"Game Design Workshop" Reading Journal #4

Exercise 2.7: Premise

I'm not familiar with Risk and Pit, but I know the premise for Clue would be players are detectives trying to solve crime scenes and for Guitar Hero it would be players are playing guitars even though they don't know how to.

Exercise 2.8: Story

There is a game published last year but I played recently: The Red Strings Club. It's in a cyberpunk city, which was what originally hooked me to play the game. During the game I get to create alcohol drinks for costumers that will trigger different talks. I also get to do a lot of choices and some of them are actually making me think about my opinion and values. For example, when Donovan (Player) talks to the AI robot, she asks him if there really is an ideal world, would he allow things like depression, suicide, murder, rape, etc. They really are hard questions, especially with the criminal things.

During the gameplay I also get to play as the boyfriend of Donovan who goes into the technology company's building. Unlike normal hacking process, I get to make phone calls with fake voices to several different people to find out passwords and stuff. It's really interesting to see how the characters act differently when called by different people and how they are trusting the more authorized people.

The best part for me is the ending of the game, where he managed to destroy the system but the AI robot comes and tells him that she's using him and that she knows all of the secrets from the beginning. Then the security people form the company comes and shoot him, and he eventually falls out of the 108th floor window. Then he calls Donovan and then player get to choose what to say to him. You can tell him that you are leaving the country, which is just making up a lie to cover your death, or you can tell him that you are dying. The last choice in this part is to choose from telling Donovan about the truth of the AI robots or to tell him that he loves him. It was a scene so shocking and yet it feels so irreversible because the falling scene is actually the trailer and the opening scene. To me it feels so romantic and desperate at the same time that I cried for a long time and keep thinking about it in several days.

Exercise 4.1: Making Checkers Dramatic

I would make it into a turn-based strategy where the player is playing as the king and he is giving orders to soldiers and other people to attack the other kingdom.

I think in this week's reading I find the flow theory really helpful. I've heard about the theory before but I never really looked into it. The part where the author talks about the seven things that make a game enjoyable is really inspiring to me because I actually thought about them separately but I've never considered them as working together to create a cohesive enjoyable gameplay. When creating and twisting my game I applied the theory about balancing frustration and boredom to figure out the appropriate HP for the enemies and the player.

In chapter 8, the author says that game mechanics, aesthetics, kinesthetics, and technology are the four essential aspects to a digital prototype. This concept actually helped me plan my game and creating tasks at the beginning of my game making process. I think it's a really clear way of thinking about all of the things need to be done, because to me it always feels really overwhelming when starting a project.