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.
Constellation
Honestly, at first I just don’t understand what the author is talking about. When he starts to throw in examples, I slowly get what he means. I do agree with him that constellation can allow user to use their imagination to fill in the gaps, like the example he gave where you make those robot tanks roll at random direction and may occasionally cause chaos and challenge to players. But I cannot really conclude if constellation is good or not. I guess it all depends on situation and different players’ preference. Some players may find rolling tanks annoying while some thinks it is interesting and a challenge. I think it is actually hard for game designers to use constellation as they cannot predict what the players will imagine. May be they will imagine something good and give the merits to game designers/writer. But if they have a bad experience, like people hate rolling tanks, then it may damage the image and reputation of the game. It may come to a situation that the players like most part of the games except the annoying constellation introduced.
