Devlog 5

This week we wrapped up our sports games and actually got to play other groups’ sports games. We didn’t end up making any changes to our Skrewball game, we were quite happy to keep it simple and wanted to refrain from adding too much and making the game more than what it needed to be. This was reflected in some of the feedback we got, as well as our own thoughts as we played. The most agreed upon additions to improve the player experience were a provided way to keep track of scores through rounds, and to consider changing the game from a “Most points at the end of 5 rounds” style to a “first to x amount of points game.” The strong points I wrote about in the last devlog still held true as well: that being that there is always a healthy sense of drama since the winner is never decided until the very end, a classmate in last place doubled their points in the final round and ended up winning the game by one point. The other strong point being that sense of community and integrity around our scoring system. It wasn’t perfect, if the bead covers multiple point zones then take the score of whichever zone the majority of the bead is on, but it held up as everyone wanted to keep the game fair and honest, improving the playing experience for everyone. Overall, my favorite part of creating sports based games was that there really wasn’t anyone person taking control of the entire thing and everyone was eager to work to agreements on the design process, like how Macklin and Sharp say “The more aligned everyone is, the more in sync the team will be” (Macklin and Sharp Ch 8). In addition to this mindset the team had, having individual chat channels in Microsoft Teams to communicate and “file share” to make sure we all came equipped for success and completed the instruction file gave the whole project a professional atmosphere. Macklin and Sharp also say that this file sharing and communication are vital for team success so that everyone understands assignments, roles, and time deadlines (Macklin and Sharp Ch 8). For the second half of the week we broke into card games and played this game called “Sushi Go!” which was actually quite fun. To prepare, we learned a brief overview of the history of playing cards, and I think the most interesting bit of information I Iearned was that playing cards are meant to be kept pristine and unbent/ruined so that they all maintain their anonymity and uniformity when viewed from the backside. If the King of Hearts is bent, then everyone knows what that card is in that deck rendering it obsolete. I had honestly never come to this realization before. Nathan Altice phrases this perfectly by saying “Uniformity…breeds the deck… and the shuffle,” allowing for random chance to be introduced and “When chance comes into play, uniformity guarantees fairness” (Altice The Playing Card Platform). To return to “Sushi Go!” players always adapt to what hand they have and what their opponents are doing. Points are awarded by picking similar cards and pairing bonus cards together. I really enjoyed the learning process of this game and trying to come up with different strategies and seeing how well they worked. One of my favorite parts, however, was that there are many viable strategies in this game, there is not just one correct way to play and players can choose to do whatever they think works best for them. I personally didn’t play many card games growing up, yet I had tons of fun and I am super eager to get further into learning what makes them so unique and entertaining from the design side.