Now that I got your attention, some announcements:
1) Game Sharing Day!
Is this saturday Feb 1. My opportunity to let you guys play/see the games I plan to discuss in the coming class days, as well as a chance for all of us to share some of the other games we've used as examples to the rest of our classmates.
So if you have a laptop or USB drive full of games, or maybe a DS or PSP, or some board/card games, or whatever else you want to analyze, ask about, play with your classmates or just exude your fanboy/fangirl energies about, bring them this sat!
The tuesday/friday classes are welcome to join in as well (since this friday jan 31 is a holiday). I'll be in school all day (room 1115 in the morning, and 818/817 in the afternoon).
I'll still be checking attendance for the wed/sat people, by the way.
2) About the Jan 28/29 paper submission:
My apologies, I probably wasn't too clear with what exactly was supposed to be discussed in this one; some people submitted essays that were meant more for the questions posted here in this blog.
Anyway, lemme straight up post here the guidelines for the Dramatic Elements paper essay (at most 5 pages):
Pick a game.
-A quick summary of what the game is about, how it's played.
-Is there a premise or backstory? How is this revealed in the game? (Through cutscenes? Text windows and spoken dialogue? Sound effects and music? A particular set of rules and procedures?)
-What's the challenge being presented? What skills are demanded from the player, and how are they used in the game (ex. the ability to strategize, the ability to spot color & space patterns, the ability to bluff)? What feedback does the game use to let him know of his progress/success/failure(visuals, sound effects, a big ol' "YOU FAIL" sign in his face)? How do the player's skills and the opposition he is presented with (be it computer opponents or other players) progress/escalate, and how is the balance between them maintained (if it isn't balanced, why not?)? Discuss the formal elements that help to enforce these.
-What's the potential for play? (what kind of play can happen in the game? in what ways can a player approach the game? ) Discuss the formal elements that allow for these to happen.
AKA What dramatic elements can be found in your game of choice?
I'll leave it to your own judgement. If you feel that what you gave me on Jan 29 doesn't match the above, feel free to submit a new piece. I'll give you guys till Wed, Feb 5 to resubmit your papers if you need to.
Refer to the Dramatic Elements recap post if you need a reviewer to help with this.
3) Blog comment deadline?
Some people have asked, what's the deadline for making the comment in the blog posts?
I clarify it now, you have until the Midterm to leave your comments. Any later, and I can't use them to add to your grade.
That be all for now.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
playing with dramatic elements, pt2
Pick a game. By discussing its formal elements, how does the game keep its players (the lone player/team if vs system, or all sides if multiplayer) from quitting in frustration or falling asleep with boredom? (example: how does DotA make sure that both teams still have a motive to see the game through to the end even if one side has a huge advantage over the other?)
Add your analysis in the comments!
Add your analysis in the comments!
playing with dramatic elements
2 versions of the experiment for this post, you need only answer one of them:
1) Pick a traditional 52-card deck game (pusoy dos, tong-its, etc) or a traditional playground game. Add a theme to it (backstory, premise, characters, etc). Discuss any rules changes, appearance changes, added pieces and props, etc. that will help the new game fit the theme. (examples: can Pusoy Dos be a game involving valiant knights and princesses fighting dragons and gods? can Gin Rummy be about the struggles of a SoMA student as he searches for the meaning of life? can Langit-Lupa be about Indiana Jones?)
2) Pick a movie or a book or a music track or a theatre play. How would you retell that work as a game? Focus your discussion on the formal game elements that you would use to demonstrate elements of the work (sequence and mood of events, characters and characterization, that spoilerrific death scene at the end, etc). If it's already been done before, discuss the resulting game as well, focusing on whether or not it properly captures (or even says something new about) what the original work was about. (ex: Romeo and Juliet as a dating game or an assassin's creed-style sneak fest? Frozen as a final fantasy-style RPG or a first-person shooter? Harlem Shake as an MMORPG or a realtime strategy game?)
Post your experiment in the comments!
1) Pick a traditional 52-card deck game (pusoy dos, tong-its, etc) or a traditional playground game. Add a theme to it (backstory, premise, characters, etc). Discuss any rules changes, appearance changes, added pieces and props, etc. that will help the new game fit the theme. (examples: can Pusoy Dos be a game involving valiant knights and princesses fighting dragons and gods? can Gin Rummy be about the struggles of a SoMA student as he searches for the meaning of life? can Langit-Lupa be about Indiana Jones?)
2) Pick a movie or a book or a music track or a theatre play. How would you retell that work as a game? Focus your discussion on the formal game elements that you would use to demonstrate elements of the work (sequence and mood of events, characters and characterization, that spoilerrific death scene at the end, etc). If it's already been done before, discuss the resulting game as well, focusing on whether or not it properly captures (or even says something new about) what the original work was about. (ex: Romeo and Juliet as a dating game or an assassin's creed-style sneak fest? Frozen as a final fantasy-style RPG or a first-person shooter? Harlem Shake as an MMORPG or a realtime strategy game?)
Post your experiment in the comments!
Week 2.1 review: Dramatic Elements
The Dramatic Elements of a Game:
Multimedia Elements: Visual elements like images, animations, sounds. Concept elements like premise, story, characters, written dialogue.
As with careful adjustment of a game's rules, procedures, etc, choosing the multimedia elements of the game will alter the player's experience.
"Fun", or the concept of Challenge: The state of mind where a person is truly engaged and invested in the activity that he is currently doing.
Achieved in a person through a balance between the person's skill level and the difficulty of his current task. (the so-called FLOW theory. google "Csikszentmihalyi" for more info)
high difficulty and low skill = frustration (failure is guaranteed), and the person gives up on the task.
low difficulty and high skill = boredom (success is guaranteed), and the person loses interest in the task.
a skill level that matches the difficulty of the task at hand = no true guarantee of the results (50% chance to succeed, 50% chance to fail, and subject to change due to plenty of factors, most important of which is the person himself). A much better motivation for a person to see the task through to the end.
Other parts that help produce the "challenge" and "fun" mindset:
-A person's skills are put to the test (things like calculation, spatial awareness, sense of rhythm, perception, strength, agility and flexibility, etc.)
-There is a clear goal to accomplish using the skills, and there is immediate feedback concerning the person's progress towards that goal. The consequences of any mistakes are obvious, as are the benefits of any correctly-performed task.
-The so-called Paradox of Control: a person has a sense of control over himself and his actions/skills only when the success or failure of the task at hand is clearly NOT under his control. (If all it takes for me to open a door is press a button, then it is not me who opened the door. If the door will not open unless I push it open myself, then it is I who opened the door)
The psychology of the above notes being: there is a certain pleasure to be had for a person in confirming once and for all that his skills are genuine, and the only way to do this is to pit them against something that will prove them false.
(recall all the kung-fu bad guy characters in the movies and animes, that actually LIKE it when the protagonist has a chance of winning against them)
Some signs that prove that a person has indeed achieved the FLOW state, and is indeed having "fun":
-Absolute Concentration. Nothing else on their minds, just the activity in question.
-No sense of self. Nothing else on their minds, especially not the worry of humiliation from others around them.
-Merging Action and Awareness. No need to stop and think about what to do next or how to do an action; the moment you think of it, it's done!
-No sense of time. Seems like only a few minutes have passed, when it turns out hours have already gone by. Or the reverse, a split-second action feels like it's moving forward in super-slow motion.
-The activity becomes an end in and of itself. No need to find reasons why you're still engaged in the activity or what you'll get out of it when it's finished; you are doing this Just Because.
Plug the "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" mindset into your game's players by choosing its formal elements and multimedia elements carefully!
Play: A state of mind where, in the desire or need to conform to the rules of a system (a tool, an activity, a law of nature or physics, a social setting, a game), a person nevertheless will do everything that he can do within that system, in an effort to "see just what he can get away with". Has the desirable side-effect of allowing a person to practice his own skills (by pitting them against the rules) and creating all sorts of oddball effects that, while still conforming to the rules, are completely unexpected and unpredictable.
Comes in 4 broad categories (google "Brian Sutton-Smith" for more details on this, his take on how Play works, or just observe what children do when they're playing, they be experts on the subject):
Competition: If a person can do something, he will find ways to prove that he can do it better than everyone else.
1-on-1 battles, high score tables, all sorts of contests.
Chance: If the rules dictate that the probability of an event successfully happening is very small, a person will find ways to make that event happen anyway, either by repeating the event over and over until it succeeds, or by manipulating the circumstances around the event to make it more likely to happen successfully (or more likely to fail, even). Or just placing bets on which outcome will actually happen.
Making dice roll a specific number. Using proper strategies to ensure the small army can defeat the much larger one. Shooting a pingpong ball into a paper cup. That carnival game where you catch goldfish with a paper net.
Make-believe and mimicry: If something exists, a person will find ways to duplicate it, using whatever he has on hand. If something is theoretically possible but doesn't exist, a person will find ways to make it exist, using whatever he has on hand. If something just plain CANNOT exist, a person will find ways to make it exist, again using whatever he has on hand.
Using pencil and paper to make Dragons. Using old clothes, paper plates, and acting to reenact World War 2. Charades. Pictionary. The character creator in a role-playing game. A mod that turns the badass biker player character into a badass pink octopus. Using engineering concepts to make Iron Man, and science concepts to make Captain America.
"Vertigo", aka to make oneself dizzy: If the rules say that a particular event is very disorienting, very dangerous, flat out will kill you, is completely unknown, or carries any number of negative effects, a person will find ways to bring himself as close as possible to duplicating the event (and any physical or mental effects it may bring) without doing any permanent damage to himself. That there will be no lasting damage suddenly makes a person brave enough to participate in the event; That there may be no lasting damage or that there will be no lasting damage only if the person's skills are very good is an even better motivator for some people!
Skateboarding. Hang-Gliding. Bungee Jumping. Mountain Climbing. Any of the extreme sports. That stab-a-knife-between-your-fingers-on-the-table game. Walking into a haunted house. Roller coasters. Travelling to unknown destinations. Poking an angry dog on the other side of the fence. Walking up to a lv50 monster as a lv2 character. Provoking all the cops in the city. Russian Roulette.
Any single activity can be covered by any number of the above categories.
Plug the potential for all sorts of play into your game by choosing your formal elements and multimedia elements carefully!
Multimedia Elements: Visual elements like images, animations, sounds. Concept elements like premise, story, characters, written dialogue.
As with careful adjustment of a game's rules, procedures, etc, choosing the multimedia elements of the game will alter the player's experience.
"Fun", or the concept of Challenge: The state of mind where a person is truly engaged and invested in the activity that he is currently doing.
Achieved in a person through a balance between the person's skill level and the difficulty of his current task. (the so-called FLOW theory. google "Csikszentmihalyi" for more info)
high difficulty and low skill = frustration (failure is guaranteed), and the person gives up on the task.
low difficulty and high skill = boredom (success is guaranteed), and the person loses interest in the task.
a skill level that matches the difficulty of the task at hand = no true guarantee of the results (50% chance to succeed, 50% chance to fail, and subject to change due to plenty of factors, most important of which is the person himself). A much better motivation for a person to see the task through to the end.
Other parts that help produce the "challenge" and "fun" mindset:
-A person's skills are put to the test (things like calculation, spatial awareness, sense of rhythm, perception, strength, agility and flexibility, etc.)
-There is a clear goal to accomplish using the skills, and there is immediate feedback concerning the person's progress towards that goal. The consequences of any mistakes are obvious, as are the benefits of any correctly-performed task.
-The so-called Paradox of Control: a person has a sense of control over himself and his actions/skills only when the success or failure of the task at hand is clearly NOT under his control. (If all it takes for me to open a door is press a button, then it is not me who opened the door. If the door will not open unless I push it open myself, then it is I who opened the door)
The psychology of the above notes being: there is a certain pleasure to be had for a person in confirming once and for all that his skills are genuine, and the only way to do this is to pit them against something that will prove them false.
(recall all the kung-fu bad guy characters in the movies and animes, that actually LIKE it when the protagonist has a chance of winning against them)
Some signs that prove that a person has indeed achieved the FLOW state, and is indeed having "fun":
-Absolute Concentration. Nothing else on their minds, just the activity in question.
-No sense of self. Nothing else on their minds, especially not the worry of humiliation from others around them.
-Merging Action and Awareness. No need to stop and think about what to do next or how to do an action; the moment you think of it, it's done!
-No sense of time. Seems like only a few minutes have passed, when it turns out hours have already gone by. Or the reverse, a split-second action feels like it's moving forward in super-slow motion.
-The activity becomes an end in and of itself. No need to find reasons why you're still engaged in the activity or what you'll get out of it when it's finished; you are doing this Just Because.
Plug the "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" mindset into your game's players by choosing its formal elements and multimedia elements carefully!
Play: A state of mind where, in the desire or need to conform to the rules of a system (a tool, an activity, a law of nature or physics, a social setting, a game), a person nevertheless will do everything that he can do within that system, in an effort to "see just what he can get away with". Has the desirable side-effect of allowing a person to practice his own skills (by pitting them against the rules) and creating all sorts of oddball effects that, while still conforming to the rules, are completely unexpected and unpredictable.
Comes in 4 broad categories (google "Brian Sutton-Smith" for more details on this, his take on how Play works, or just observe what children do when they're playing, they be experts on the subject):
Competition: If a person can do something, he will find ways to prove that he can do it better than everyone else.
1-on-1 battles, high score tables, all sorts of contests.
Chance: If the rules dictate that the probability of an event successfully happening is very small, a person will find ways to make that event happen anyway, either by repeating the event over and over until it succeeds, or by manipulating the circumstances around the event to make it more likely to happen successfully (or more likely to fail, even). Or just placing bets on which outcome will actually happen.
Making dice roll a specific number. Using proper strategies to ensure the small army can defeat the much larger one. Shooting a pingpong ball into a paper cup. That carnival game where you catch goldfish with a paper net.
Make-believe and mimicry: If something exists, a person will find ways to duplicate it, using whatever he has on hand. If something is theoretically possible but doesn't exist, a person will find ways to make it exist, using whatever he has on hand. If something just plain CANNOT exist, a person will find ways to make it exist, again using whatever he has on hand.
Using pencil and paper to make Dragons. Using old clothes, paper plates, and acting to reenact World War 2. Charades. Pictionary. The character creator in a role-playing game. A mod that turns the badass biker player character into a badass pink octopus. Using engineering concepts to make Iron Man, and science concepts to make Captain America.
"Vertigo", aka to make oneself dizzy: If the rules say that a particular event is very disorienting, very dangerous, flat out will kill you, is completely unknown, or carries any number of negative effects, a person will find ways to bring himself as close as possible to duplicating the event (and any physical or mental effects it may bring) without doing any permanent damage to himself. That there will be no lasting damage suddenly makes a person brave enough to participate in the event; That there may be no lasting damage or that there will be no lasting damage only if the person's skills are very good is an even better motivator for some people!
Skateboarding. Hang-Gliding. Bungee Jumping. Mountain Climbing. Any of the extreme sports. That stab-a-knife-between-your-fingers-on-the-table game. Walking into a haunted house. Roller coasters. Travelling to unknown destinations. Poking an angry dog on the other side of the fence. Walking up to a lv50 monster as a lv2 character. Provoking all the cops in the city. Russian Roulette.
Any single activity can be covered by any number of the above categories.
Plug the potential for all sorts of play into your game by choosing your formal elements and multimedia elements carefully!
Saturday, January 18, 2014
playing around with the Formal Elements
The blog post homework for the Formal Elements of a Game section:
Take a game, pick a formal element in that game, and change it up (ex: Street Fighter with 4 players in free-for-all or teams of 2, or Assassin's Creed with NO combat procedures whatsoever, or DotA without the ancient as the primary objective, or a mario game without a jump button). How do you think the gameplay will change from the original version? What other elements would you change/remove/add to accommodate this initial change? (If there are examples of actual game titles using these changes, or games that are more often played with certain changes/suggest changes right in the instruction manual, tell us about them as well)
Add your experiment in the comments!
Take a game, pick a formal element in that game, and change it up (ex: Street Fighter with 4 players in free-for-all or teams of 2, or Assassin's Creed with NO combat procedures whatsoever, or DotA without the ancient as the primary objective, or a mario game without a jump button). How do you think the gameplay will change from the original version? What other elements would you change/remove/add to accommodate this initial change? (If there are examples of actual game titles using these changes, or games that are more often played with certain changes/suggest changes right in the instruction manual, tell us about them as well)
Add your experiment in the comments!
week 1.2 review: Formal Elements of a Game
ABMA 122 peoples, leave your homework post here: pick a game, list out its formal elements.
A recap of the Formal Elements of a game discussed this jan 17/18: (a little game: try to guess which of the following examples refer to which games)
Players: How many people are playing? what's their interaction with each other?
Is it player vs player? team vs team? solo player vs team? many players vs each other? player vs system (aka single-player)? many players (not a team) vs system? team vs system?
Objective: What's the very action that you do to win the game?
Kill or tag the other player? Outrace the other player? Claim the entire board space as your own? score the most points? rescue the princess? erase the board of all the jewels on it? just stay alive for as long as possible? capture the flag? destroy the enemy's base?
Procedure: how do I go about getting to my objective? what is the primary action or actions that I can do in the game?
Do I run past the other player or tag them? Do I use letters to form words and score points? Do we take turns to roll a dice and move a number of spaces according to the dice result? Do I press the D-Pad to walk and mash buttons to attack or do special moves? Do I tilt the phone and swipe the screen to move out of harm's way?
Rules: The many other specific guidelines that must be followed for the game to work. Comes in 3 flavors:
Rules about objects and terms. Specify what the objects and terms used in the game are, and how they're used.
Who/what is the team 1 player? Who/what is the team 2 player? who/what is that mushroom/flower/odd walking mushroom with teeth? what are these little squares with letters and a small number on them? what does "check" mean? What is the "flag"? what is a "critical hit"?
Rules about restrictions. Specify what CAN be done and what CANNOT be done under which conditions.
Can I break bricks or shoot fireballs? Can I ask for two cards from the other player instead of one? can I lay down a red 9 if the last card played was a blue 6? can I use shotgun shells with the sniper rifle? can I use the str-99 weapon if i only have 98 str? can I cast the BB1 spell using BBR? Can I use the last player's short word to build a longer word? can I backtrack? the team 1 players may run anywhere, but each team 2 player blocking them may only move on a horizontal line.
Rules about effects: If 2 objects or rules interact with each other, what will be the result?
If I jump and land on the odd mushroom with teeth, the mushroom is smooshed. If a punch lands on the arm, there is a chance that the arm is crippled. If a player is successfully tagged, he becomes the new "it". If player 1 makes the ball's first bounce outside the border, player 2 gets a point.
Boundaries: The borders of the game, within which the game happens.
The agreed-upon playground space. The game board. This 52-card deck. Wuhu Island.
Resources: Anything in the game that is very useful or mandatory for a player to win the game, but is limited (can only be used a set number of times or for a limited amount of time) or hard to find, claim, or use, or all of the above.
100 coins = extra life. Extra lives. Hit Points The gold that can be earned from last hits to buy stat-boost armor. Guns, Ammo, Bombs. The 5 minutes that you may wander in peace before That Thing starts aggressively chasing you. The full-house combination in your current hand. A 2 of diamonds. The "triple word score" tiles on the board, the many 1-point "e" tiles, and the lone 10-point "z" tile. The broken wall to hide behind. Multiple team 1 players to help in distracting the current team 2 player. The power meter needed to unleash The HUEG-ASS Hyperbeam move. Your one move for this turn. The Red Lightning of Doom that has a cooldown of 150 seconds. The timer, and powerups that extend it.
Outcome: The point in the game when someone can be declared the winner or the loser. Comes in 2 flavors:
Zero-sum game: When there is a very specific "1 wins, 1 loses, game ends" outcome.
Checkmate. Your Ancient is destroyed. Your Hit points are zero, KO! Time is up, and you're still alive. Ride the flagpole at the end of the stage. Check who has the most points when the tiles are all used up.
Not zero-sum: The win conditions are a bit more flexible or non-specific, and not necessarily the end of the game proper. Often enforced by the player himself rather than the game.
Amass $9,999,999 by turn 6/16. Speedruns. To be the proud owner of the Legendary Spiked Pauldrons of Badassery. To build an exact replica of ninoy aquino's face using trees.
Conflict: Anything in the game (rules, resources, boundaries, etc) that is set up specifically to STOP the player from winning, or give him a hard time. Comes in 2 flavors:
Obstacles and Opponents: Obstacles are there specifically to get in your way or enforce a loss if left alone; Opponents are either also chasing after the same win condition as you are, or have a win condition that is directly opposite to your own; often also allowed to interfere in your efforts like obstacles do.
The other players or team. The army of mooks and their boss. The timer in the upper-right corner. That (player-controlled) Thing that wants to eat you. The alarmed car sitting right in the middle of the firefight that will summon more enemies if it is hit.
Dilemmas: Anytime that, thanks to the ways that the rules, resources, etc. interact, a tough decision must be made, where none of the answers are an obvious right answer (all have their advantages AND disadvantages).
Should I chase after that (rolling into imminent unknown danger) powerup? which gun should I pick up? shall I play my full-house now, or save it for later? which of my 3 enemies should I ally with for now, which should I attack?
A recap of the Formal Elements of a game discussed this jan 17/18: (a little game: try to guess which of the following examples refer to which games)
Players: How many people are playing? what's their interaction with each other?
Is it player vs player? team vs team? solo player vs team? many players vs each other? player vs system (aka single-player)? many players (not a team) vs system? team vs system?
Objective: What's the very action that you do to win the game?
Kill or tag the other player? Outrace the other player? Claim the entire board space as your own? score the most points? rescue the princess? erase the board of all the jewels on it? just stay alive for as long as possible? capture the flag? destroy the enemy's base?
Procedure: how do I go about getting to my objective? what is the primary action or actions that I can do in the game?
Do I run past the other player or tag them? Do I use letters to form words and score points? Do we take turns to roll a dice and move a number of spaces according to the dice result? Do I press the D-Pad to walk and mash buttons to attack or do special moves? Do I tilt the phone and swipe the screen to move out of harm's way?
Rules: The many other specific guidelines that must be followed for the game to work. Comes in 3 flavors:
Rules about objects and terms. Specify what the objects and terms used in the game are, and how they're used.
Who/what is the team 1 player? Who/what is the team 2 player? who/what is that mushroom/flower/odd walking mushroom with teeth? what are these little squares with letters and a small number on them? what does "check" mean? What is the "flag"? what is a "critical hit"?
Rules about restrictions. Specify what CAN be done and what CANNOT be done under which conditions.
Can I break bricks or shoot fireballs? Can I ask for two cards from the other player instead of one? can I lay down a red 9 if the last card played was a blue 6? can I use shotgun shells with the sniper rifle? can I use the str-99 weapon if i only have 98 str? can I cast the BB1 spell using BBR? Can I use the last player's short word to build a longer word? can I backtrack? the team 1 players may run anywhere, but each team 2 player blocking them may only move on a horizontal line.
Rules about effects: If 2 objects or rules interact with each other, what will be the result?
If I jump and land on the odd mushroom with teeth, the mushroom is smooshed. If a punch lands on the arm, there is a chance that the arm is crippled. If a player is successfully tagged, he becomes the new "it". If player 1 makes the ball's first bounce outside the border, player 2 gets a point.
Boundaries: The borders of the game, within which the game happens.
The agreed-upon playground space. The game board. This 52-card deck. Wuhu Island.
Resources: Anything in the game that is very useful or mandatory for a player to win the game, but is limited (can only be used a set number of times or for a limited amount of time) or hard to find, claim, or use, or all of the above.
100 coins = extra life. Extra lives. Hit Points The gold that can be earned from last hits to buy stat-boost armor. Guns, Ammo, Bombs. The 5 minutes that you may wander in peace before That Thing starts aggressively chasing you. The full-house combination in your current hand. A 2 of diamonds. The "triple word score" tiles on the board, the many 1-point "e" tiles, and the lone 10-point "z" tile. The broken wall to hide behind. Multiple team 1 players to help in distracting the current team 2 player. The power meter needed to unleash The HUEG-ASS Hyperbeam move. Your one move for this turn. The Red Lightning of Doom that has a cooldown of 150 seconds. The timer, and powerups that extend it.
Outcome: The point in the game when someone can be declared the winner or the loser. Comes in 2 flavors:
Zero-sum game: When there is a very specific "1 wins, 1 loses, game ends" outcome.
Checkmate. Your Ancient is destroyed. Your Hit points are zero, KO! Time is up, and you're still alive. Ride the flagpole at the end of the stage. Check who has the most points when the tiles are all used up.
Not zero-sum: The win conditions are a bit more flexible or non-specific, and not necessarily the end of the game proper. Often enforced by the player himself rather than the game.
Amass $9,999,999 by turn 6/16. Speedruns. To be the proud owner of the Legendary Spiked Pauldrons of Badassery. To build an exact replica of ninoy aquino's face using trees.
Conflict: Anything in the game (rules, resources, boundaries, etc) that is set up specifically to STOP the player from winning, or give him a hard time. Comes in 2 flavors:
Obstacles and Opponents: Obstacles are there specifically to get in your way or enforce a loss if left alone; Opponents are either also chasing after the same win condition as you are, or have a win condition that is directly opposite to your own; often also allowed to interfere in your efforts like obstacles do.
The other players or team. The army of mooks and their boss. The timer in the upper-right corner. That (player-controlled) Thing that wants to eat you. The alarmed car sitting right in the middle of the firefight that will summon more enemies if it is hit.
Dilemmas: Anytime that, thanks to the ways that the rules, resources, etc. interact, a tough decision must be made, where none of the answers are an obvious right answer (all have their advantages AND disadvantages).
Should I chase after that (rolling into imminent unknown danger) powerup? which gun should I pick up? shall I play my full-house now, or save it for later? which of my 3 enemies should I ally with for now, which should I attack?
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Welcome to GameCon!
Where we talk about games, and figure out why we like 'em so much!
And use what we've figured out to try making our own game!
So then, are there any specific games you guys would like me to discuss in the class?
Poke ze comment button downstairs, and lemme know!
And use what we've figured out to try making our own game!
So then, are there any specific games you guys would like me to discuss in the class?
Poke ze comment button downstairs, and lemme know!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
test post, 1 2 3, test post...
let us see how this works. hopefully this blog site serves as a more unified (and exclusive, no facebook-distractive other posts) means to communicate with the classes, as well as serve as an avenue for discussion among the students.
right, here's to the 1st no-computers, all concepts class!
right, here's to the 1st no-computers, all concepts class!
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