Week 3- Designing for a game

“The less directly we control our role in a game, the more story cues help us make sense of what happens and how well we are advancing the story.” (Macklin and Sharp chapter 2, storytelling) This has always been my favorite part of the design process. This does tie in with the theme but creating the story and world you set foot in is always cool. Imagining something that players can get excited by. This was what I was thinking when we did the river game in class. When thinking of mods I also was thinking of turning the game into a different theme. Most ideas were hovering around a pirate theme. This story could have been about a colonial ship escaping the pirates. But world-building is my favorite and is necessary for building a player-immersive game.

Like a well-executed pass in a soccer match leading to a goal, you are in sync with someone else, working to meet a shared goal. (Macklin and Sharp, Chapter 3, cooperative play)  in the book, it was discussing cooperative play. The quote above I believe is very important. They used a soccer analogy and I can't agree more. I think that for most games the coop play should be the most important part. This brings people together and is the reason for people playing a game. If the coop play is bad they will not want to play. I discovered this in class. The river game felt bad and frustrating together as a group. But with some modifications, it felt more competitive. in turn, brought us closer and more involved in the play.

Every time something happens in the game, the player has to analyze what changed, why, and how that impacts the state of the game. (Macklin and Sharp, chapter 4, turn-based page 8) We are starting to get into the more technical side of how games operate. Here we are talking about pacing and the general essence of a game. Turn-based games are my favorite. I suck at timed missions in games and I crack under pressure easily. This is why turn-based works for me. This gives me plenty of time to react, plan, and play. In class, this was experimented with and compared with eh detective party game and river game. Sure there different but you can see the difference. The party game is a live-action operation of people's judgment Live. The river game was broken up to give room for calculating moves. Two games designed differently for two purposes but a great contrast of play.