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.