Posted on by Amber Holt

Week 2: Question Sets 1-3

Amber Holt

Question Set 1:

  1. What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of a nanometer? I think a searching type of game, like Spot It would be interesting. Players would have to use super microscopes to search around for the little objects. Even better—it would be cool to have similar mechanics to Hasbro’s Pictureka, where you roll a die or draw a card to see what your finding things challenge is. For instance, some of the challenges are to be the first player to find a certain object or you have to bet against other players about how many of one particular object you can find in a given amount of time. Of course, this would be even more challenging working with microscopes. 
  2. Who are you making games for? Myself and other people who want to enjoy them. People who like to play the same types of games that I like to play. To me, as long as I am happy with the game I guess it doesn’t really matter to me who I am making the games for. However, I would love to make games for people who enjoy casual games that they can really get immersed in. 
  3. Who will be your play testers outside of class? My mom and my brother, my boyfriend, some media arts friends, my high school friends, and if I can convince them to play, my boyfriend’s roommates and friends. Overall, I want to try to get a variety of people to test out my game. 

Question Set 2:

  1. Can you think of a game you were able to play without referring to the rules? Most games I tend to thoroughly read the rules beforehand and refer to the rules probably more often than I really need to. Some games are definitely easier to pick up on than others, especially when the game board is intuitive and has mechanics familiar to other games. My family owns this school trivia game where you move along a game board answering random trivia questions from a pile of cards and if you get the question right, you move the number of spaces as the difficulty level you answer. Because this game is fairly simplistic and similar to the mechanics of a lot of other board games where you roll a die, complete an action of a card and advance, the first time I played it I didn’t really need to refer to the rules at all. The gameboard has a clearly defined start and end so that makes it even more intuitive.  
  2. How do you define what a game is? A game has to have rules, it doesn’t need physical objects but can definitely have them, and players have to make choices (whether simple or more complicated). The book says that “A game is an interactive mathematical system, made concrete, used to tell a story” (p. 43). This really just means that a game is a balance of mechanics and rules, pieces and graphics, and a theme. I agree with this definition of a game as well because every sort of game can fit into this, but they may all have different balances. Some games rely more heavily on themes than others and some are almost purely based on mechanics. 
  3. What features can make your games more intuitive? Because humans are built to see things in groups, color can make games more intuitive. Cards with the same color or design are seen as belonging together. Certain colors can also signify certain things, like red is bad and green is good. The book also suggests that form can make games more intuitive so you should be clear how something works by the way it is designed. For instance, in The Game of Life if you land on a space with 1 blue baby you get 1 baby boy or if you land on one with 2 pink babies you get 2 baby girls. Deliberately making choices about size and integration is also recommended by the book. The game board also can include reminders about what you are supposed to do when you reach a certain space, for instance, and you can include reference cards for playing, like in Bang. Overall, everything has to make sense from any angle that the players might look at it from and you have to think about what generalizations people make about certain things before they even begin to look at the rules. 

Question Set 3:

  1. What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming? The Settlers of Catan was probably my gateway game. It was definitely one of the first games that I played that differed in mechanics than those standard games that everyone has played, but it was still reasonably challenging and easy to learn. I feel like a lot of the games that I enjoy playing are fairly simplistic and largely popular both in terms of board games and video games, so it’s kind of difficult to think of a gateway game that I would play to introduce others to gaming. Like it was for me, I think Settlers of Catan could be a good one for a lot of people because it’s easy to understand but it’s definitely different than those Sorry!-Scrabble-Monopoly-Uno category games that the book mentions. Thinking of more of a party game that I think could be a gateway game for others is Your Worst Nightmare, where players have to rank 4 randomly drawn fear cards based on how scared they are of it and then guess how other players ranked those fears as well. I’ve introduced this game to quite a few people and I think it’s a good get-to-know-each-other type of game. 
  2. What features do gateway games share? Gateway games should be easy to learn, have a theme that can appeal to a massive audience, shouldn’t be too complex but still have a little more complexity, interactive with other players, have a luck factor, last between 45 to 90 minutes, be original, and should be replayable. 
  3. What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own? The 10 beautiful mechanics are mechanics that are so good that really draw players into the game, and they are the standard for which you should aim to be above. They include Kingmaker’s noblesse oblige, BattleTech’s heat, Set’s set-making, Magic’s card tapping, Battle Cattle’s cow tipping rule, xXxenophile’s popping, Bohnanza’s hand order rule, Mississippi Queen’s paddlewheels, Time’s Up!’s communication breakdown, and Dominion’s constant shuffling. 
  4. How does luck and strategy factor into game play? Luck is something that is beyond your control and it can be good or bad. Strategy is “the act of making plans and decisions during the game, given limited information”. Luck can give anyone the opportunity to win or lose, but purely luck based isn’t always fun. Strategy makes players feel like they have some sort of control over the outcome of the game and it is all about making choices that you think will be beneficial to your situation. Making decisions is part of what makes games fun. However, both luck and strategy are important to gameplay.