Devlog Journal 2

For week 2 of our class we went over some folk games. For our exercise this week, we went into groups and were asked to pick a folk game from a website that contained a library of folk games. Before we were able to get the supplies needed to play our folk game, we were asked to modify our selected folk game in order to create a game that accounted for 6 attributes: Actions, Goals, Rules, Objects, Playspace, and Players. Our group decided to go with the folk game called Group Juggling, a game where you toss a bunch of catchable objects at each other. When we were trying to modify our game on Tuesday, we made a game where we threw rings at one another in sequential order until we mass the rings to the last person. Our action was to throw the rings. Our rules were to throw them in the correct order and not to drop any rings, However, our goal was not very clear, it was to have a high score or to throw the rings in the order for as long as we could until someone dropped a ring. Our goal did not feel like a very entertaining goal. Our rules did not help out either because it was hard to have everyone cooperate to have a high score. The goal felt more like "Don't drop the rings". It felt like there wasn't a concrete goal for the players to agree on. It is similar to what Macklin and Sharp say in Chapter 1 of Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design, "The actions and rules of a game make more sense when we know the game’s goal." In our group's case, the rule of "don't drop the rings" became the goal rather than the intended rule of getting a high score. Which made our game feel goalless.

On Thursday, we were asked to pitch our modified game. We would then be able to get our objects and playspace for our game in an empty room next to our classroom. But before we played our game, we decided to have a different goal for our game. Instead of just throwing our rings for as long as we could, we decided to make our game an elimination-based game. This made our rules the following: throw the rings at anyone, a player is eliminated if a player drops a ring,  and a player is eliminated if they hold two rings at the same time for too long. Our goal for the game was: the last person standing wins. So if we started with 5 people, the next round would start with 4, and so on. These changes made our goal much more concrete and the rules and actions of the game made much more sense. Another change we made was changing the objects we used. We originally used rings to toss and catch, but we saw that the rings were kind of tricky to catch. We wanted to make our game as accessible as possible to anyone. As a result, we changed our objects from rings to cornhole bean bags.

After making these changes, we played our game with another group of people. It was much better than we hoped for, we had a concrete goal, which made the game exciting for everyone. But there were 2 things that caught our attention. 1. The players had to be honest with each other when determining who was eliminated in each round. 2. Some players threw the bean bags rather than tossing them to make it harder for the player to catch the bean bag. There was a lot of unpredictability in how the players interacted and played the game. It is just like Macklin and Sharp said in Chapter 1 of Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design, "Game designers determine the specifics of these core elements of a game, but they have little control over what the player does with them while playing the game." We had full control over our Actions, Rules, and Goals for our game, but had little to no control over how the players from the other group played our game.

Overall, everyone was honest when we played our game with the other group. We learned that our game was much more exciting with the changes we made. The group we played with gave us their thoughts and we were able to reflect on what was good about our game and what was bad about our game from the other group's perspective. We were able to experience our game for what it was with the other group. Things would get very intense when the last 3 or 2 people were standing, which made the game exciting. Macklin and Sharp say in Chapter 1 of Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design, "This is the real power of game design—creating play experiences that can entertain, express, connect, cause reflection, and many other kinds of thought and emotion." Because we experienced the game with the other group, we were able to connect with them, receive their feedback, and have fun with each other while focusing on making our game the best version it can be.