Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Iterative Game Design

This week, you completed a game design boot camp. You learned the iterative design process, which has five steps:

1. Mission statement
2. Prototyping
3. Playtesting
4. Evaluation
5. Re-state mission, if necessary, and re-design

These steps are repeated again and again (…and again! … and again!) until the game achieves the designers’ mission(which may change over time).

Why we do iterative design:
-You cannot fully anticipate play in advance – your game may not do what you think it does
-Real players may understand your game differently than you do – your goals and rules may not be clearly defined
-Multiple plays produces different results – different kinds of fun, different errors, different problems, different strategies – that you may want to emphasize or eliminate

Evaluation areas:
-Is the game accomplishing its goals?
-Do players understand what they are supposed to be doing?
-Are players having fun? What kind(s) of fun?
-Do they want to play again?
-Could they play it differently the next time?

After you guys designed two great games-- seriously, I am still psyched about how much fun it was to play them. We crawled around a fountain blindfolded yelling "pebble webble"! We raced up and down a ramp screaming "Back to the castle! Back to the castle!" It was really surprisingly awesome fun.

This week, I want to see each member of a design team complete the iterative process again in the comments. Evalute the last playtest, restate your mission if necessary, and propose redesigns. I am certain both games will be played again-- I am actually quite eager to try them both out in public!

13 comments:

Anytime Tomorrow said...

Pebble Webble:

Pebble Webble is a game that derives its fun from simplicity.

Synopsis:

An outdoor playing field must be picked; ideally it has some sort of natural enclosure. The players are blindfolded and asked to spin around. A number of pebbles are scattered randomly throughout the playing field. A small 2 minute hour glass is flipped and players then must crawl around on the ground searching for pebbles, the player who gathers the most pebbles when time is up is the winner of that round. Players must shout “Pebble Webble” when they find a pebble, there by giving the other players an extra boost of anxiety.

Current variations:

Parco Molo Pebble Webble: While players are crawling around bystanders assist the players by shouting “Pebble Webble” when they come across a pebble. This give players the advantage of using sound to help find a pebble.

Omnipresent Parco Molo Pebble Webble: This variation is much like Parco Molo Pebble Webble except the bystanders follow around players shouting “Pebble Webble” wither or not they are near a pebble. Bystanders are free to be as deceptive as they wish.

Of these two, I feel the first is most effective. I think that if this game is to ever be played on a non-assignment basis, the defficuality level has to be decreased a bit. The game is challenging enough without the multiple without the deceptive omnipresent variant.

Possible Future Variations:

Frontier Pebble Webble: This is like a regular Pebble Webble except an angry shaken up Raccoon is placed into the playing field. This element add’s extra tension and anxiety to the game. If a player is bitten by the Raccoon, that player is disqualified. For extra flair, players could wear Davie Crocket style costumes.

Executive Pebble Webble: This is a regular game of Pebble Webble except that is played during rush hour in a Finical District crosswalk. For extra flair, players could all dress in business professional clothing.

Aquatic Pebble Webble: Self-explanatory, except it is played in shallow water and players must wear a snorkel.

Hobo Aquatic Pebble Webble: Similar to regular Aquatic Pebble Webble except it is played in a public fountain, and instead of looking for intentionally placed pebbles, the players must search for found coins.

Lizardparty said...

Adding to Doc's iteration of synopsis and variations for "Pebble Webble", I believe a couple of game rules can clarified to broaden playability.

1. Game pieces can be marbles, pebbles or any other relatively small, harmless and similar objects.

2. Game timer can be anything (as the hourglass's role as anxiety creator is diminished due to blindfolfing of participants) and time length can be decided by PM and/or players (although five minutes should be max limit for everyone's joint health).

On top of this, some suggested equipment would seem to improve playability such as knee pads and actual blindfolds or modified goggles.

I also thought that the game name/shout could be subject to change if something more apt was found, however I'm a bit fond of it as it is.

I love the Executive and Hobo variations Doc!

lisatized said...

Great job summing up the "Back to the Castle" game and adding the back story, Grey. I agree that the second deck of cards is too cumbersome in a lot of ways, and the game would move even quicker without it. I really like the idea of taking this game to the extreme with more than 2 players and/ or teams. We had so much fun watching each other scramble around and try to remember who and where they were that I can imagine seeing a bunch of folks doing the same thing would foster some good laughs and more running around. The games may be shorter this way, but the fun level would be high, so more rounds would be played.

Pebble Webble was also a great idea for a game, especially because of the multiple uses of sound which was heightened by not letting us see anything! I have to admit that I am not likely to play on the cobble stone surface in a skirt again, but the sound of the fountain for a bit of orientation mixed with the disorientation of people walking around and screaming "pebble webble" while kicking little pieces of glass that 'ting' around beautifully on the brick can't be beat. Crawling around on a carpet or other padded surface would make my knees and palms happier, but it just would kill the sound portion that made this game interesting.

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