Ames' syllabi

On April 11, I had the first at-scale test of my game idea. I use the term “game” lightly. This was more of a non-objective experience. My goal with this experience was to engage gallery goers and challenge them to consider the effects of parking minimums by making them be the ones to create the issue themselves. Timelapse: (I will likely reframe this video to focus attention straight down on the board but I had some trouble with the Premiere plugin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWzSKgk6lwQ
The inspirations for this experience were many. I liked the idea of having many players sharing the space of the game board with their moves affecting future play. This reminded me of an experiment that Reddit has done twice on April fools day, once in 2017, and again five years later in 2022. This is r/place, a huge canvas where every user of the website was allowed to place a single pixel every set amount of time (I think it was 10 minutes). Very quickly communities organized to create larger artworks that would not be possible with only an individual’s ability. There was also a sense of limited space and several works came at the expense of other existing ones, similar to graffiti on a wall. I liked this idea of overwriting existing spaces.
I wanted the rules to be easily digestible because it is difficult for people to understand a new game, especially if they were only going to be “playing” for a few minutes and knew that they likely would never have to play again. Any kind of in depth system would work to deter players. In the end, the rules page was one page of a few clearly bulleted points and I summarized these verbally for many players (although a couple of people still struggled to understand the rules).
I looked at Blokus for its system of deploying tile pieces through touching the corners of the same color pieces. This achieves an even distribution of colors because it doesn’t allow for two pieces of the same color to touch sides. However, later in the game as the board fills up, players are forced to use smaller and smaller pieces which didn’t fit as well with my model of having many different players. I also looked at Tetris, which in my opinion is one of the finest games ever created. The “tet” of the game’s name implies that every piece consists of 4 tiles which I liked a lot. Limiting the number of spaces on a piece also allowed for more interesting shapes to be created. It’s not possible to create different multiple shapes out of three or less touching triangles, but four would allow for a few interesting permutations of layouts.
An earlier version of my game had parking spaces disconnected from the development pieces. This allowed players to designate one area of the board as a massive parking lot, which is interesting in its own right, but I didn’t think would be as engaging to play. I considered having a requirement that the parking was built adjacent to the development or perhaps just in the same neighborhood area. By integrating the spaces into each piece, I feel that the problem of having players responsible for placing their own parking wherever they want was solved. This also removed a huge barrier to entry from the original idea which was to have players reference a spreadsheet to determine how much parking was to be built. This was in line with reality and would make people who did choose to engage with it to maybe understand the issue to a greater depth, but I think may have also deterred people from engaging to begin with. It also made it easier for players to break the rules by just not building separate parking spaces.
Another observation was that when two parking spaces were built adjacent to each other, it made an area that was big enough to house one of the matchbox cars that I had placed on the board. I initially put the cars on the board to draw a stronger connection to the road play rug that I referenced in my write up but it was interesting to see what players did with them once left to their own devices. I think this allowed for a non-intended play experience that I’m glad people were able to _. This also seemed to appeal to some of the children in attendance, although in placing the height of the table at a comfortable height for adults, I didn’t account for it being accessible to people any shorter than Max.
https://forms.gle/orqd5S8aE8PmvxKR8
I placed a QR code on the board with the pieces that linked to a form to encourage any kind of written feedback. Knowing that people are unlikely to take the time to write a lot, I tweaked the usual playtest form from this class to have only two questions that allowed for extended response and one multiple choice question for any game. I also made all of the questions optional to allow someone to submit any feedback that they may want to write, even if they don’t want to respond to every question.
By nature of this layout, the longer that the game plays out, the fewer pieces will be able to be played. If players played “perfectly” to optimize the number of pieces played, it would be possible to cover the entire surface of the map in parking. This, however, calls into question what the players motivations are in the game. Is playing as many pieces as possible the main objective of the game? For example, Anne Marie chose to play exclusively green spaces. This shows that different players have different, potentially conflicting goals, and mirrors the real development of a shared city space. Everyone makes changes that leave a lasting impression on the space.
A change that I would make would be to limit the number of pieces that have parking available on the edge of the piece. The ones that have parking in the middle of the piece diminish the redevelopment that is possible and accelerate the pace of the game which allows for some more creative placement.
This experience had the desirable effect of engaging people in a topic that I think about often and enjoy spreading awareness of and I was able to gather some valuable verbal feedback. I had a good discussion with Michelle Patrick, and although she apparently found the game “difficult to play”, I think that at the stage she experienced it, that was kind of the point. We discussed potential changes that the school could make that would benefit the majority of students on campus. This in turn sparked another conversation on a following day about what other needs some students might have.
I think that in many ways, this test was a success. Some future changes that I would like to make are trying new board layouts, re-keyframing the animations on the projection, and trying some tweaked rules such as limiting the areas that can be developed from virgin land to maybe three neighborhoods and only allowing spreading to a new space when there are no legal moves in the existing ones. This could serve to demonstrate the “sprawl” across the map as it fills up.

1. What questions did your players have?

If you replace the plant cards once they were grown. 

2. How quickly did they learn?

Somewhat quickly. 

3. What kinds of interactions did the players have?

Stealing plants from each other

4. What confused the player? 

A little confused about the order of the turn and what they could do on each turn. Maybe it will be easier once the garden and plant models are in play.  

5. What made the players excited?

When they could sell the plants

6. What did your players enjoy doing?

Selling plants for money

7. Did any aspects of the game frustrate players? 

The customer cards. Maybe have more customer cards to choose from. Like having 3 out to have more variety. There still weren’t plants matching up with the customer cards. Maybe I should take out some plants to add to the customer cards. 

Add a bargain bin where players can sell plants in their shops for 5 bucks. 

Remove types of plants. There are too many types of plants and is hard to rotate all of them.  

Make like monopoly money for the bills. 

Make it clear when growing plants with superfoods and material cards

Get rid of the wild cards

Materials- 6 gardens, 6 player boards, 30 Customer cards, 40 Material cards, 60 Plant cards, 30 Money cards, 52 water chips, 52 sun chips, and 52 fertilizer chips

Set up- Separate and shuffle the material, and plant cards and place them in separate piles. Separate the money into piles by value and lay them out in the middle of the players. Then each player should be given a garden, player board, 4 material cards, 4 plant cards, 2 sun chips, 2 water chips, and 2 fertilizer chips. Your material cards should be hidden from the group but your plant cards can be laid out. Next, lay out the customer cards. They are divided into easy, medium, and hard. Take 1 from each pile and lay them face up in the middle of the group. 

Starting the game- The player who bought a plant the most recently will start first. Each plant card will have specific rules to fully grow the plant to be able to be put into your shop. At the start of your turn, you will pick up one material card and 2 of any chips. You can only grow up to two plants per turn and sell to one customer per turn. Your hand limit is 4 cards. 

Shops- Each shop can hold up to six plants at a time.

Material cards- These cards can give you extra chips or contain special events. 

Plant cards- These cards will show you what plant they are and a picture of the plant. The bottom of the card will show what it requires to grow. For example, it may need sun, water, and fertilizer or it could be sun, sun, and water. Once you have all the required things to grow your plant you can now grab a plant model and put it into your shop to sell. You will also return all the chips to their piles. 

Customer cards-  Each customer card will show the required plants you need to be allowed to sell to them. The money you could receive from the customer is listed on top of the card. When you sell to a customer, you will trade in the plants that were listed, take the customer card and put it back in the customer card pile, and grab the money that the card said. 

To win the game- The first person to get $100 will win the game. 

Wild cards- You can use a wildcard to replace any sun, water, or fertilizer chip. For example, if you have a Peace Lily which requires 1 water, 1 sun, and 1 fertilizer, you can use the wildcard instead of the fertilizer to grow the plant. 

Steal a plant- If you get a “steal a plant” card, you can keep it as long as you like and use it on your turn. When you steal a plant the plant has to be in the player’s shop. 

Plants died- If you get this card you must play it immediately. The only plants that will die are the ones in your shop. If you have none in your shop you can discard this card. This applies ONLY to the person that pulled the card.  

Robbed card- If you get robbed, all the plants in your shop will be gone. The only plants that will die are the ones in your shop. If you have none in your shop you can discard this card. This applies ONLY to the person that pulled the card.  

Switch plants- If you get a switch plants card you can play this on any of your turns and you can switch any plants whether it’s in the shop or still growing. 

Superfoods- With this card, you can fully grow a plant with one of these cards.

Flood card- This card must be played immediately and affects every player. When this is played you must lose 3 plants that are in the player’s shop. If you don’t have 3 plants in your shop, it will take what you have. 

Mega buy- A mega buy card is a big buyer and will purchase up to 3 of any plants from your shop. If you don’t have three plants it will buy what you have. You can receive $10 per plant.