Week 7

The best way I think I can relate this week's classes to the reading is by talking about the prototyping journey. We started this week with a deck of cards that had some plus 2 numbers written on them and we finished it with an entire game and throughout this journey we've learned so, SO much. “But in truth, you may throw away many prototypes.” Is pulled from the first section of “Ten tips For Productive Prototyping.” And though it sounds really self explanatory it was a rude awakening in our group. I really feel for our artist Eden who put in hours of effort for Tuesday's class but once we realized we wanted to go a different direction with our game we had to go and redraw all of our cards. It's a part of the process but in truth I never realized just how many times we were going to break down and rewrite our game. I found myself confusing old rules with new rules ETC, but i'm happy with where we got. 

The same chapter has a really important set of questions that stuck out to me when reading it “If my game had no goal, would it be fun at all? If not, how can I change that? When people see my game, do they want to start interacting with it, even before they know what to do? If not, how can I change that?” 

These spoke to me because they are really the core foundations of what we are doing. If we get lost in trying to be innovative or complex then is it really worth anything at all? My biggest goal when we are creating is to make things that are fun. The first thing I'd ask our group when we had others finish playtests is “Did you have fun? Was the game fun?” because at its core the experience we set out to create is rooted in play. It's rooted in fun. And something I'm really proud of about our game. I think we did a great job with our atmosphere, as well as the game itself.

The other reading this week was about “Sociality '' within the context of games, which is another big niche our game sort of happened to fall into. It stands to reason that any multiple player game will have social aspects to it, but I really love the interplay of our game. A personal goal of mine was to create sort of set ups for players. To be funny or interact with others. I.E power cards that affect others or the very action of a group taking photos together is to foster a sense of comedy and silliness to the game. When a location like a Port O potty pops up my hope is you might turn to your friend and say something silly. It's all about that really, creating and fostering that social interplay within the game. We know it's hard to socialize so we give our players things to bond over and talk about.