- Question Set 1
- what is the difference between a game designer and a game developer? A game developer does not design the game, but “they make a lot of the games you buy better” (pg. 74). The game developer helps perfect the game by suggesting often minor changes to the rules, mechanics, etc. The designer comes up with the idea and inspiration for the game, but the developer turns this into a finished product.
- what commonly occurs during the game development process? Initial playtesting, reviewing and editing the rules, blind playtesting, and settling on titles and theming.
- what are the challenges of balancing a game? Players should be able to feel like they all have a chance to win and that makes balancing a game difficult, especially when there are cards or mechanics that have drastically different rarities or power levels. Additionally, the interactions between the components need to be balanced, not just the components themselves. You also need to consider a card or components value. You also need to consider the different strategies that players may use in the game and if there are special techniques that will dominate over others and win every time.
- what should every player of your game believe? Why? Every player needs to believe that they have a chance to win up until the end of the game. Games become uninteresting if you know that you are not going to win; it just feels like the game is dragging out and you want to get it over with. Players also want to feel like they have some sort of control over the outcome of the game.
- how can you avoid stealing players fun?Based on Dave Howell’s guidelines, “don’t kick a player out out before the game is over”, avoid kingmaking (including kingchoosing, kingmaking, and kingbreaking), “don’t reward the leader”, “include inherent declaration”, “a player’s ability to influence other players should fall between none and lots”, and “don’t force a reverse”.
- what 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules? Use no intermediary terminology, use real words, make no more work than necessary, add flavor (but not too much), make your text no smarter than your reader, discard rules that can’t be written, take a breath (aka break up your rules), go easy on the eyes (not too much bolding and capitalization), get your final version playtested, fix any errors that pop up after publication in the faq
- Question Set 2
- how has play testing changed your game? Playtesting has made me realize quite a few critical flaws in my game rules and design that I wouldn’t have considered. For Garden Sabotage, I didn’t anticipate players planting plants that they didn’t want in their garden and I had no way for players to remove them. For The Lamp, a lot of the fun cards of the game went unused because I didn’t realize I had put too few spaces in the game.
- who from class would you like to play test your next game or version 2 of your first game? For Garden Sabotage test two, I would like to have some of the people in the class that are interested in garden games or sabotage games test them, because I think they are similar to what my target audience would be.
- who is the audience for your game? I haven’t taken much time to consider the audience for my games. But for Garden Sabotage, I think it could include people who are interested in plants and flowers and also people who want to be able to sabotage other players. For The Lamp, I’m honestly not sure what the audience would be. I think I need to take further time to establish an audience for both games.
- who should play test your game outside of class? Ideally, my target audience would be the playtesters of these games. Because quite a few of my friends and family are interested in plants, I think they would be good for a primary test of Garden Sabotage.
design courses, syllabi, schedules, resources and policies