design idea wk 9 — fairytale

The game that I plan to retell is The three little pigs. The game I design will give the players choice to be pig mother/little pigs/wolf. The story will start as the original three little pigs, where the pig mum tells the three little pigs to leave home. Then as pig mother, she needs to help little pigs to build protections/alarm to detect the wolf coming, like setting out traps on the path to the houses. When either the pigs/wolf win, the tower defence game of mum also finishes. For the little pigs, they will have a totally different style of game. They will be given some amount of money. Instead of building their own house,they need to inspect houses build in the street and decide which one to buy, just like in real world real estate buying. The money they hold is only enough to buy a straw house plus some protection, which may be not enough and too easy to be eaten by the wolf. If the pigs want to get more money, then they need to work. Or if they don’t want to work, then they can speculate/invest. For example, they can buy a cheap house, refurnish it and sell it off to earn money. Or they can buy in the share market and hope that it goes up and they can earn money. No matter what, the wolf is scheduled to come at the 15th day. So they need to buy a house before then. If they don’t they will be immediately eaten by the wolf. The computer wolf will choose the weakest pig to attack first, then next day the second weakest, and third day strongest. Wolf can only lodge one attack per day, and it will have some limited attempts on one pig, say three attempts. If after three attempts the wolf still cant kill the pig, the pig win and the game finish. For the wolf, before the 15th day, it can go and track down pig mum, so she wouldnt be able to build protection/trap to help the pigs. Or it can go to gym to keep fit, so it can make stronger attack and has a higher chance of eating the pigs. The game finishes for wolf when it eats up all the pigs/unable to kill the pig after the limited attempt.

journal wk 9 — interactive fiction

I played the four games given. Honestly I do not enjoy them that much. They are clearly replayable, because the results turn out to be different based on the decisions I made, but the point is that after I play it for the first time, I do not have interest to play with it for the second time. It’s probably because I just do not quite enjoy these kinds of game. For one of them, I think it was Aisle, no matter which decisions I made, I always end up walking away, which is not fun at all. And when I played Facade, it was ok at the beginning, but when the husband and wife started to quarrel with each other, and ask for my opinion, I just don’t know what to do. No matter what I said, they would never stop. And there is no hint on what they want me to say, so I just stand there and type random message in. And the game turn out to be never end. May be it is because I am not those people who can calm people down. On the other hand, I do appreciate how Facade recognise the message that players type. They seem to interpret the message pretty correctly, which is kind of amazing. It is annoying if they allow us to type own message but then not being able to recognise it. So I think Facade has done fairly good in this message interpretation area. Overall speaking, I think I only replay Aisle for twice, then for others, I just can’t be bother to replay.

Design idea wk8: a social game

My game is a simple bidding game. Basically every player starts up with a fixed amount of coins/money/credit, say 100. Then there are a number of lands for them to fight for. The number of lands can vary with the number of players, say if there are two players, then 5 pieces of land is good enough. Each land stands for one round of bidding. Each round has a limited time for decision, each person needs to place how many coins they will use to bid for that piece of land. Players can strategically place zero coin for one land, if they want to save up coins for later lands.After all players place bid, bid prices are revealed and the one bidding with most coins win that piece of land. If more than one player place the highest bid, then the land is neutral and does not belong to anyone. After all lands are bid, the player who own the most land win the game.

Journal wk8: mafia

Mafia is basically a competition between truth-telling people and liar. The game is fun because there is information asymmetry. While the mafias know each other, the commoners don’t. The only way to tell is by guessing. And the social fun comes in when people start accusing each other, and giving funny accusing reason, eg.”I accuse you because you accuse me”. Unlike other games, Mafia is still enjoyable even after you get killed. In fact, you get even more fun when you know who are the mafias but seeing the villagers debating on killing innocent people. For the mafias to win, they need to be good liar so no one would suspect them. And for the commoners to win, they need to be good mind reader, or know the players well. Say if a commoner is a good friend of the mafia, s(he) would have noticed some little habits or behaviour of the mafia, hence being able to tell if s(he) is nervous/lying. There is a dramatic fun on revealing the identity of the killed person, to know whether they have killed the right person. Another kind of fun comes in when villagers start killing more innocent people. When more and more innocent people get killed but no mafia is caught, the rest of the group will feel more anxious as the ratio of mafia to innocent population gets higher, and they know if they keep killing innocent, eventually they will lose the game.

If there is a cop role, then a good strategy is as follows. Giving the cop a few rounds for him to inspect few people, then at some point, someone should ask the cop to come out. If the cop is not dead yet, then s(he) should stand up and tell the rest who is suspicious and the villages will get lots of information. But the cop is risking her/his life to it. Of cause the mafias can pretend to be the cop and stand up. In that case, we will have more than one cop, but still you can limit down the number of suspects. This strategy involves corporation between villagers and they must agree not to lie. If one of the villagers lie and pretend to be the cop, then this strategy will break.  And I guess a general way of guessing would be put yourself into the mafia’s shoes and guess what they are thinking, that would helps too. (Note: I caught Yin in the tut using this strategy,wakaka~~~)

Mafia can be made an online game, in fact it has been already. I will describe an example of playing mafia using MSN. All players including the moderator should open up a common conversation where everyone will states their accusation and vote in that chat box. The moderator gives each person a role and tell them on a private chat box. Then moderator opens up another common chat box with the mafias, and mafias vote who to kill in that chatbox. And the moderator should open another chat box with the cop,just for inspection. At the beginning of everyday, the moderator will reveal in the large common chat box who is killed by the mafia.

Reflection Wk 6: Player-centred design

Personally I am more on Raph Koster‘s side than on Ernest and Adams’s side. I do agree with Ernest and Adam that designers have the obligation entertain and empathize, but not to the degree that designers should give up creative ideas if the vision is incompatible with entertaining the player. The industry needs creative ideas, not the same game idea in 10 different games. Sure every gamer has his own preference on game type, but just because someone is more into shooting game does not mean he cannot enjoy in other types of game. Who knows what will happen if he is introduced with other type of games? May be he will like it?We try to think like the players, guess what they like, but we are not exactly them. We will not know whether a new creative idea will work unless we let the players experience  it.  All I want to say is, we should not give up on our creative ideas just because it seems not fit with the goal of entertaining players. We should actually try it and see how the players react to it. With the game Braid, at the beginning, I felt that it’s another Mario game, but as I progressed on levels, I started to realise it is completely different. In Braid, the key component is the the time control, rather than just like Mario, jumping and hitting the mushrooms’ head. Instead of a reaction game like Mario Bros, I would classify Braid as a mind set game, where players need to control the time to solve different challenges. Guess what? I actually like Braid more than Mario Bros, especially the time control feature. If the designers didnt introduce the new time control idea in Braid, I’d never imagine such an idea, and never know I will enjoy using this feature. And I appreciate the graphics in Braid too, they are beautiful. As described in one of the professional comments: “The whimsical world looks like a painting come to life.” I enjoyed that sensory pleasure.

Design Idea Wk 6: Hardware driven game

My game idea is inspired by the Japanese drum game, that with music players have to hit either outside the drum or center of the drum.

My game will be simulating players playing piano. Each finger will be given a row, where the notes come out from the right and keep moving leftwards. When the note meet the red circle, then players have to press the corresponding finger down, just like playing a note on piano.

When the player plays correctly, the game should generate the corresponding piano sound to award the player. If the player plays good enough, he/she should be able to listen to a complete song, like “Mary has a little lamb”,”twinkle twinkle little start”, or even more completed pop songs. This can gives some sensory experience to the player, especially if the player manages to play most of the notes right. This game is divided into levels. Lower levels only contain one finger note at a time, just like the beginning of the picture shown on top, then at later stage, chords will start to appear. At first, the chords should be some easier one, like two fingers chords. Then at some later stage, 3 fingers chord will be introduced. Also, as different songs have different rhythm, the notes will appear by different speed on different songs. Even within a song, for example the classical, can have different rhythm, hence different speed. As the speed gets faster and the chords get more complicated, it is expected that the game should be more challenging and the player should be able to feel the tense to get the fingers in right position.

Design Idea wk5: Mechanic driven

As James said it is okay to write design idea without following the design idea instruction given, so I have come up with a game that does not use fluid dynamics. Although it does not use fluid dynamics, it is still related to physics knowledge. It applies the lever idea as basis.

The aim of the game is simple, given the lever and the object, and the target, player has to hit the other side of the lever so that the stone/object can be transferred into the target basket, like this:

As players proceeds on to higher levels, the target basket will be smaller and smaller and eventually be just enough to let the stone in, so the challenge of the game actually increases over levels. Also, instead of using one sized lever, the lever length varies, so that the player does not get too used to the same length of lever. The longer the lever, the greater force player will need. The pivot point will change as well. The closer the ball is to the pivot, the greater force player needs. It is in expectation that players will need to try a few times and experience on the projection before they can get used to the lever as well as the pivot point. At later stages, we can even add in wind direction. Say if the ball goes against the wind, the player will need to hit harder to offset the wind. On the other hand, if the ball goes along the wind direction, then player cannot hit too hard, otherwise, it will be too far away from the target basket.

Reflection Wk 4 – Is that all there is?

Is commercial games industry stuck in a creative dead-end and only building rehashes of the same basic themes? I think it is getting better, at least that’s with the game consoles. May be for PC games, there are still stuck in shooting games for some reason, but for recent years, we can see that there are more variety of games published to the market, playing in Wii or PS or Xbox consoles. I agree with Anthony Burch that games need more variety than just one category, shooting, or not just fun. But I disagree with him that he puts most blame on the game industry, the designers and the programmers. I think the reason behind involves both the players and the industry. In some sense, David Jaffe is right in a way that not everything you can think of, can be turned into a great game. He mentioned that the designers may have some brilliant ideas, but then when they start thinking of what do you actually do in the game, they are stucked. Creative is an artistic thing. It is unavoidable that an idea can come to a dead end. Though I believe there are designers who try to come up with new ideas, I also expect that there are some designers/programmers out there are just what Anthony described, lazy to think of new ideas.

In a commercial company’s perspective, whether or not it will produce a game depends on its market. Even the designers think this is a great game, if there are not too many people like the game, then the company may not produce it as it may incur a lost. On the other hand, if it sees that a game, saying a shooting game, has generated a great revenue, it is reasonable for them to think why not generatea  new one and earn another great revenue? Therefore, I believe the game players should take up some of the responsibility too. The market is created with supply and demand. If there aren’t many people looking for and be immersed into a particular theme, then the companies will not keep producing the same theme. I think to have a revolution in game to make games be more creative, developers, producers and the market(or players) have to work together.

Reflection Week 3 – Emergence

Gish

I played Gish for a few times. The first impression it gives me is, like another Mario game, where you walk around and kill those creatures, collect coins. But soon, I find out that Gish is actually harder to control than Mario. As mentioned in the design video, Gish does not have a particular jump button, so to jump and I need to push Gish down, and then jump. It is quite annoying at the beginning, but I guess when players play around more, then they will eventually get use to it. I do like the idea that Gish can change the body states, to become squeezable and fall down a narrow pipe. Overall speaking, I find Gish a skillful game. Players need to spend some time playing with it before they can move Gish skillfully like the author in the design video. It is harder to pick up than games like Mario. I don’t really think it’s good. As a player, I certainly would not waste three hours on getting used to the complicated control and play a game like Mario, where you just walk around. If it turns out to be a competitative game with friends, like the 2P mode where two players get to play football using Gish, that will be more interesting as the social factor is added.

Design idea wk 4 – Games for Mum

My mum likes traveling. She likes going around the world, and sightseeing other countries as well as experiencing their cultures. And she likes eating nice food too. She enjoys watching those TV shows that introduce special food from other countries. As of my mum’s age, she does not like much challenges, so the challenge of my game will be remained to minimum. Because she is not an expert game player, so the instruction of this game aim to be simple enough for her to understand and get used to in short time.

Based on the fact that she likes traveling and other countries’ food, I would design a game that has both of these component. For each level, the game starts off at a hotel and the player is geared with a map, some money, and a public transport guide. On the map, there will be a few scenary point marked. With the limited money given, player has to plan the sight seeing route and taking the correct transport. When the player reaches the scenary point, a short video clip which is taken at the real place can be obtained. Player can watch the video clips at any time to have a look at the real place. After collecting the clips, when player goes back to the hotel, 1 to 2 plates of localised food will be presented to the player. After 1 city is finished, another city will be opened for exploration. If all cities in a country is finished, player will be awarded with a piece of souvenir representing that country, eg. a kimono for Japan, a windmill model for Holland. At the end of the game, these will form a collection of the player.

This game hopefully can bring a little bit challenge, some drama,exploration and self-expression to my mum.