In this week’s lecture we kind of wrap up our group project by submitting a team evaluation form. In Tuesday’s class, we focus on three parts of a game design process today, functionality, completeness, and balance. For example in class today we talk about the spawning position of the player after they died in the game, it is an important aspect to discuss about when designing a game. For example in a first-person shooting game, like in CrossFire this game when you died you will respawn in your own base with 5 second time period that you are invulnerable because someone can just snipe you or hide behind you in your own base. The same concept can also be seen in the game League of Legends you respawn in your own base when you died and there exist an overpowered turret can dramatically kill the enemy champion if they try to dive in the pool and kill you in the base. In the second part of the class we watch a youtube video called “Balancing League of Legends for every player, from Bronze to bengi” In this video, It talks about how different it will be if they try to balance the game for top tier players vs low tier players. It’s a hard job to balance a game when the difference between a pro player and low-leveled is too huge.  But there is still different aspects we can focus on when we try to make a change. From the character aspect, the overpowered heroes or their passive, abilities can be counted if you spend time studying the game and understand their weaknesses. And also another aspect to consider is that if the game designer makes the abilities are hard to execute, only the top tier players will be interested in doing that, the low tier players still trying to learn and understand how to play the game better. There are so many other minor things it talks about in the videos such as strong window power, this allows the players that in a short period of time is more powerful than other teams, this can also be an aspect to think about when balancing a game. One example of this is that there is a monster called Baron if your team kills it, you will get a buff for your whole team to grant you extra power for a short period of time. Throughout this video, I really learn a lot about the perspective of a designer. Right now when I play the same game I have a different feeling now, I look deeper than just playing the game. I think about is it balanced, right now I will spend time to look at the patch notes riot post out, to see what changes they make for the current patch. And through those changes, I take my time to think about why they make those changes.

On this Tuesday in game design class first, we talk about the different usage of player perspective in games. For example, there is a top-down perspective that also can be described as a God-like perspective. Mostly is used in strategy games in this particular game playstyle the player usually needs to build up armies or buildings. Which in this case it makes sense for the game designer to use the top-down perspective allow the player to have a better angle and perspective to oversee what is going on throughout the whole map. Some times the camera angle will change during the gameplay depends on what the game designer what to show the player. For example in league of legends, there is one champion name Jhin when he uses his ultimate perspective will change, allow him to snipe the enemy champion on a wider top-down perspective compare to the normal top-down perspective we have when we normally play league of legends. Another point we can talk about for camera angle this topic is probably the game designer want the player to feel they are immersed in the environment they play in. We want to let the player feel like he is the character he is controlling right now. Another usage for camera angle is that in a horror game the camera angle is limited when you can not see a lot of things, it makes you feel fear because you will never know what kind of things or event will pop out from nowhere. Later on, we watch a video in class it’s related to a game called night in the woods. In the “Night in the woods” this game, the character stays the same throughout the design process. The game designer which also is the artist of the character have the relationship relate to the character. In the video, the talk about this game is based on their personal experience. So when we watch the live stream gameplay in-game there is a lot of conversation going on between the character we are playing and other characters in the game. Which the author of the game try to let us understand the background story of night in the woods this game. The personal experience the game designer had is when they were in their 20s right now they are in their 30s they have time to reflect and think back those experience and put them in night in the woods. Overall this game is very unique it’s personal to the game designer, and as players, we understand more stories about the designer background as we play through the game.

This week in the class we talk about two topics. The first one is system dynamics. The second one is the information systems of games. In class, we look through games on the slides, and we try to identify what elements is in that game to guide us through to discover the space and environment of the game. For example in league of legend there is a mini-map on the left-hand side bottom corner for us to see where are we at right now in the game. Also in class, this week 3 of our classmates stream the Fornite game and play in front of the class. It is interesting to talk about Fornite this game, the space of the game will keep getting smaller and smaller as the game progress through time. And one other interesting thing we find is it may seem like it is a survival third-person shooting game at the beginning. But this game also has the other aspect when playing this game. Which is you can collect material and later on use them to build up building for hiding or attacking.  The system dynamic in Fornite plays a huge role. Without keeping shrinking the battlefield and if the player can not collect things and build up things from those resources. This game will just be a normal third-person shooting game. It is very interesting to see that if you change one aspect of a game as a game designer. The play style of a particular a game and the feeling message the game tries to tell the player will be totally different messages. Fornite this game gives the player a feeling like you are really on a battlefield, and you are forced to act, can not just keep hiding in one spot, because the map will shrink throughout the time. In the future, as we design games, we need to think about the system dynamics of a game, because you will never know what kind of interesting game will be designed when you just changing one aspect. For the information system of the game, it is important that can give the player some kind of ideas about what is going on in the game. For example when my classmates are playing Fortnite before the map starts shrinking there will be a timer running down and you will see a circle in the minimap. Without this kind of things the newer player of the game will get lost and confused, need a longer period of time to figure out how the game works.

In the last game design class we talk and play test about the topic of team based game. First class of the week we get into our groups and play a team based board game together with the people that we have to do the team project on, so we can get familiar with our own group and to figure out how to play the game we pick as a group. Our focus this week is about team game we have see three types of game, the first game is a board game, the second game we watched the gameplay video clip on youtube as a class together, but didn’t get a chance to play it, the third game is called Overwatch. In this three games the game play style is different but there are some common points. It all required time to understand the background skillset of a particular character or a particular race, these kind of game reminds me of a game called Warcraft 3 the frozen throne, because in this game we need to understand a particular hero’s skillset and it’s different passive, just like in Fire Emblems for the archer is good to hide behind the bushes and for the tank, stay in the front line. On Thursday when we play Overwatch in class together, some of the person is their first time to play the game, just like me, so I was lost when I get into the game, I don’t know the ability of the hero I am playing and we have no communication no strategy. But I believe if we spend some time to understand the skillset of the hero, and the map objective of how to win the game. We will have a better player experience, One thing I found out is that for team playing game, communication is so important, and everyone need to be on the same page. If one of the person don’t want to win the game, we will probably have a huge chance to lost the game. and I found out maybe it will be good to have a voice system like Dota or league of legends, when we can communicate with our own teammate in live. But at the same time people may abuse it, to become toxic talk, I think in this part league of legends really do a good job, you can only talk to the person that is in your party when you queue up for a match. You can not communicate with random people, it prevent the situation that talk toxic words verbally to the people you don’t know.

In this weeks class we introduced a cool concept dramatic element, in the activity we try to add create the story line and drama, using a card game we bring in for class. In our group we have 2 set of card game one is the Pokemon cards, the other one is UNO. We using the cards we have in both card game to create a background story. For example for the UNO game we have numbers and the power cards. We choose 9 to be the highest rank and the idea is every other number from 1 to 8 is trying to use the plus four card or plus two card to reach the higher rank, and also we have the reverse card, So once we used that card, the rank system is reversed, one become the highest rank and nine become the lowest rank. After create the story for UNO, this card game is still play the same way as usual, but it adds a little bit taste to it, when we play through the game we will think about the story behind it. I realized most of the things we come up with the card game we have, it’s based on our culture, things we been play before, things we been watched or experienced. Later on we bring up another interesting material, we watch a short youtube video it’s called if UNO was an anime. This video draw an attention to me because by watching this video it let me see the style of anime, and I never know that in anime the thing they do is mostly exaggerated.

After play test the game I design for the individual project, this Monday me and my friend is talking about how can we improve this game, make it more playable, balance and enjoyable. Last week on Thursday we play test our game with classmates, the feedback I got from them is, the concept of the game is good, in my game there are action cards which can play the player switch allegiance. One example is that if you are a wolf someone can use an action card called “repent” and you will turn to sheep and become on God’s side now no longer on Devil’s side. One thing that people in the class bring up when play testing the game is that there are two many action cards, people can just abuse it, keep changing a players allegiance, and later on the player will get confuse about which side should I fight for.

There are two new things I discuss about with my friend, first one is we can borrow the concept from UNO, instead of having too much action cards, in UNO the number of wild cards, reverse and skip is limited that’s what make them special and powerful, because not everyone have the access to it.

The other concept I get is similar to one thing we learn from playing “Virginia” the past Tuesday. In the game the player is being guided with the story line. Can not explore the things around if it is not meant to be shown. The concept I get from discuss with my friend is that we come up with a new play style, we increase the number of wolf and decrease the number of sheep. And with the limited number of action cards. The amount of wolf is double the amount of sheep. So when the game goes on it forces the wolf to do actions. As the Game Designer we forces the game to go this way, this is another approach when designing the game.

On the lecture on Tuesday, in our small group we have to come up with a game related to the topics we come up in the class. The topic we choose is pay to win, loot boxes and micro transactions.

We come up with a Vision Document during the class time. It consist of 5 parts. First part is Overview/goals, second part is Team Members/Roles, third part is Tools/Software/Materials, And the fourth part is deliverables.

For Overview/goals we create a shooting game like Cross Fire/CS-GO that address the issue of pay to win/loot boxes/micro transactions. For team Members/Roles, Timothy is the Software Developer, Pang is the UI/UX Designer, Nick is the audio Designer, Rick is the animation Artist

For the tools/software/materials we use Unity, Sound equipments and recorders and any softwares needed to design the visual or the game

For the Deliverables it is a shooting game that is similar to CS-GO. It also has ranking system with XP and players can get better weapons, of course without paying more. Players can get cooler skins by paying.

We also have an asset-list for our game. External part we have software developers, audio developers, visual Developers, animation artists and computers and related to program the game or design visual. For the internal part we have the character, gun/weapons, playgrounds or maps, UI layouts including user profile, Scoreboards/Ranking system, Matching making system, shop or marketplace(micro transactions), Settings and login system.

Also on the individual game project. I came up with a paper prototype have card boards with different characters, skill cards. Right now my main goal before next Thursday is to have a neat looking board game and find my friends to play test it, write down the feedback from the players and ready to improve the game play, character, skills card, over all game play style based on the player feedback.

On Thursday’s lecture, we brain storm about the topic we want to do for our individual project. I come up with an idea from a parable in the bible. It’s called the parable of the wandering sheep, it’s from Matthew 18:10-14 

10“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. [11] ^a12“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

So I take the idea from the parable Jesus speaks. It’s easier to let people understand the character of God through parable. God is the shepherd, we are the sheep, and satan try to kill the sheep’s. The message I try to convey to the player through the game is, God’s love is unconditional, if he have 100 street sheep, he will leave the 99 sheeps and try to find the one lost sheep back.

So the game play is similar to a board game called Secret Hilter, they have two parties one is called Fascist the other one is called Liberal, in my game it’s God and Satan. For God’s side to win you need to save all the sheeps, for Satan side to win you just need to kill one sheep.

One question I encounter right now is, how to make this game balance, either you have special card for god’s side example: prayer, devotional time, or in other sense I got the idea from the game called queers in love at the end of the world, the main message of that game is try to let the player feel that there in only 10 seconds left to make a decision. For my game there is a message I want to convey to the player too, God is overpower Satan, but at the same time God has more responsibility, he needs to save every sheep. I could have two choice, either design the game make it balance and we could play fairly, or I could just make the game unbalance, unfair to clearly show the player the message of “God overpower Satan”.

On the Tuesday lecture one interesting point is we went through a tool called twine, it’s a hands on web application that allow us to learn how to create our own game. One interesting game created from twine is called queers in love at the end of the world, it’s created by Anna Anthropy, be honest with you guys, I never though that a game can be this creative, at the beginning I was so confuse about this game, we have a ten minute timer on the clock running down, and on the player experience part, we feel rushed when playing this game, we really got the real feeling of we only have 10 seconds in our life and we have to make quick choices, it will be the first choice that came up in our mind with in our conscious. And we learn that by setting up constraints in the game such as, 10 second timer, really have a huge impact on the mechanics of the game.

Later on in the class we have a chance to choose a board game to play with our classmates. We choose Catan, we look though some procedural rhetoric of the board game. For example we figure out that in Catan, roll of dice represent the unpredictable circumstances of life, you can not control what resources you getting anytime, but there is another aspect, you can place your settlement on the resources that with high probability so you can get the most distinct resources you get, also when you rolled the number 7 on dice you can rob someones resources, this play style makes the game fair, prevent one player from overpowering one certain resources.