Ancient Games

Over the past few weeks, every Thursday we have been getting our hands on some ancient games, the first of which was Senet (The game of 30 squares) and The Royal Game of Ur (The game of 20 squares).

The Royal Game of Ur is a race game in which each player has to get all of their counters onto and then back off of the board, while being chased by their opponent, the way in which the two players can reset the position of each others counters by landing on the same square meant that the two players had to use strategy to get to the end of the board making the game fun and competitive.

Senet shares many similarities with Ur as it is a race game in which each player has to get their counters from one end of the board to the other and then off, however in Senet their are certain ways that players can block the other player from advancing along the board, such as by having three spaces occupied in a row.

Overall I found both games relatively fun to play, although I do feel that some of the rules in both games could do with a slight tweak to both make the rules clearer to the players and also to make the game better overall

The second game we played was Duodecium Scripta which is a two player racing game, played with 15 pieces of their colour choice, plus three six sided dice. The game starts with the players pieces off the board and build up in each players starting location, they can't move out of the home place in the middle until you have filled and stacked the board, once this starting row is filled then the player may move up to the top right of the board and move left along the top of the board and then once that is done down to the bottom and move right till the final phase of the game where they must roll the exact number to get off of the board. The only problem with the games was that it had a mechanic that allowed players to stack counters and move the stack as if it was one counter, this meant that all one player had to do was get all of their counters in one huge stack and race to the end, defeating the object of having multiple counters.

Lastly we played Tablut which is again is a two player game but this time it isn't a race game Tablut is a game with each player being either white or black, white has to protect the king and get him to the corners of the board and black have capture the king by surrounding him on all sides. This makes the game compelling from the idea of movement on the board however king will more likely win then lose due to 1 piece movement and how you are forced as black to get 4 pieces around, when I say you can win with nothing but a king due to the movement style of rooks from chess, because of this the king can run away unless boxed into 2 or 3 boxes and then crushed slowly by the black team.

 

 

 

SissyFight 2000

Sissyfight 2000 
This was the game played in Robs lecture last Friday. The game involved using a set of cards (Team, Defend and Solo) to either attack one of your opponents or defend yourself you also got a set of colours, one of which you take for yourself and the others of which indicated the player you wanted to attack, So one of the main mechanics, is this hidden information factor, as players only know what card they have picked and who they are going to be attacking, any successful attacks/ defends get a set deduction from their counter pile, this mechanic leads to players trying to team up with each other to try and mount an attack on someone else or double bluff someone and then go attack someone else, creating a sense of backstabbing and tension.

We played three games before we went on to iterate the game, our first iteration was to add a mechanic that allowed on player to use a certain card so that any other damage done to a player would be doubled, this created an even stronger sense of people teaming up, as it ended up that everyone just tried to form alliances to get someone out of the game as quickly as possible, our second iteration was to add another colour card that when used would do damage to every other player in the game however if more than one person used the card only the people that used that card would take damage, this lead to people just trying to use it every round and the game ending very quickly

 My thought on the game is that I didn't really enjoy it, this is mainly due to the fact that I was for the most part, the person that was being targeted at the start of every game, mainly due to the friends I was playing the game with, haha

Game Classification

On Wednesday we learnt about how to define video games and how to categorize them.

We looked at the studies of James Newman who referred to Roger Caillois who came up with the idea of putting games into two main categories Paidia and Ludus.

Paidia can be simply explained as, “play” for pleasure

Ludus is defined as more constrained by rules, with a clear outcome (E.g. “Winning”)

He then furthered that by bringing in the following:

Agon: Competition - a competitive multiplayer game

Alea: Chance, Randomness - A gambling game or equivalent

Ilinx: Movement, Vertigo: - Outdoor sports, skiing, skateboarding

Mimicry: Simulation, Role-Play – Cinema

Games that came to mind when I thought of Ludus were board games as they have a clearly defined set of rules that have to be followed for the game to function properly. Board games also have an element of competition to them as most of them involve players playing against each other to see who can get to the goal first.

World of Warcraft is a game that offers the player a huge sandbox  world to play in and gives people the freedom to do what they want, whenever and how they want to, which is why I feel like it has elements of Paidia however it also has elements of Agon with the competitive PvP, Alea as the loot system is based on a roll between 1 and 100.

Bibliographies

Schell, J (2008) The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, CRC Press, Florida

Chey, J (2003) "System shock 2" in Grossman, A. (ed) Postmortems from game developer insights from the developers of the Unreal tournament, black & white, Age of Empires and other top selling games, San francisco, CMPBooks, pp 5-12

A bit about me

What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading or what is the title of the last fiction book you read ?

I am not currently reading any fiction books at the time of writing this blog, this is in part due to the fact that there is not a book i have seen as of late that has caught my attention enough for me

to sit down and read it. One of the last fiction books that i read was Of Mice and Men in secondary school as part of my GCSE in English, when i initially started to read the book as part of the work i didn't really get engaged with it and i started to find reading it boring, however once i started to learn more and more about the book and some of the hidden meaning in the book i started to really appreciate how good the book is.

What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading or what is the title/topic of the last non-fiction book you read ?

Since becoming invested in the idea of games design and becoming a games designer i have started to read non-fiction books on the subject of games design, one i have recently started reading after being recommended it by Dave Pimm (one of my lecturers) is Jesse Schells The Art of Game Design which i have found to be a really good read.

What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended ?

The last live performance event i attended was V Festival in Chelmsford a few summers ago, me and some friends from school went there. I was really looking forward to seeing Ed Sheeran live as i was listening to his music a lot at the time, i really enjoyed going to V Festival and seeing all the Bands and Singers that i listened to a lot in person. The only downside to the weekend was that it was two of the hottest days of the year without much shade so you got very hot very quickly.

What is the title of the last film you saw either at the cinema/ online or watched on DVD ?

The last film that i watched was actually only last night as of writing this, me and some of my flat mates and their friends all decided to watch a film at our flat, we decided to watch 28 Days later which was a film that i hadn't seen until then. apart from 28 Days later i don't really watch many films i usually tend to prefer to watch streams of games of watch TV programs on things like BBC iPlayer and 4OD

How often do you read a newspaper ? Which One ? Online or physical ?

I very rarely read the newspaper, the only time i do read a newspaper would be if there is one in the front room at home and i might read that in the evening or i might pick one up when i'm on the train, i only ever read physical newspapers and the paper woulds usually be a local newspaper.

Which art gallery / museum / exhibition did you last visit ?

Not too long ago i visited the Science Museum London, i have visited the Science Museum London a number of times as science is something that has always interested me and i like looking around all of the old cars they have on display and looking around either space exhibition. I also find all of the technology that they have on display (some of which is useable by the public) really interesting to use and find out about.

How many hours a week do you spend playing video games ?

I generally spend anywhere from 15-25 hours a week playing games usually playing counter strike, however this number can be even lower when i have something that i need to get done such as work for college. I have recently started to play more different games rather than just spend hours on a single game. At the moment i have a couple of favorite games that i am playing which are Escapists which is a top-down gamed based on  escaping from prison and the player has to find one of many different ways to escape and Rimworld which is another top-down game that is based on a group of survivors that all have different skills such as building and hunting, this game uses randomly generated encounters to produce raids on the camps that you make that you have to defend using your group of survivors

How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games ?

I spend very little time playing games other than video games, however i do like playing card games so i will occasionally play card games with friends and family. Although i don't often play non video games when i do occasionally play then i tend to spend many hours playing card games.