exploration and freedom not allowed in other mediums. An example I can think of is Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide, which we played in class, where a large part of the narrative given to the player is linear, to the point that the narrator himself controls a lot of the player’s freedom over the game, such as making the player skip the maze. However, the player can still have freedom in pacing, such as if the player chooses to read all the comments in one of Coda’s games.

In class, we played Half Life 2, which uses a bit of both ideas. The player controlled character is able to freely move around and interact with characters to learn about the world. In addition, talking to important characters in the story does not prevent the player from continuing to freely move around. However, the game also has a set path that they must follow to access the next stage of the story.

Sources:

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” Electronic Book Review, 7 Oct. 2004, electronicbookreview.com/essay/game-design-as-narrative-architecture/.

While many video games exist today where the themes and rhetorics can be easily found in its narrative, the mechanics of games can also be a key factor in deriving rhetoric. In class, we played a variety of board and card games where themes can be derived from the mechanics. For example, my group and I played a Bob Ross game where it emphasized completing paintings quickly and having possession of a variety of art supplies as vehicles towards gaining victory. Thus, it is easy to derive from the game themes emphasizing the importance of speed and resource control. 

In addition, while most analogue games lack an active story with fleshed out characters to derive emotional stakes from, players will still find themselves invested emotionally during playtime. Players will experience both positive and negative emotions from events that happen in the game, usually events that set them back or put them ahead. These emotions are triggered by the mechanics of the games.

Games exhibit structures where each component of its structure is interrelated to other components (Fullerton, 42). As such, while video games can have more fleshed out narratives, I believe that more effort can be put into a lot of these video games where the mechanics are more interrelated to the narrative. The mechanics of a video game should be able to express the themes of the game’s premise as well as the narrative that surrounds it. In some games, I feel that narrative acts more like icing on the top rather than something that is baked into the structure of the game, such as games where the majority of storytelling is relayed through cutscenes. There also seems to be a lot of games where having the narrative take center-place means having simplified gameplay. This can be seen in games dubbed “walking simulators.” 

While I don’t think every game needs complex mechanics, I think it could still be exciting to see a game where the gameplay mechanics also express elements of the narrative and vice-versa. In board and card games, I feel that, while the narrative that surrounds them are more simplistic, the narrative is baked into the mechanics of the games themselves, while I think the opposite is more common in video games. 

Sources:Fullerton, Tracy. “The Structure of Games.” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th ed.

With the rise of Twine to create interactive media, there has been debate over what is and isn’t a “real game.” Although I see Twine media as something akin to a game, there are others that believe otherwise. For sure, when many people discuss games and even genres of games, many games of specific mediums or platforms tend to be left out in these discussions due to the fact that they believe those games of a certain type “do not count”. What can and can’t be defined as games have always been fuzzy. Is it the amount of visuals involved? The amount of interactive freedom given to the user dictated as the “player?” The competitive component? Many media classified as games can be negative for one of the above questions (i.e. Detroit: Become Human lacks a competitive component), and media that are debated to be games can be positive for all of them (as per the Twine example, many Twine-based RPGs are positive for all three questions). In my opinion, if the creator believes that what they have created is a game, then it should count as such. 

In addition, while some media are classified as “games”, they are seen as inherently inferior based on the medium or platform of the game. Games designed to be played in browser or mobile platforms are often looked down upon as only for “casual” people and games of good quality cannot be found there. Although, as someone who frequents these platforms, I would debate otherwise, as I have found many enjoyable games through those platforms.

The desire from groups of people to count out media as “real games” and the exclusion of “inferior” games in discussions seem synonymous with Lorde’s accounts in “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” She discusses her experiences in the Black community where lesbian women are seen as anti-Black because lesbianism is seen as a “white women’s problem” (Lorde, 8). This can be seen as synonymous to some people excluding Twine games as “real games” as well as the exclusion of games of certain mediums and platforms, such as browser and mobile games, in genre discussions such as indie games. While these games may be different from the popular definition of games, it is still important to include them in gaming discussions to include a new point of view.

Sources:Lorde. Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. Sister Outsider.