In our game design, tentatively titled Crusaders, we plan to get players to react with joy when winning, and frustration when losing. We see emotions similar to what we expect to provoke in our game in other board games of chance and strategy such as Monopoly or A Line in the Sand. In Monopoly, players have some control over what properties they own, but virtually little over where they or their opponents land. Even so, there are distinct displays of emotion Read the rest of this entry »
Final Fantasy X (PS2) is the game that has most affected me on an emotional level. Most people have a misconception that emotional means inherently sad and depressing, but the truth is that emotional can refer to anything that provokes a strong sense of feeling in one way or another. That is not to say Final Fantasy X is a bright and happy game. It has its sad moments too, ultimately culminating in a striking awful finale.
The Final Fantasy series is renowned and critically acclaimed for many things, one of which is the extremely effective character design and in-game development. This aspect of the game is one of the cornerstones of FFX’s success as an emotionally provoking game. All the characters, playable and non-playable, are believable. Significant characters have well-developed motivations and their reactions to the events occurring in the game world are generally predictable because of those beliefs and motivations. Read the rest of this entry »
In the upcoming Centenary Test (Rugby League), players (as well as coaches and other team personnel) representing Australia and New Zealand will be subject to International Rules. From what I can remember, this means that the test match result can be a draw if each team has the same score at the end of 80 minutes of football. Now, of course this won’t happen, because: a) Australia excels at Rugby League, and b) New Zealand doesn’t.
This rule introduces the ‘draw’ end condition, one that isn’t possible in NRL rules Read the rest of this entry »
In last week’s workshop, we were asked to create a game involving a few small props. Our group was given some glass counters (I don’t know how else to describe them other than that they are the same type used to represent hit points in the Pokémon card game) and a tennis ball. We developed a game where players connect two desks lengthwise to form the playing field. The idea was for each player to set up his tokens on his half of the playing field, and for players to take turns rolling the ball in an attempt to knock the opponent’s markers off the field.
But I can’t be marked on what happened in the workshop, so I will discuss the game created by a fellow group that we got to play in the latter half of the class. Called Snapponaire – the lovechild of card games Snap and Billionaire – the game introduced a higher level of physical manipulation to the traditional game of Snap. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a long time since I played a full game of Monopoly. In fact, I haven’t even started a game for a while either. I add that last part because in my experience, a game of Monopoly is abandoned before completion more often than not, as a result of eliminated players not having any interest in observing the rest of the game. To me, sitting down to play a game should be just that: sitting until the game is won. Leaving a game unfinished produces in me dissatisfaction at the gaming experience.
This concept of game etiquette, particularly the failure of players to respect it, is commonplace in online gaming. Whether a result of perceived anonymity, or a simple lack of respect for other players, online gamers frequently ruin the experience for others by leaving games early to avoid losing, cheating, wrongfully accusing others of cheating, Read the rest of this entry »
Lumines is one of the more commercially successful games released on the PSP. Its success may have come from the appropriateness of a puzzle game for the handheld gamer. It may be that it was released early after the PSP. But one thing’s for certain: the way in which the game was designed, by developer Q Entertainment, to compliment the hardware makes it an exemplary game from a design perspective. Read the rest of this entry »
I’d like to discuss an extension idea for the dice game Yahtzee, but first I’d like to provide some of my experiences with the game in design. Our Year 12 IPT class was learning Visual Basic programming, and our major assignment was to design and implement a computer version of Yahtzee. The dice game was easy to pick up, but, as amateur programmers trying visualise and recreate the game mechanics, our class entered into many lengthy discussions on how to design the game as an algorithm for interpretation by a machine. Much the same as trying to port an existing physical space game to an electronic version was not easy, I realise that turning a game concept from a design document to a functional piece of software would be at least as difficult.
Looking back, I now understand the appropriateness of such a game for an assignment involving a procedural language. Yahtzee is a competitive, turn-based game, such that players never have any direct influence over their opponents’ scores. Other dice and board games like Scrabble and Monopoly feature a much greater level of competition and player interaction in that each player’s turn has some influence Read the rest of this entry »
Game companion media can work wonders at enhancing the gaming experience, but they can also detract from it. I have indulged in copies of the original soundtracks of Final Fantasy VIII and XII. Listening to the orchestral tracks (however synthesised) outside of their native presentation format brings back to me some of the immersive experience of the game as well as affords the chance to appreciate them as purely expressive works. There are of course many other forms of companion media, such as action figures, concept artbooks and developer interview videos, all of which can add to the wonder of a game. There is one medium in partcular however, that I think detracts from the experience, and seems to serve no other purpose than to make money: the ’strategy guide’.
One of our tutorial exercises was to write a concept statement for a new game and then to try adding start and end conditions, as well as describe some of the game play. Some of my initial ideas seem like they can be extended on to make a suitably simple yet comprehensive game design for our design project.
In terms of the project, I have been thinking along the lines of developing a board and dice game, one in which players can manipulate objects on a board and where the dice introduce an element of chance. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the features I enjoy about modern first-person shooters is the variety of game modes they provide. If a player isn’t feeling up to the traditional flavours of Deathmatch or Capture the Flag, there are many other competitions to participate in, such as the generic Team Deathmatch and Last Man Standing, as well as more game-specific modes like Onslaught from Unreal Tournament 2004 (Win). The interesting thing about these game modes is despite their different end conditions, much of the game world and player abilities remain the same between them.
On a functional level, Team Deathmatch only differs from Deathmatch by assigning players to teams and keeping score based on those teams rather than for each player individually Read the rest of this entry »
