Week 2: The MDA Framework and SiSSYFiGHT
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This week we were taught about the MDA Framework and worked on modifying the card game SiSSYFiGHT. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics and makes up the fundamentals of how you design a game. Mechanics is all the systems at work. For example, if you were playing a card game, then you could say that the systems include drawing cards, playing cards and resolving their effects, basically setting the rules on how the game is played. If Mechanics is how the game works, then Dynamics is how the game plays. That is, the objective of the game, how to achieve it and other things related to gameplay. Aesthetics are the emotions you want the player to have when playing the game. This could be called the different ways of having fun in your game. Socializing, exploring, going through challenges and following a narrative are all different Aesthetics, ways for your players to enjoy themselves. Moving on to SiSSYFiGHT. SiSSYFiGHT is a card game were about you and your friends essentially being in the roles of schoolgirls bullying eachother by lowering the self-esteem of your opponents. The self-esteem of each player is represented by 10 tokens, and players can use different actions each turn to remove each others tokens or to protect their own. The action cards are; SOLO: Declare a solo attack on an opponent that removes one token. Outside of those are the target cards, each with a different color that is supposed to represent the player. Each player chooses an action and a target and then resolve the effects. When only two players are left, those two win. Anyway, we were supposed to modify these rules to fit inside a different fiction and have new mechanics before finally having a new element introduced to it, randomly handed out by the teachers. Our reworked SiSSYFiGHT was set on a fictional space vessel with a ”replicator” infecton in the mix. Players would try to figure out who is a replicator and the tokens were renamed Credibility Chips (CC), to reflect how likely they are of being exposed as a replicator (even if they aren’t one). This was our answer to people immediately getting picked off at the start of a game and then sitting there doing nothing. The replicator idea meant that the player had at least a chance of getting back into the game as soon as another player was taken out. We also added an ACCUSE card, where a player would team up with another to accuse an opponent of being a replicator. If successful, the targeted player is immediately removed from play. However, should it fail due to a DEFEND, all players accusing players lose tokens of their own. With the introduction of the random element, we had to add customization. Therefore we added traits, and while I won’t go into detail on what all the traits do, I can say that it had some influence on our playstyles and created some minor amount of strategy. That’s all for this week.  |
