Week - 02 Folk Game

In class, the group and I discussed our favorite folk games we learned at camps, church, or in any other environments they popped up in. We talked about the game of ninja we played, brought up more physical activities like the avoid trash can game ( I do not know the name of it but I do know it was very fun and tiring to play), and more humorous examples like Zip Zap Zop. Honestly, the conversation was not directed anywhere, we simply discussed our likes and dislikes of each game and what we thought would be a good idea for each. We eventually thought that a combination of two games would create enough challenges but also familiarity so it would be enjoyable. I brought up the example of combining Zip Zap Zop with ninja so the person receiving the invisible ball would have to react fast enough to jump out of the way of the two individuals standing next to them that would try to hit them in one move. If the people playing understand the rules for both, they would get the idea fairly quickly and can be playing and enjoying their time in about 2 minutes after it is explained. After exploring that idea, we went back to discussing other games we could apply our ideas. It was brief, mainly because we were truly trying to come up with something that sounded super fun and interesting to work on, but most of the ideas I feel were not wowing us, so we kept moving on to different games. I think when we were discussing, we were trying to find something that would be enjoyable for a long duration of time and bring out the playfulness in people. Playfulness and play were described as two different things in our reading. Play is described by Sicart in his book Play Matters:“…to be in the world. Playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and who we are.” I take this as understanding the world in which play is taking place (rules, conditions, etc.) and our role in the play (AKA the game). Playfulness is described as “a physical, psychological, and emotional attitude toward things, people, and situations.” So playfulness can happen during play and outside of play, our goal, I would say, is to bring out more playfulness during play and have people let loose a bit. That is what I got from our discussion at least. Later, he states “Playful designs require a willing user” we want people to be more than willing to play our game and to be excited about it.