This lesson we talked about the oldest games of history and how they became popular. We looked at games like chess, dice and backgammon.
Kingdom of Lid
There’s a story about the Kingdom of Lid and how it was suffering from a famine. The King came up with a way that would keep his people alive and keep their morale up. On one day a group of people would work the field and eat and then the next day they would play games all day to distract them from their hunger and they would keep switching turns with another group.
This meant that the games they played was so addictive they forgot about their own basic needs. This story has some truth to it as I have played addictive games myself such as ‘Skyrim’ or ‘Game Dev Tycoon’ and I didn’t even realize how hungry I was. If we can make a game similar to this then our game has a chance to be successful.
King and the best game.
A king sends out three wise men to go out and find the best game. One day the first of the three wise men came in and said it was chess as it is a strategy game and strategy will determine your destiny. The second wise man disagreed and said it was dice as it relies on luck and luck determines your destiny. The third wise man came in and disagreed to both of them and said backgammon was the best game as it relies on both luck and strategy and strategy and luck determines your destiny.
The third wise man is right as there are things you must do and plan out in order to set a path for your future but there are also opportunities can appear out of no where which you can’t control. Which means that strategy and luck based games are the best. When it comes to game play this is also true. A completely luck reliant game would take the control out of the player and would make the game more of a gamble than anything and a completely strategic game would make casual players feel out of their element. If you mix luck and strategy then it would give casual players a chance to against even the smartest players.
Lee telling us these stories was a fun way to research what makes games fun and addictive. I think that this approach of doing research is underused as it let’s think about why these things happen in the stories.
Backgammon
We wanted to see what Backgammon was like. It really was a game of strategy and luck. After playing this game I didn’t feel that I was in a complete disadvantage because there was still a chance to win with luck but at the same time I didn’t feel like I needed to rely too much on luck as I can still win using my wits.
10,000/Farkle
To win at Farkle you must be the player with the highest score above 10,000 points on the final round of play. Each player takes turns rolling the dice. On your turn, you roll all six dice. A 1 or a 5, three of a kind, three pairs, or a six-dice straight earn points. This game is all luck based.
We can add this luck mechanic to our game by adding things that is out of the player’s control for example a random obstacle generator. This is perfect for things like endless runner games as the player can’t rely on memory to get a high score making gameplay more engaging. I don’t quite know how my team can achieve this but there should be a variety of different tutorials on youtube we can look at.
Othello is an all strategy game. It is started by placing two of each colour diagonal from each other on the center of the bored. then players would decide who starts first.
To place your chip on the bored you must make sure you are surrounding your opponents row of chips with 2 of your own chips (1 on each side of your opponents row of chips). When you do this, the row that you have surrounded will then change to your colour chips. To end the game you must fill every grid on the board with chips and to win you must have the most chips on the board. We were given a tip from our tutor and that is to take over the corner of the board.
I tried playing this game against an AI and I found it challenging since I’m not very good at strategy games like chess or checkers, but even though I found it difficult I still found it fun to play but mainly because I was competing with my friends to see who can win first.
I can’t imagine a hyper casual game being strategic since the main selling point for this genre is the fact that it is easy to get into.
What I learnt
The most important thing I learnt about these games are:
- Games based on luck is addictive.
- Games completely reliant on luck will make you feel out of control of the situation which can lead to bitterness when playing competitively.
- Strategy games can be difficult if not used to that type of gameplay.
- Playing strategy games against your friends can be fun if they are of the same level of experience as you.
- Combining these two things together will make an engaging and addictive game.
I will use all the information I’ve learnt to make a hyper active game.
Mechanics
In class we talked about other mechanics that make games more interesting and here are the ones we came up with
- Chance – Dice
- Strategy – Chess
- Exploration – Skyrim is a game that takes place in a really large map filled with dungeons and missions that can only be found through exploration.
- Timing, Reflexes – Guitar Hero, a game that requires you to press buttons when colours matching those buttons get tot a certain point on the screen.
- Memory – Every fighting game like Mortal Kombat is a memory game as you’d need to learn combos and move lists to overpower your opponent.
- Resource Management – Resource management is in most games nowadays as you’d require experience or currency to purchase skills or equipment. For example The PS4 Spider Man game requires you to do certain missions to get tokens that can be used to purchase skills.
Example of games that combine these mechanics are MOBA games. MOBA games rely on strategy and reflexes to take down opponents, memory to learn all the moves and their effects and timing to combine your moves to make to improve your rate of damage, resource management is also a mechanic as coins are used purchase items that improve your characters health, defense, attack, magic and magic defense and also improve the effectiveness of skills by acquiring skill points by leveling up.
What is flow in Games Design?
Games must keep a consistent flow in order to keep players playing your game until the end. So in the beginning of the game it would normally be easy as the player has no experience with the game just yet but, as they progress through the game they’re skill level should have increased along with the difficulty. Games should not be too easy as the player will get bored but they don’t want the game to be too difficult as they’d lose they’re motivation to continue which is why most games make difficulty and experience have a correlation.
Skyrim is another great example for this because as the player levels up so do the enemies and their gear.
The reason for why players are like this may go all the way back to evolution. If you think about it we as humans are constantly looking for problems to solve. If there were no problems to begin with then there would be no reason to evolve but at the same time certain humans only some problems can be solved depending on the person solving the problem and their experience tackling similar issues.
My Game Jam Project
My Game Jam project is categorized with some of these mechanics. Since it is an endless runner game you’d have to rely on luck as the obstacles are randomly generated, it also relies on timing as there are times where there are obstacles bunch up together and you’d have to time your jump perfectly in order to survive.
We also researched flow in games and wanted to make our game more difficult as time went on. We had the idea to make the runner move faster and faster as time went on or increase the spawn rate of the obstacles the more you pick up collectibles.
Nick Amalin 