Yesterday in class, we played cooperative board games. These games pitted the players against the game rules and systems. These games are a nice change of pace from a single player story based game or a competitive multiplayer game, since we had to work together and strategize and communicate in order to win.

My group played Pandemic, a game where there are four plagues that spread throughout the world and it is our job to stop the plagues from spreading and to find cures. Each player has a different role in the game, like a dispatcher who can move other player’s pieces, or a scientist who can find a cure with one less card, and a quarantine specialist who can prevent outbreaks in cities they’re in or any neighboring cities. These roles help make the players feel like they’re contributing to the game because they can do things that other players can’t. It encourages the players to work together and use their abilities together. A dispatcher can move a quarantine specialist a couple extra spaces so an outbreak doesn’t occur, or a scientist can cure a disease early in the game so that when the medic passes through cities, they don’t need to take an action to remove the disease from the city. 

I have always enjoyed cooperative games like Pandemic because it’s approachable. Anyone can pick up the game and feel like they are playing a big part in the success of the group. A coop video game that I think does a good job at this is Borderlands. The characters that the players choose have different abilities; phase locking enemies, throwing down an exploding turret, going bezerk, the list goes on. When you play in the cooperative mode, you can pair your abilities together, like phase locking an enemy, then throwing the exploding turret at the enemy to blow them up. Like Pandemic, Borderlands is also approachable to different types of players. If you want to max out your skill tree and attach the best mods to mow down your enemies, you can min-max your character. But if you just want to explode a bunch of psychos and have fun, you can do that too.

Cooperative games require coordination and proper communication to get the most out of the game. In Pandemic, planning a few steps ahead and talking with your teammates is almost essential to beating the game. In Borderlands, communicating when to coordinate attacks and use abilities is helpful to ensure that you beat the bad guys. This communication is what helps make cooperative games so fun and so engaging.

Sources:

Pandemic, Z-MAN Games, 2007

In class on Tuesday, we discussed how we wish to create our games with our teams and then proceeded to get into groups to play a board game.  Our group played Fury of Dracula which involved one player as Dracula who secretly travels the European countries and turns humans into vampires.  The remaining players are the Hunters who must locate the Count and kill him before he can win the game. The game alone took more than an hour to read the instructions and figure out the logistics, and even after doing so, we were still slightly confused.  It really opened my eyes to this sort of perspective, because I’d always been explained the rules of a game by a friend who knew the game if I was new at playing it. I never really had to learn a new game by myself/with others by reading thoroughly through the instructions – especially a game as difficult as Fury of Dracula, so I found that interesting.  

Once we got into the game, however, our group was able to discuss more about the cooperation and teamwork involved and how this differed from other games.  The game initially reminded me of Betrayal at House on the Hill in that it had various character sheets and each one had their own “stats”/abilities.  One character, Mina’s, ability involved her being able to find out if Dracula is in the same region as she is given the fact that she is in the same city currently as another hunter.  Additionally, the fact that hunters on the same city could trade with each other and see each other’s cards shows the teamwork involved in utilizing each characters’ abilities and items.  However, Dracula didn’t have teamwork involved with his character, as we were all meant to plot against him. This differs from other board games that are often highly competitive between characters, like Trouble.  If you don’t try to work together, you will likely be at a disadvantage.  I found this interesting since a lot of the board games I’ve played have been mostly competitive.

Hand, Stephen. Fury of Dracula. Games Workshop, 1987, and Fantasy Flight Games 2006. Board Game.

In chapter 12: Team Structures of the textbook, Games Design Workshop, by Tracy Fullerton, it talks about the importance of publishers and developers. First, it is important that both parties have a good standing with one another as they will be collaborating to make a game. Game developers are the ones who make and design the games that we play. These developers can be coders, digital artists, scriptwriters, etc… For instance, a game developer could be making the characters and the map of the game while another team works on the music and sound effects. The game publisher markets and distributes the games for consumers. An example of this would be the newest Call of Duty game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The ones who marketed and published the game was the company known as Activision.

Problems may occur when game publishers get greedy and they force developers to manipulate game content for more profit. A great example would be the publishers, Electronic Arts (EA) adding gambling to their games. The game FIFA 20 is a great example of how bad some companies try to take their costumers’ money. In the game mode Ultimate Team, you are able to open what is known as FIFA packs. In these FIFA packs, you unlock players for your soccer team so you can use them to play against other people. In these packs it is unlikely that you will get a good player, so you would have to open a lot of packs to get someone good. EA has it that you can spend real money on FIFA points so you can spend it on FIFA packs.

I agree that a good relationship between the game developers and the publishers is very crucial. The gameplay and overall experience of the game can potentially be affected due to the lack of cooperation. A great example of this would be the relationship between the developers Bungie and the publishers Activision. Activision wanted to add microtransactions to the game known as Destiny, so they could maximize profits while Bungie hated the idea. In the end, Bungie parted ways with Activision and also took the rights of the game. Because Bungie left Activision, they improved the game making it a more enjoyable game for players.

Sources:

Fullerton, Tracy, and Tracy Fullerton. “Working with Dramatic Elements.” Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, CRC Press, 201

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.

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.

This week we dived deeper into dramatic elements and how they contribute to the overall experience of a game. In Fullerton’s chapter “Working with Dramatic Elements” it is mentioned that “Dramatic elements give context to gameplay, overlaying and integrating the formal elements of the system into a meaningful experience“. Some of the elements are characters, challenges, story, visuals, music, environment, premise, pace, and many more. Depending on the game, some of the elements are more emphasized than the others. For example, in games such as Dota 2, Overwatch, and Counter Strike, challenges and mechanics are the main dramatic elements that contribute to the overall experience of the games. On the hand, games such as Virginia (2016), Firewatch and The Beginner’s Guide focus more on story, visuals, environment and music instead.

This week I got to see in depth how visuals, music, environment and characters come into play as we played Virginia (2016) in class. In Virginia, we can see how the game designers use lightning, coloring, contrasts, and environment to give certain effects. One example would be using the color bright red in dreams to give this mysterious and vivid vibe. The game also starts with a dramatic music in the background and movie-like manner cut scenes that were short and quick. Last but not least, the design choice have a strong impact on the overall message and experience of the game such as having male characters as the majority or having our character silent during whole game. I think it’s interesting that most of the characters in the game are male but the ones that we can related the most are the female characters, the main character and her mother. Even though I have not played the whole game, I believe that there are good reasons behind all of these specific design choices.

Another game that comes to my mind is Batman: Arkham City. Besides progression and story line, I enjoy its uses of environment, space and dramatic music to improve the gameplay. This game is an open world game and it requires sneaking around to takedown enemies. The challenges and the open world design give this “loss of self consciousness” described in the Fullerton’s book, as I play the game.

To conclude, most of these games use story, progression, visuals, environment, music and challenges to create a game with meaningful experience. These are the important things that we need to take into account when we design our own games.

Works Cited:

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

Virginia. Variable State. Published by 505 Games. 2016. 

This week in class we played the highly narrative driven game, “Virginia”. This game continues our discussion on narrative in video games, while also showing a different kind of gameplay, more similar to a “walking simulator” or “interactive movie” type of game. The game tells the story of a newly appointed FBI agent named Anne Tarver, who is sent to Kingdom, Virginia to investigate a missing persons case, as well as investigate her partner, Maria Halperin. The game begins with a cinematic opening, showing locations throughout the game with an opening credits sequence and dramatic music accompanying the visuals. This is an interesting choice for a video game, as it makes the experience immediately feel more like a film rather than a game. Gameplay itself is pretty simple in this game, as it mostly consists of walking around as Tarver, taking in the surroundings and clicking on interactive objects to progress the story. There are no hidden collectibles, no levels, and no lives or even real danger. Everything in the game is scripted, and will happen every time no matter who is playing the game. The only variance in gameplay is how how long the player decides to take to move on with the story. In addition, the game is one fluent narrative, and has no real checkpoints or “levels” as I stated before. The game is segmented in “scenes” in the games menu, much like a DVD for a movie would display scenes. Truly, this game treats itself quite differently from other narrative driven games, such as “Half-Life”, “Portal 2”, or even “The Beginner’s Guide”. While these games each center on gameplay in a different way, a story is weaved into the experience, making for a memorable playthrough each and every time. “Virginia” is different in that it is almost a piece or art stuck between two mediums, game and film, yet still executes it story in a meaningful way. Earlier in the semester, we discussed how games can be played and what makes every game different because of these modes of play. For example, a game like “Hearthstone”, or a player versus player game, wildly varies from a game like “League of Legends”, or a team versus team oriented game. “Virginia” is hard to define, as it is a single player game, but there are no obstacles, nothing to fight against, it is just the experience you take from the story itself. It is truly something to think about when creating a game, and a narrative as a whole. Will the story benefit from being virtual? What hardships should a player face, if any? Telling a story through gameplay or environments certainly isn’t impossible, but “Virginia” certainly approaches this in a strange way.

In class this past week we have been focusing on what makes a game dramatic or what are the dramatic elements that go into a game. We discussed some things that can go into what can make certain scenes in a game dramatic or intense. One of the things was the music. Now in my opinion the music is probably what plays the biggest part in making something feel more dramatic. You know when you are in a boss fight and the music begins to speed up and change tone. It gets you amped up and ready for the fight or motivates you to do better in the fight. Or in some games when the music just abruptly stops and you are left with just the sound effects of the game or an eerie humming noise. That really builds tension. Another factor that plays into it is setting. The setting of the environment or the play area can build up tension and make a scene in a game dramatic. The combination of these two things along with just a dramatic narrative of course makes for good tension filled scenes in games or just games in general. We started playing a game in class called Virginia and in this game there is no dialogue just music, sound effects, and visuals. It’s a detective, mystery, type game and it’s filled with a lot of intense dramatic moments. For example there is one scene in the game where you are dreaming and begin to wonder around and you see things from that day in your dream overlapping and at the end of your dream you’re in a car with the director of the FBI driving until you hit your partner with car. The scene cuts before you hit her, but the abrupt stopping of the music and cutting to black makes you sort of jump a little. 

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.

Dramatic elements within a video game is something that is very important to the success of the game itself.  It is the very thing that keeps the players interested, invested, and excited about the game. Within the chapter “Working with Dramatic Elements”, it is mentioned that challenge is very important when it comes to game design.  In the chapter it says, “For a person who does not have any of the skills a task requires, it is not challenging, but meaningless.  For a person who has the skills but is not completely assured of the outcome, a task is challenging” (99).  I think it is important to understand that you cannot just throw a whole bunch of random challenges at the player throughout a game and expect it to have a meaningful and dramatic effect.  Those challenges have to make sense and hold meaning within them on their own.  If there is a challenge within a game that requires a high level of skill to complete, then that is motivation for the players to keep playing the game until they master that skill and overcome the challenge.  There are many games that have kept me interested in playing just because it requires certain skills that I am interested in getting better at.  The Last of Us was a game where sneaking around was a huge challenge and required skill to do so.  I was never really exposed to that specific style of playing prior to the game, so it was extremely challenging for me to get use to at first.  Because that challenge was reoccurring, and the skill of sneaking was very necessary, it drove me to want to be better and keep playing the game until I was able to successfully sneak past enemies. This took me a few tries to get right, but to me that was where the fun was.  If the enemies were super easy to kill, then sneaking would just be an unnecessary mechanic.  Overall the game would be more lackluster and too easy to get through. To me challenge and skill are what makes games exciting, regardless of if there is a narrative or good graphics or neither.

Work Cited

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