Serious games “case study” & board games

This week we have only had 1 lecture, which was yesterday (Monday). The lecture was from a former student, who now works for three games and has a past experience as a developer for serious games. The interesting thing to note is how coincidental it seems when some people are lucky enough to land a contract in the gaming industry. They knew someone who had created a webpage (iirc) and that client wanted to create a game about their company.

The lecture was fairly long and as usual impressive when it came to the presentation itself (Jakob rules when it comes to presentations). That said, I don’t really have that many reflections, because I’ve been working with client based contracts before and kinda knew a lot of the information on beforehand. What was new however is that the client should be aware that everything they want to add will cost them. I mean of course it will, just that it is smart to get that down on paper, because I know a lot of companies think that a job will just take this and that many hours and it will be done, however in reality it takes longer.

Another great takeaway form the lecture is to put a time limit for how long a project should last. Now I agree that you should put a time limit to how long you should maintain a game, especially since this was a web based game (or flash based, but it is basically the same). What I think maybe they should have opted for was a way to extend the maintenance deal. That said I don’t know if they tried, I should have asked about it, but forgot… Ok, ok I didn’t think of it until now…

As I mentioned however, the lecture was interesting, but a lot of it was self explanatory. What is great about Jakob’s lectures is that he usually talk a lot about stuff that isn’t on the slides and he always seem well prepared. Not that the others doesn’t seem that prepared, but he has a flow that at least for me works well. I have time to write down what is on the slides and summarize what he says in between.

Last year Serious games was dubbed unserious games (according to some students), this year I don’t think that’s the case at all. So far we have a clear goal and agenda all along, it was good with a refresh of MDA, it was really nice working with machinations, although what I did sucked, unfortunately I had no clue what kind of a game / resource system to use. I did however play around with the software a lot so if we get the same kind of assignment again I’m prepared, at least more prepared than I was before. Also the gamasutra article on machinations did explain a lot. For the interested it can be found here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/176033/the_designers_notebook_.php
and the machinations can be found here:
http://www.jorisdormans.nl/machinations/
Read first, then create is my advice, but keep the machinations up and replicate the examples, that way you see how it works. And also go to the wiki and replicate the examples there, gives a greater understanding of how it works.

Anyway to continue the train of thought, Serious games has a structure and we have an assignment at the end of the course, so it seems like a course that has been improved and upgraded by the teachers, at least if I compare it to what I heard about it from people that had it before. I didn’t know that before I applied for it however, so I’m glad that we have a serious agenda.

Board game presentations

Today, Tuesday, we had presentations based upon our analysis, the goal was to discuss in a group and agree upon best and worst sides of the games we played, the core system and generally talk about the game and answer questions from the audience.

The problem with these kind of assignments is that they become boring quickly. No offense to fellow students, but we are not good at delivering a summary of games, explaining what the games are about and how to play them. Getting the best and worst sides I think all groups did well however. I think it boils down to us not preparing for it, for instance I wasn’t even supposed to be on stage today, but at the last minute I joined in because the one that wanted to have the presentation wanted to bring us along, in case of questions I assume. Honestly said though I don’t think I would have been able to explain a board game quickly, without being boring. I guess what we could have done is to bring the actual board game so that people could see the real deal. That said I guess it would have taken too long. We could have used video maybe to record a 2 minute intro of the game showing cards, items, etc. And a typical game round with bullet points and freeze frame. Nah I’m only joking, but at least something to make the audience understand the game. Because presentations with games that I have played before was much more interesting and I believe it is because I knew the game already.

However, when I think about it afterwards there was one good thing that came out of this. We’re introduced to more board games, we get to know about them, what the good parts are, the bad parts, but also some of the groups said what was fun about it. So if we take that a step further, we also get to know about certain systems. Systems that might be useful to know about when we are creating our own games. I also find it interesting to see what other people think is the best and worst. Although it is said to be objective, it will never be because what might be a bad side for some, might be something another group never experienced.

One example in particular comes to mind. In Smallworld for instance there’s a random race and a special ability. Some combinations can as some groups claimed be powerful, which is true, however if you look at how the game is played, you can see that even if a race is powerful you can only use it limited amount of times. Bivouacking trolls I believe was what they mentioned as an example, that means you have 10 trolls in total, to conquer a basic land you need. To be able to conquer a land you need at least 2 race tokens, which means that you can have a maximum of 10 lands with a race, however the regions they control are fortified with a trolls lair and encampment. However at some point you lack the necessary tokens to conquer new lands, and even if you have a high defense, not all parts of your land has that high defense. You tokens might get killed off after a certain time and you have to go in decline. So even if a race and special ability combo seems more overpowered than others it won’t be because you reach a certain limit and it is strategically better to go into decline, because it takes time for the other players to take over your lands you have a couple of rounds where you can really stack up on points with the new conquering race.

Another thing I came to think of today is that a lot of people seem to think of what makes the game what it is as a core. If I mention one example, there was a lot of teams playing fiasco. At first I didn’t get what the whole thing was because it didn’t seem to follow any normal roleplaying elements that I’m used to. However from what I understood there was a system where you created characters and a system that put the scenes in place. People argued that the Scene system was the core because that’s what you play out and that characters wasn’t and vice versa. From the explanations that I saw, I would say that scenes sounds like the core, but not because of the arguments used, but rather because it is what people is doing most frequently. At least that’s what the core is according to the MDA definition. The action that you most often perform during play.

I might be wrong here since a lot of groups seemed to get it wrong. One example was one group that thought the resources themselves in Settlers of Catan was the core, however it is how you generate resources that is the core, because you do that every single time it is your turn to play. Again at least according to the MDA core explanation that I read from a short paper about MDA.

What I think though is that our teacher should have questioned that part more, because I think it is vital that we are able to identify the core of a game or not. That said, maybe we get that feedback on our individual reports, I don’t know, but it would be nice to get some kind of right and wrong answers on these things. That said, I believe what we did today is more an exercise in arguing for what we believed was correct, and that we at a later point need to either read up on the course literature or will get some kind of aha moment why something is the core and not. That we simply just need the practice in thinking in design and need the practice of discussing it and that right and wrong at this point doesn’t matter as long as you can argue for your point.