Devlog 3

This week our big focus shifted to how simple board games are designed, and we even practiced modding on ourselves. We started with just playing the game in its base state without adding any rules of our own. I think this was great to start with because this first playthrough allowed us to understand the ins and outs of the game, how it works, some of the gimmicks or intricacies, etc. The game in question is called Up the River, and at its simplest it has up to four players rolling a die and racing to get all of their pieces to the end first to score the most points. Just like this, however, the game wouldn’t feel too fun or exciting, so there are some unique spaces to enhance the player experience. First there is the sandbar space, which forces players to stop on that space, even if they rolled a high enough number that would have put them on a space in front of it. Then there is the waves space, which gives players that land on it a 3 space boost, though this is also halted by the sandbar if it is in front of the waves. Lastly, there is a waterfall at the very back of the spaces which causes the pieces to all shift back one and the very last space to rotate to the front of the board after all players have taken a turn. If one of the players’ pieces are on this last space, that piece is knocked out of the game. We were asked to modify the game so as to change one of the 6 attributes of the game, Actions, Goals, Objects, Rules, Players, and Playspace. In addition to this, we were asked to maintain a “Lusory attitude,” which Macklin and Sharp define as being “willing to accept, and even invite, less efficient or logical means of engaging with a game in exchange for the potential of the play experience” (Macklin and Sharp Ch 2). In other words, we had to be willing to accept that our modification might not be so great in exchange for the chance that it would enhance our play experience beyond the base state of the game. Our modification was to add a new gimmick space, the Pirate space. If someone landed on this space, they got to shoot a nerf gun at the board from a specified distance, and any pieces are knocked out of the game. This added a new action for the players to do, and a new way for them to interact with the objects of the game. More specifically, a new Direct Action was added, which is a way “in which the player has immediate interaction with objects and the playspace” (Macklin and Sharp Ch 2). This also created a new subgoal for the players, and even gave us more excitement than actually making it to the end of the river, we wanted to land on the pirate space more. This space also took away some of the initial game’s consistency, as there was now a “skill level” associated with it, with how well each player can aim and shoot a small nerf gun at small pieces. Macklin and Sharp define this consistency as meaning “the game responds to player actions in the same way every time” (Macklin and Sharp Ch 4). This was inconsistent because sometimes players can hit a piece, or miss entirely. Arguably the most important thing this modification added to the game was a renewed sense of excitement and risk of being eliminated. This made a game that felt simple and relaxing into a game with a sort intensity. Some things that could have been implemented to make this modification better would be things like consistent play piece sizes, as ours varied. This would make the shooting part feel more fair as all pieces are equal in difficulty to hit. One other change we could make would be making the game board pieces out of heavier material so that the nerf darts didn’t scramble up the board so much. Overall, this experience was invaluable as it allowed us begin getting familiar with designing a new rule and experimenting with how much we wanted players to feel both rewarded, and sometimes penalized.