Non Digital Game Iteration
Game Iteration
Jasper Juul (Juul, Jesper. “The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression.”, 2002, https://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html) sets out the distinction between two types of games design philosophies, progression, and emergence.
The definition that Juul (2002) gives progression is that ‘the player has to perform a predefined set of actions in order to complete the game’, the other key part of progression that Juul references is the designer having strong control over how the game is played. The control a designer has over the game stems from their controlling how the game plays out, referred to by Juul as ‘playing a game on a rail’ where due to the amount of control over how the game can be played it becomes a checklist of actions to complete to advance the story.
An example of a game with high progression is Tokaido, this is because the game contains many of the key features of progression games, one of these being the lock and key system, in which they have the players stop at inns across the board before they can continue. Another progressive element is the personal storyline that is created as the game is played; by the player collecting panoramas, eating at the inns, and donating to temples across the map. The main issue that this system creates is that due to these kinds of progressive elements and the fixed route of the board there is an impact on replayability, as at some point the player will have exhausted all the available gameplay routes.
It is important to note that games don’t tend to fall exactly into progression or emergence, but rather it is a scale. Using Tokaido as an example while it has the progressive features already listed, it doesn’t include other trademarks of progression games like character upgrading, or random world generation. Despite these absences the other progression features mean that even if it isn’t pure progression, it still falls in the progression camp on the scale.
On the other side of this scale from what we’ve covered is emergence in games, about these games Juul (2002) says ‘a small number of rules that combine and yield large numbers of game variations’, generally games in the categories of action and strategy lean towards the emergent side.
A game that utilises emergent properties is chess, as despite the set board and specific numbers of pieces there are only a small number of rules, consequently there are many gameplay variations, indeed there are multiple books that focus on different stages of the game. This shows that small numbers of rules don’t mean erratic and chaotic gameplay, but rather due to the freedom the player has they can experiment with different moves creating a complex system of fairly strong emergence.
On this spectrum I would place my game closer to emergence as there are a small number of rules and set game pieces similar to chess, and how they connect with each other facilitates somewhat complex gameplay, much like Jaipur and its market system and the random drawing of cards adds to the unpredictability of the game leading to more variations of playing based on what cards the player starts with, like the card drawing found in colt express.
Types of fun
The type of fun the player experiences affects how they play the game, Nicola Lazzaro (andrzej marczewski, june 5, 2013, https://www.gamified.uk/2013/06/05/gamification-user-types-and-the-4-keys-2-fun/) describes 4 kinds of fun, these being hard fun, easy fun, serios fun, and people fun. I decided that the fun I should aim for in my game is hard fun, as the player is trying to beat their opponents and the game challenges them to think tactically, due to this there a feeling of accomplishment when the player wins a game, this feeling of accomplishment turns in to Fiero when the game situation becomes tense, as it did in some test games.
Compulsion Loop
The key to non-digital games is the compulsion loop, according to Joseph Kim (Kim, Joseph. “The Compulsion Loop Explained.” Gamasutra, 23 Mar. 2014, 05:07, www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JosephKim/20140323/213728/The_Compulsion_Loop_Explained.php.) a compulsion loop is ‘A habitual, designed chain of activities that will be repeated to gain a neurochemical reward: a feeling of pleasure and/or a relief from pain’.
The loop is the broken down by Kim into 3 key notions, the first being habitual, creating a long lasting and repeated habit. The second is the designated chain of activities, which sets out that a compulsion loop should be made up of multiple specifically designed events within each part of the chain. And the third is neurochemical reward using dopamine in an effort to control peoples’ actions by creating habitual behaviours. A good game to use as an example of the compulsion loop is colt express, the loop being draw cards, play the cards, get reward.
Nir Eyal (Eyal, N., 2013. Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products. Portfolio Penguin.) has a slightly different framework in that he believes the compulsion is made up of 4 parts rather than three, these 4 parts are triggers, action, reward, and investment, the main difference to Kims definition is that Eyal separates the reward and the investment, with the investment compelling the player to keep playing with ‘endowed progress’ rather than the reward itself.
Core Mechanic
The core mechanic of my game is a mixture of pick and pass and push your luck. The pick and pass mechanic consists of players picking a card from a deck and passing it on, while this traditionally goes on until there are no cards left in the deck, in my games case this only happens until each player has 5 cards.
The result of drawing and checking cards each turn is that the player is always paying attention and there is a lot of meaningful choice due to the multiple card combinations capable of winning the game that the player will be looking for, proving the importance of tactics and player choice in pick and pass games.
The second part of my games core mechanics come from is push your luck, with this mechanic turn by turn the player can choose whether to stick with what they have or risk making it worse, this means that every turn the player faces a meaningful choice of whether or not to switch cards.
An example of a push your luck game is similar to my own is blackjack, where once the player has two cards, they choose whether to keep those two cards or add to them, this is similar to my game, the main difference being that instead of adding cards players replace their cards.
Smart Depth
An important part of keeping players playing your game is smart depth, this gets its start from the core loop of a game, this as Nathan Lovato (Lovato, N., 2017. How to Perfect your Game's Core Loop – GameAnalytics, GameAnalytics, https://gameanalytics.com/blog/how-to-perfect-your-games-core-loop/) puts it should be short, with a clear goal built on a strong theme using an action, a reward and anticipation.
Creating smart depth from this point involves giving the players meaningful choice and the chance of decision making, leading to replayability. This is a key part of allowing the smart depth to show a good core game loop, with a simple and intuitive action, an encouraging reward and investment through anticipation. In my game the core game loop is the short action of selecting a card, the clear goal and reward of increasing point scores with each card, and the anticipation of increasing their score by swapping out an unwanted card.
A good example of a game similar to mine that makes good use of smart depth is Jaipur, in which the player can take any card from the market, or the camels, or they can swap their cards for cards in the market, then when they sell cards, they can sell a single card or multiple, the more cards the bigger bonus, and when an opponent draws a card, the player feels anticipation that the new card put in the market might be better and the reward is the player selling their items and getting their money.
This is a good example of smart depth as while the options are simple, in selling and swapping the different options and tactics means that every turn the player is faced with meaningful choice and decision making.
Affordances
Affordances are a key part of design as they help the player Intuitively understand mechanics of the game, this is a point made by Don Norman (Norman, D., 2002. The psychology of everyday things. [New York, NY]: Basic Books.) in ‘the design of everyday things’, in which he states that ‘good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself.’ This communication between designer and player through the game comes in three forms.
The first being systemic qualities where game objects behave as you expect them to due to real world logic, an example is survive escape from Atlantis, wherein there are boats, which carry people and can be turtled (overturned/fully capsized) by whales, and whirlpools swallow everything, as you can see systemic affordances are made sense of by their environment.
The second kind of affordances are environmental affordances, which are what give context to systemic affordances, for example, the colour of the water shows where boats can go, and the land disappears, sand, forest then rock, in the real world these 3 are in order of solidity, so while it’s not completely realistic it’s realistic enough for the player to accept.
The final affordance is thematic affordance, continuing to use the example of survive escape from Atlantis, the name gives a context cue about what the aim is, and although, Atlantis is a mythical city, whales don’t usually overturn boats and krakens aren’t real they fit in to the thematic affordance of the game, so the player accepts it.
My Game
Farm Animal Rush is a Push your luck turn based card game, where the players are competing to build the best farm with 6 kinds of cards; pig, chicken, horse, sheep, llama, and impala, each of these in increasing order of value. The deck is passed around and each player draws 5 cards with the spare cards going in a deck in the middle. Each player then takes turns either swapping a card or holding their deck, then once either the deck is empty or each player holds their cards the player with the most points wins, the points are found on the cards.
Playtests
Playtest of Farm Animal Rush V.1
3 play testers including myself played the game over a 20 minute period.
Can people play my game – Bug Fixing
Are people enjoying my game – iteration and redesign
The players found that the rules covered the general area of the game, but found it had nothing on who starts, and if holding on to cards instead of swapping once locks them in from swapping next turn
The players noted that the scores being on the cards simplified the game rather than having to remember scores
Players looked to have enjoyed the game, deciding whether or not to swap a card seemed to keep them involved and paying attention.
The players didn’t like that they couldn’t see other people’s cards and thought it’d improve gameplay if all cards were face up
Player feedback:
- Make cards visible to other players
- As others can see cards make them more than white cards with scores
My Assessment:
- Visible cards would make the game more tactical as you can see what hand your opponent is trying to build and counter it
- Cards with decoration as well as scores would require smaller font size for the scores but should still be readable
Changed for next iteration-
- Cards in players hands will be face up and visible, but cards in the deck will be face down
- Each card will have a cartoon drawing of the animal they represent to make the card more aesthetically pleasing
Playtest of Farm Animal Rush V.2
4 play testers not including myself played the game over a 25 minute period
Can people play my game – Bug Fixing
Are people enjoying my game – iteration and redesign
Players found that some combinations of cards were too hard to beat and suggested lower scores for different animals together.
Face up cards and decoration seem to work, I could see players mirror and try to counter each other with card combinations
The players suggested that instead of doing quick games like in blackjack, each game becomes a round, and a certain number of rounds is a game
Player feedback
- Face up and decoration cards helped
- Make the game round based instead of quick games
- Change the card combination points
My assessment
- A round based game would help the issue of game length and could lend itself to rewarding the winner of each round somehow
- Changing the card combination points seems necessary, overpowered cards will lead to players holding cards too much instead of risking a swap
Changes for next iteration
- Games will be made up of 5 rounds so that the game lasts long enough and there can’t be ties
- Card combinations will go up by 1 with each animal instead of by 2 as before to keep the lower cards in play
Playtest of Farm Rush Animals V.3
4 play testers over 20 minutes
Can people play my game – Bug Fixing
Are people enjoying my game – iteration and redesign
There weren’t any big issues in this game, I’m happy with the rules
Round system was an improvement and made the game last longer and intensified the gameplay
The new score system worked and kept the lower cards in contention.
Player feedback
- 5 rounds making up the game works well, makes the last two games more tense
- The new score system works and keeps the cards closer without negating the advantage of the bigger cards
My assessment
- The rounds worked well and making the player who won the last round draw first made for a good reward for winning the round
- The card scoring system works as well as I could hope.