Contextual Studies -Earliest, simplest game

When I was a child, I played Crash Bandicoot 2: The Wrath of Cortex. This was a basic, characterful, colourful ps1 platformer. A trivial, silly narrative was introduced at the start of the game to support the player’s actions. This was appropriate however, as it was primarily a child’s game. I then spent time concentrating on the execution of two moves; the jump and the spin. These were needed to get past pits, and dispatch enemies. I was just a mute orange character, wearing blue shorts and red sneakers. Running down a linear path through a jungle. Killing enemies, breaking big cartoon crates, collecting items, timing jumps and retrieving a big, unmissable pink crystal on each level. The gameplay was easy, fun and simple. Moving consisted of four directional buttons. Whilst all the remaining controls you needed, were; a button for a spin, and a button for a jump. Nothing else was required to play through the game. There was also no customization, no inventory, no branching storylines, no multiplayer, and no minigames. There were a small number of types of crate you could find. There were three levels of protective witch doctor masks you could have. Enemies’ actions were uncomplicated and predictable. The game was effectively split into 5 sets of 5 levels. Each section had a consistent theme running through it. Which gave you a comforting sense of familiarity, amongst all the dangerous traps and enemies you had to face. This game had such a lovely, childlike simplicity and delight about it, which it made it a pleasure to play. Even now, when I play it, it does not seem ‘old, dated and rubbish’. Its nostalgic to play, and a childhood classic of mine.

Contextual Studies - Roger Caillois

I agree with what Robert has said here, but only to a certain extent. It is completely true, that playing games does not acquire you any physical wealth. He is right to call it waste. At the end, you have gained nothing. You have only lost things. An alternate way of looking at it is that you may have gained or accomplished various things within the game universe. Therefore, not making your actions a waste of time. I think it depends on how you look at it. Yes, you may have built an amazing; building, castle, city within the game world, but ultimately, all that doesn’t matter in the real world. But then, if you take that standpoint, you could also argue that nothing in reality matters either. One human life, and all of its achievements are ultimately futile, insignificant and pointless in the long timeline of the universe. So this question of ‘play being a waste’, can go into enormous depth and detail.

Contextual Studies - The feel of Bioshock

Suddenly plunged into a frightening , mysterious, mad , bizarre world. NO KINGS OR GOD, ONLY MAN. As soon as I arrive, I’m assailed by impossibly powerful madmen. I struggle to repel them, and flee further into the city. This is a beautiful city, a utopia under the sea, but with a rotten cancer at its heart. Who’s effects are all around me. Madness, desperation, raw, feral instinct, running wild through the streets. I loot shops, corpses for food and supplies, which raises feelings of moral disputation within me. With no ethical, religious or governmental restraints, the excessive minds here have harnessed the powers of the Gods. And bottled it. I drink this ambrosia down greedily. I unleash it gleefully upon my enemies, who do the same in turn. Yet amidst all this chaos and depravity, glimmers of innocence appear. It falls to me if I am to crush these budding hopes in my fist, for my own personal gain, or set them free, and lead them away from this place. The great omnipresent creator of this city watches and studies my every move. I feel the sensation of constant observation everywhere. He communicates directly with me, questioning my presence here, my goals, my motives, undermining my confidence. I am embroiled into the strands of fate of the city.  `I feel small, threatened and real.

Board Game - Update 3

Now, we have decided on a type of game, (an abstract strategy game), a name, and a number of possible themes. So, things are progressing. Our game is a strange cross between chess and checkers, with 2 or 4 players. The pieces will be D4's, or four-sided pyramids. These will then move about the board, from their 'base' to destroy opposing pieces, and/or take any objectives, which we have also devised. One of our core elements, is that the pieces now have 'ranks'. These different ranks create a sort of rock-paper-scissors system between the pieces. Where one can take another, but can in turn, be taken by another rank, and so on. All of a players pieces start on 'rank 1' and can progress up to rank four. Currently, a player may move two pieces a turn. Or, alternatively, use those moves to 'upgrade' up to two of his pieces.

For example, a player moves one piece one space, and decides to upgrade another of his/her pieces one rank. Therefore, you cannot upgrade or move a single piece twice in one turn. In addition, you can turn a 'rank four' into a 'rank one' if you so wish. As only 'one's' can take 'four's'.

After we had created this system, we thought about extra objectives and victory parameters, to add to our game. Adopting a classic game mode from various video games,( and some tabletop war-games) we added our own version of 'Tower Defense' or 'King of the Hill'. This involved placing a central objective on the playing area. The idea was that players would fight to capture and control this over the course of a game.

Board Game - Update 2

This morning, we gathered in the Union, to discuss our findings. We had done well as a group in gathering information about board games, with a couple of us even going further and developing simple ideas for our game. This was excellent, as it acted as a catalyst for others to think up additional concepts. I thought several games during the course of the morning, including a time travelling game, which would have players answering questions from history. This then revealed itself to be a rather eleborate history test, which would be attractive for the wrong audience. I thought of developing this into some sort of Doctor Who questionnaire. But soon realised that this has almost definitely been done before, in the form of some Doctor Who trivial pursuit game. 

I then thought up a simple game, which was based on 'looking nice' rather than having riveting game mechanics. It involved three players, as the three primary colours. They would go around the board colouring in the dots with whichever colour was theirs. They could go over other players dots, to add to their own score. Their would be gradients of colour, so not just red, blue and yellow, but all kinds of different shades, were players had gone over opposing dots, and coloured them more to their own colour. I imagined a something similar to a 'lightbox' underneath this playing triangle, with coloured 'gels' over the top, representing the different dots shaded by the players. I thought this would be a good concept for a digitalised, online game, as this would perhaps be too much for a physical board game. To that end, we shelved the whole idea for now, and talked about another's idea, involving a grid-based, strategy game, with strong and weak units. This would potentially be four player. We then spent the afternoon discussing the exact mechanics required to get the different units balanced. This is still ongoing, and is where we have left it at for now, but this remains the strongest idea yet.  

BA1 - Fundamentals 1 : Board Game - Update 1

Its my theory, that to give us a good base knowledge of computer games, we have been asked to think about their natural predecessor : the 'board game'. Our task was to design, from scratch, a board game. This would then include the core game mechanics, (which even as I type, we are currently working on) the target audience, overall theme, concept artwork for ;the board, pieces, counters, rulebook etc. and everything else in-between.

On the first day, after being herded into our groups, my group decided to start by dispersing and doing some research into the history of board games. What are the most popular ones today. Why is this so etc.
This was a good idea, as it would hopefully give us a bit of knowledge to spin our own creation off of. This was all before we ventured off to ToyR'us to do some first hand research, into what was already out there. Needless to say, we discovered overwhelming rank upon rank of board games, stacked high and stretching down the length of the store. This was a good indication of just how appealing board games are to children, and the masses of companies wishing to capitalise on this fact. After examining the shelves of the store, we came to the conclusion we were going to follow the majority and market a game to children aged 8-12, which their parents could play with them. This would emulate the classic family format of Father, mother, son and daughter, which so many great board games base their concepts around. Namely; Monopoly, Scrabble, and to a lesser extent; Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Cluedo, and Mah Jongg.