Week 11 - Card Game Demo

I think the game may have been a bit confusing at first. In the reading from last week, James Ernest states, “…think about your game from the perspective of a new player.” (Ernest) Emphasis on NEW PLAYER. My team had been working on this game for a couple weeks now so we knew it backwards and forwards so there were details that new player obviously would not know. I was playing really heavily with Juan to keep the example going so I was not able to fully hear the questions asked, but there were some that I could tell were questions that could really help us think critically about where we could go to help the game function better. Something that I think people liked is our card game’s back story. In the reading it says, “…explaining the game’s backstory as well as mechanics, in terms that novices can understand…” (Ernest) The concept of running away drove the mechanic to discard in our game. Obviously, other rules could have been implemented to make that make sense, but the back story adds something special to the story that really highlights that concept and mechanic in a new way. The story makes the game more interesting as a whole and has a kind of psychological effect on the player (at least for me) that makes it more fun. It almost acts as a transporter via our imaginations to the world we have created. I think during some parts of the demonstration it was hard to follow, of course, I wasn’t exactly able to pay attention as I was still playing, but I could some questions were due to confusion. Other questions were people trying to figure out how to make the game better either by pointing out something that doesn’t exactly work or developing a good concept in the game. Either way, it made us think about where the game could and should go if it were to be developed further. We as a team approached it very casually. At least, I did. Something I need to focus on also comes from the reading: “Assume that the player knows about game in general, but nothing about your game.” (Ernest) Like I said before, we knew the game backwards and forwards so it shouldn’t have surprised me that some people had questions. It was a demo, not a full-fledged game. Overall, I think people really liked out story behind it but struggled with other concepts of the game, such as the Cthulhu coin toss.