research

This weekend I got to play several board and card games, including: Parcheeze, Mille Borne, clue, rackoo, uno, cribagge, and Yatzee

I learned about these other card games too.

I found these cool websites: 

Designers: http://www.coroflot.com/mattiene/toys-n-games-invented

http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2008/06/article_0010.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Garis

Card games: 

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/319686/great-for-2-garbage-for-4

http://www.thehouseofcards.com/games/gofish.html

http://www.pagat.com/eights/crazy8s.html

similarities: Uno and spoons http://www.pagat.com/eights/spoons.html

http://unclesgames.com/index.php/cPath/40_390_545_686
How to play:
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/how-to-play-go-fish.htm
http://www.ehow.com/video_4989799_play-singleplayer-card-games.html
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/428091/peanut-butter-jelly-card-game
Tarot cards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRMcyLsLPpk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot

Design Practice: Questions

Design Practice: Questions

1.	How do you plan to deal with the issue of new players arriving in the middle of a long game? Get rid of the victory condition, or find a way to make sure that players are matched with those of similar ability? If the game has different levels and the new players have to complete each level to get to the other one, it is likely that the player has enough resources and enough experience to interact with others in the game, in a way it is like grade-school. A first grade elementary kid is more comfortable in her/his own class.
2.	What will happen to the gameplay when a player vanishes? How will it affect the other players’ experience of the game (what they see and hear)? Does it disrupt the balance of the game? Will it make the challenges easier or harder? Is the game even meaningful anymore? It depends on the way the game has designed for the players to interact with each other. If they are competing or collaborating then that will have an effect on them. The effect can mimic the real life. If a comrade dies in a battle, then it is not only devastating in terms of resources but it also has an emotional impact.
3.	What happens to the game’s score when a player vanishes? Is the game still fair? I think there should be more than one measurement, so it depends how long it takes to get the scores and how long they were present in the game. So if someone was there for one hour and quit when they had 20 points, when they are away, there are points that can be gathered but they missed out on it. Maybe random bonuses that they will see what they missed when they log back in. Just like real life.
4.	Does your game offer a player an advantage of some kind for intentionally disconnecting himself (whether by preventing himself from losing or by sealing his own victory)? Is there any way to minimize this without penalizing players who are disconnected accidentally? The game can end, the period of time will elapse without stopping, if the player is not there the victory conditions change, just like real life, if one leaves a meeting they loose out on information that can help them, or if someone does not go to a party, the next party is never the same, so in a non repeating game, this problem will not exist.
5.	In a turn-based game, what mechanism will you use to prevent a player from stalling play for the other players? Set a time limit? Allow simultaneous turns? Implement a reasonable default if the player does nothing? Depending on the situation, one can use a random system, such as rolling a dice to determine whose turn it is, or the turn times out if the player takes no action. If the game requires cooperation the turn idea is obsolete, otherwise the time limit is a good way to alleviate the stalling.
6.	If you offer a chat mechanism, what features will you implement to keep it civil? Filters? A complaint system? An ignore system? Or will your game require moderated chat spaces? The computer can be programed to substitute the offensive word with another word. (However this might affect people’s freedom of speech, and be morally questionable) However one can be rated as offensive person, so just like reviews for bookstores, each person can have points in different categories that represent their character and the other people can use filters to decide if they want to talk to certain players that have certain characteristics
7.	Is your game designed to prevent (or alleviate) collusion? Because you can’t prevent players from talking to each other on the phone as they play, how will you address this? Or can you design your game in such a way that collusion is part of the gameplay, as in Diplomacy? Calculating for collusion as if it was in a Diplomacy game is an interesting solution, however it will put the other players at a disadvantage and encourage collusion.

Yahoo news November 8, 2011
Anticipation is building for Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, one of the most sought-after games in history. The third installment of the franchise is being released today, and the Web is buzzing with excitement. The hashtag #MW3 can be seen all over Twitter as people try to get their hands on the new game. Will Luke, who goes by the Twitter handle @mailliw, tweeted, "The only game I play. Bye bye November #MW3." However, some people have taken their excitement to another level. French news channel TF1 reports armed robbers stole 6,000 copies of the game over the weekend. According to the report, two men armed with knives crashed their car into a van south of Paris. They sprayed tear gas at the driver of the van and took off with the games and the van. The stolen games are said to be worth nearly $600,000. Copies of MW3 on eBay are selling for as much as $1,700. People are sounding off on social media, saying that they're not only stunned by such violence and theft, but they're even more shocked that life is apparently imitating the video game. One person calls it, "A Modern Warfare 4 mission in the making."

A paragraph about the game Donkey Kong

Write a paragraph about the game - is it as hard as is reputed? What is the key challenge of the game? How would you describe the experience of playing this game?

What skills are needed to be good at Donkey Kong?

It is difficult but it imparts the feeling that it is a skill that can be acquired. One gets to learn exactly when to jump to avoid the barrels. The key challenge of the game is the hand eye coordination and learning the physics of the game. It is not totally impossible. It has a reliable pace to it. The goal of the game is in sight, so one knows how close one is to the goal line and there are possible ways one can rest and control ones reactions, giving the player decision making power.

The King of Kong Film survey

Playing in ones familiar setting versus playing in public, is a completely different experience, they cannot be valued against each other, there can be two categories: highest score on video and highest score in public. In public there is the extra factor of performance anxiety that has to be accounted for.  

 

Donkey Kong is a great documentary it is engaging in it's own right. It does not matter if one is obsessed with the game Donkey Kong, or in general with gaming to become engaged in the film's excitement.

 

It is interesting to hear that game designer targeted their product to this audience: the high skill level core gamers, previously and that it is not so much like that nowadays.

Play Doom online, maps

http://mauweb.net/3.0/en/play-online/53--play-doom-online.html
http://www.classicdoom.com/
http://www.classicdoom.com/maps/d1exit/d1.htm
Quake
http://www.arcadecabin.com/fullscreen/quake_flash.html
http://www.quakelive.com/#!guide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJgc9Xo0U9o&feature=related

Doom

http://www.gdconf.com/
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014627/Classic-Game-Postmortem
also interesting: http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/index.html

It vs Us
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Qn1Uigkr3yG1FRCJ0CV3iE2qvsxQM-gdrjqOTXnexo/edit?hl=en_US

Hero Machine character creations

 

Donnerin
Mythological character, controls lightning. Evil, loud, has no friends, dumb, cruel,
weakness: ice(will freeze to death)

 

Envira

Captures dinosaurs, very athletic, down to earth, smart, calm, quiet, spends lots of time in nature.

 

Azure

 Medieval times, fights fiercely, she is after revenge, all her family were killed by their enemies.

These characters were created with the Hero Machine
http://www.ugo.com/games/superhero-generator-heromachine-classic

Graveyard, continued

 

1)     Write a high concept statement:It is a collection of gameworlds

2)     What is the player’s role?  His journey through the hidden worlds

3)     Does the game have an avatar or other key character? One avatar, however there are two different choices, the character can be a female or a male character

4)    What kinds of challenges will the player face? The character will face different challenges in each gameworld
5)     What is the player’s interaction model? through an avatar

6)     What is the game’s primary camera model? 3D world

7)    regular finding and travelling game

 

8)     Single player

9)     Why would anyone want to play this game? curiosity 

10)   What machine...? Computer

11)   What is the game’s setting? Where does it take place? A graveyard

12)   Will the game be broken into levels? What might be the victory condition for a typical level? It is divided into different game worlds each world has it's challenges and it's treasures that the player has to avoid or collect.

13)   Does the game have a narrative or story as it goes along? Summarize the plot in a sentence or two.

A graveyard is not an ordinary place, each gravestone can lead the player to a new world.

Caspar David Friedrich The link is

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AZs-kyAj54aFZGZucDZnczlfMGc4OXM1NmZn&hl=en_US

Pinball games

Cartoon Network Game Creators

Cartoon Network Game Creators

Go to the cartoon network game site and choose the following 'game creator' games - e.g. 'Batman' game creator and the 'Alien Force' game creator (you need to scroll through the menu of 'all games' to find these.

Answer the following questions on a separate text file:

A) What options are available to you as a 'game designer'? 1-Background, 2-Character, character attributes(Actions) 3- Goals 4- Challenges(obstacles, objects, hazards)5-Environment, walls and floors

B) How are these options provided? by multiple choice

C) What types of elements are provided for you to use to 'build' the game? Heroes, objects, Hazards, goals(door, orbs, fighting enemies)

D) What limits are set on the level of the game play able to be customized, it has to be tested and one should be able to beat it.

E) What does the process of using these game creators teach about the notion of the 'difficulty and achievement' balance? Explain using an example from your research.

When you are done, trade places with another student and have them answer the following questions.

1) Is the game level fun to play? (be honest!) It is challenging for me

2) If so, why? If not, why not? Too many obstacles

3) What could be done to improve the level? Less obstacles/Hazards

Chess Game

Work in progress:
The game pieces: 10 pieces: Two knights(Opponents/computer) 8 pawns(four for each side).
knights move the same L shape pattern.
The pawns have the same pattern of movement except that they can also move diagonally.
Unlike the chess game the game pieces cannot hit/eliminate each other.

The pawns goal is to protect each others' territory: the last row of squares.

The game termination is reached either when one of the two knights gets to the last row(the black knight has to get to the black side and the white one to the white side) or when the paws block one of the knights from moving by sitting in the square where the knight is supposed to take it's next move.

Ball Game

This is a computer game. It is designed for two players. One is the cat, the other one the person.
Goal: to catch the ball for the cat, to avoid the ball getting caught by the cat for the person. The player with the higher score will win.
Game play:
Challenge: For the person to avoid the cat catching the ball, for the cat: to catch the ball.
Actions: Rolling the ball in the direction of the opposite wall(the goal), the cat is between the goal and the person.
Terrain: is not completely uniform, it has hills and holes
Rules: throw the ball to the other side and use the arrow buttons to guide it with consideration of the terrain qualities.
For the cat(the capture) can be guided by the four arrow keys on the computer.
The game has similarities to air hockey and the game of catch.
Fairness, while the actions of the players are different, they have equal abilities to use the arrow keys to move around. to equalize the fact that the game is initiated by the person who rolls the ball, each time the game starts over the role of the players switch, so for example if a player is the cat in game one, once the first round(Game one) ends, he/she will become the person(who rolls the ball)for the next round and it switches again in round 3.
condition of termination: for each round:: reaching 10 points, 10 rolls that the cat did not capture,this can be achieved intermittently. or ten rolls that the cat captured.
For the game: The game is not complete until each player has been the person or the cat for the equal number of times: for example: 3 times cat role, 3 times person role.

Time limit:In a certain time period where the game ends, the score is calculated by the number of points each one of the players have at the moment. If one had one extra game sequence where they were in odd number of roles(cat-person)that sequence is eliminated in the score calculation.
The time period is decided upon in the beginning of the game.


http://game100spring2011.blogspot.com/2011/04/lecture-will-wright-metaphysics-of-game.html

Gauntlet

Gauntlet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(arcade_game)
Monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)
diplomacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
Dungeon Keeper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper
Artists and animators are invited to create storyboards, animatics and other test movies based on scripts at Amazon Studios. Amazon Studios is a movie development web site that is offering more than $2 million in monthly and annual contests.

Fox and geese

Fox and geese real world version
http://www.historylives.com/toysandgames.htm

Nomic Game

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm
from: http://gameful.org/
Nomic game — a game in which the rules change and evolve as part of gameplay.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8374#ixzz1W9IAPY5w
--brought to you by mental_floss! http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8374

Lunar Lander Atari Arcade Game 1979

Student Name Sara Kahn
Today’s Date: August 26, 2011
Game Title Examined: Lunar Landing
Year of Publication:1979
Game Publisher: Atari Incorporated
Game Developer:
Game Genre: spaceships physics principles
Type of game ‘world’ or environment: 2D representation of a 3D environment
Perspective taken by player? First player
Gameplay – what does the player have to do? Challenge: Fuel, Actions use the fuel to land on a flat surface
Is the gameplay intuitive? Yes, one can learn them by trial and error
Is the gameplay patterned? Yes
What does the type of graphic approach used as well as the audio tell you about the limits of the technology at the time the game was published?The absence of environmental and background elements, the vector graphics makes the game look very spartan, however I find that interesting because there are just enough elements to make it interesting and functional.
Describe your views about the game from the point of view of
a. ease of play: On a scale of one (easy) to ten(difficult): seven
b. enjoyability: four
c. level of engagement/immersion: ten
Had you played this game prior to this time? No
Describe other games it reminds you of. How does it do this?

GAME 100 EXPLORING GAME WORLDS – VIDEOGAME: PONG

GAME 100 EXPLORING GAME WORLDS –
VIDEOGAME IN-CLASS APPRAISAL TEMPLATE
Student Name Sara Kahn
Today’s Date: August 19, 2011
Game Title Examined: Pong
Year of Publication:1972
 Game Publisher: Atari Incorporated
Game Developer: Allan Alcorn
Game Genre: Sports
Type of game ‘world’ or environment: Flat environment
Perspective taken by player? First player
Gameplay – what does the player have to do? Not miss the ball
Is the gameplay intuitive? Yes, easy instructions.
Is the gameplay patterned? Yes
What does the type of graphic approach used as well as the audio tell you about the limits of the technology at the time the game was published? This is one of the first games that was designed.
 Describe your views about the game from the point of view of
a. ease of play: On a scale of one (easy) to ten(difficult): One
b. enjoyability: Five
c. level of engagement/immersion: Ten
 Had you played this game prior to this time? No
Describe other games it reminds you of. How does it do this? It reminds me of the Table football

Tempest Atari Arcade Game

Student Name Sara Kahn
Today’s Date: August 26, 2011
Game Title Examined: Tempest
Year of Publication:1981
Game Publisher: Atari Incorporated
Game Developer: Dave Theurer
Game Genre: missles spaceships
Type of game ‘world’ or environment: 2D representation of a 3D environment
Perspective taken by player? First player
Gameplay – what does the player have to do? Defend themselves and destroy the hazards
Is the gameplay intuitive? Yes, one can learn them by trial and error
Is the gameplay patterned? Yes
What does the type of graphic approach used as well as the audio tell you about the limits of the technology at the time the game was published?The absence of environmental and background elements
Describe your views about the game from the point of view of
a. ease of play: On a scale of one (easy) to ten(difficult): Three( I like the fact that one can choose the difficulty level of the game)
b. enjoyability:
c. level of engagement/immersion: Ten
Had you played this game prior to this time? No
Describe other games it reminds you of. How does it do this?