Task: Simple Game Idea

Nearing the end of the 1st semester we got given a task where we had to think up an idea for a simple game which could be played within a group of people.

The game idea had to include:

- Very few rules, 4 or less.
- Very simple mechanics.
- Very little additional equipment.

In the lecture we wondered outside to the park and each person showed off their simple game idea, things like your typical 'British Bulldog' game were put into practise by my fellow games designers as well as some other school playground classics.

Initally I didn't want a game that involved physical contact or the ability to physically out play an oppenent. Instead I went for the idea based around teamwork and co-operation. I had some confidence in my own idea in that it seemed to be different from everyone else. The idea kind of came from an unusual thing my friends would do back in the early days of High School.

Here it is:

Task:
- In two (or more) teams of four you must have each player in your team balancing their feet ontop of each other in a stacking motion.
How to win:
- Teams who have managed to balance themselfs in position either at all or for the longest amount of time is the winner.
Timekeeping:
- The timer starts when everyone in the team is stacked up.
- The timer stops when anyone in that team touches the floor or dramatically becomes unbalanced.
Rules:
- You cannot have any player leaning on any objects to hold your team up.


 When putting this into practice I think it went down very well. One thing I noticed one team doing which was clever is that straight away the player with the largest feet was nominated to be the first foot in the middle as a main support for everyone elses' balance.
People seemed to have fun with this simple game idea and a lot of hugging was involved in the aid for maintaining the balance. I felt happy that I achieved something that was arguably different.

Storyboard/Scriptwriting Module

Week 11 Reading - Don't Be a Vidiot [Greg Costikyan]

What Computer Game Designers can learn from Non-Electronic Games.

- Games designers find it hard to define what makes their 3D game unique, because they are all similar.
- 2D games are the same as 3D games in the creative sense.

- Software is a plastic medium.
The industry channels our efforts into reworking the same themes over and over.
"Science fictionals" no understanding of Literature other and Sci-Fi.
- This limits them.

Costikyan states that you need to have a fairly wide experiance of game further than the last 5 years of all platforms, genre and age range including both digital and non-digital board games.

"Vidiot" - A person whose sole understanding of games derives from video games.

The importance of study to non-electronic games:
Modern Art/Settlers of Catan.
On the mass.
German Boardgames:
- Negotiation and diplomacy as innovation.
- Back stabbing occurs.

Target Audience:
War Games - Older men in 40s +
Sci-Fi Games - Younger teenagers (e.g. Warhammer 4000k)
- Time in both playing/painting
- It's a hobby for fanatics.
Minitures Gaming is appealing.
- Wargame appeal
- Collectors appeal: Enjoy the modelling over playing the game.
You will always want cool new figures.

War Games:
'Tactics' by Charles Robets in 1953

SPI and Avalon Hill - War game industry as a small scale.
GDW - Small publisher
War games got far more complex in the later years - sometimes the rulebook was 16 pages of 9 point type some even had 96 pages!
The industry was convinced that innovation in design rather than in technology was what the audience wanted.

Designers of RTS games need to study board wargames
- To emphasise conflict/no just blowing up crap.
- Emphasise lines of supply, fog of war, combined arms, menuvour (Mirco), formation (Unit Positioning).

Sci-Fi board games were an outgrowth of wargaming.
- Have fairly complex rules.

Rolplaying games began in 1973.
- Dungeons and Dragons.
- No victory conditions "win"
-Boundless
- Co-opertate with other to get anything done.


GURPS - "Genereic Universal Role-Playing System"
Vampire: The Masqurade - Appealing to the gothic subcultre
Found to be interesting. ("Role playing is officially cool")
Digital version (Arguably) Brutal Legend which appeals to the 'Heavy Metal' subculture group, as a way of apealing to an audience.

CCG - Collectable Card Games:
Magic the gathering:
- Began as a limited set of rules as a whole but cards contain sub rules.
- The fascination of which you never quite know what you're up against. (Thousands of different MTG cards out there).
- Trading of cards
- Hobby games
- RPGs
- Collectable.


The Nature of the Game:
Magic has a scene simlarly to the Starcraft II scene in that pro players are often flown overseas.

Live Action Roleplaying - LARPS
Sub genres of LARPS:
- Adventure/Line
- Interactive/Freedom
- Commercial
- Adventure LARPS: - Take place outdoors

How to get into Starcraft II

Week 10 Reading - What Every Game Developer Needs to Know About Story [Gamasutra]

What every Game Developer Needs to know about story (Gamasutra by John Sutherland)

Sutherland argues that:
- The real substance of a story is conflict what are basic conflics in stories?
- In what fundamental way does game story developement differ from storytelling in other forms of media?

- As games evlove, people want more depth, not just higher polygon counts.
'A story is a universal human expericance'.
- Games aren't movies.
- Movies aren't plays.

Moving pictures:
1. They are a form of story, not just a new toy.
2. Their particular form of story differs from all previous forms of story and has other things in common with all forms of story.

•  Storytelling is becoming more important in Games...
• Classic 3 Act Structure - Storytelling:
  - The protagonist and their world.
  - Then the world is thrown into chaos.
• Reversal:
  - Overcoming various trials that test the character.
• The Resolution.

Common Misconceptions:
- Story is dialog.
- Story doesn't matter (Sometimes in games)

Story is Conflict
- Appealing to a mass audience.

A Starting place:
Mckee states that the real substance of story is 'Conflict'.
-  Story is conflict
- Conflict is part of the structure. Which means it needs to be planned from the beginning of the development process.


How classical stories move:
Classical story structure:
- It's simple.
- It works.
____________________________________________________________________________
- First there's a protagonist, or hero.
- His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.
- A gap opens up between the hero and an ordinary life.
- The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap.
- It fails. The world pushes back too hard.
- The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pusing back.
- Then there is a reversal something new happens, or the hero learns something she or he didn't know before and the world is out of whack again.
- A second gap has opened up.
- The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the 2nd gap.
- After overcoming the second gap, there's another reversal, opening a third gap.
- The hero has takes the greates risk of all to overcome this gap and to get to that Object of Desire, which is usually an ordinary life.


Character and why it matters to Games:
Characterisation - The superficial stuff.
Character - Why he chooses to do something.
Principle of atagorism - Pressure on the hero to bring out alternative choices.


Movies:
- 80% Visual
- 20% Auditry

Plays:
- 80% Auditry
- 20% Visual

The importance of Reverals - can happen through actions.
Types of Conflict and Types of Story:
- Internal Conflict happens mostly naturally in novels.
- Interpersonal Conflict happens most naturally in plays and in soup operass.
- External Conflict happens most naturally in movies and in games.

Internal Conflict - What goes inside your head.
Interpersonal Conflict - Between people.
Exeternal Conflict - Conflict with society in general or the physical world.

Gamers generally don't tolerate a lot of dialogue and I agree with this.
Empathy and the big protagonist flip:
Writers try to create heros that the audience create empathy for.
- Gears of War 3, Doms Death Scene is a good example of this.

Pacing Stretches, Dialog Shrinks:
In films you can get bored of the same scene after 10 minutes or so. But in video games the user feels much more immersed and spent 20 minutes hiding in a ditch not wanting to die. To them, is feels like a life and death situation which is arguably the closest thing to real life yet most people can tell the difference between film and real life. Games are just simply more immersive.

Tweaking 'The Royal Game of Ur'

Here's what I've been iterating: