Surveillance on the Gaming Community

For the final I will be submitting a paper on surveillance on the gaming community. On the news everywhere I have been reading and watching the Edward Snowden leaks. This issue is interesting to me and it helps me analyze how I play new and online games in the future. It is a topic that I believe the gaming community should be talking about. I know most gamers have their favorite games were they really do not care. I believe that we should be conscious of what companies invade player’s privacy. I give an example that happened a couple months ago with the release of X-box One, and how they had strict requirements to play their system. I also talk about how the newest revelation by Snowden, that WOW (World of Warcraft) and Second life are also being monitored by the government agencies. This is not the biggest issue I have with the surveillance of games. The thing that worries me the most is with companies spying on gamers for profit gain. There should be better regulations against these types of activities, so players feel more at ease when playing and interacting with other players on these types of games. I believe there is really one solution to this issue and it has been visible with the backlash against Microsoft.  

    

Blog Post 4 Jean McGonial

I saw the Ted talks with Jean McGonial and her case on how games could improve real world issues. She goes on a states her case by bringing up examples of certain games that create a type of online connectivity were players help each other on missions. This is important asset to solve problems that the real world has. She states four points; blissful productivity, social fabric, urgent optimism, and epic meaning. These four points that she stated are very positive to the game community, because this is why people play games. She also created three games the let the players solve real world issues as a type of game simulator.

 I agree with some of her main points that games are important and they do subconsciously make players play with the idea of her four points. I believe that we need to have and actual live game that will help solve some of our main issues in our society. My idea is to play a game were a lot of people fight poverty by racing around different areas where there is homeless, and feed them etc. If these games were live and actually helped out while people were playing it would make her idea and concept stronger.    

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html   

5 game assignment

The three games that I played were dys4ia, Puzzle platform, Burn the rope, Only one level, and Oregon Trail. All these games had different quality to them. All three games had a linear narrative quality. Dys4ia was a narrative about a lesbian women going through all the bullshit she went through. It was a game with super-fast mini games that got your through all the bullshit. It was an interesting concept that it had that many mini games in one. For the game Puzzle Platform the game is actually pretty fun. It has a feel of Tetris and Bubble Burst. It gets harder and harder as you break the blocks which make it fun and frustrating at the same time. This game was interesting to me because it is the types of game I would like to create. Oregon Trail was also a fast narrative of the Oregon Trail. I played the original version as a kid and it had a similar feel to it, but also had a simpler aesthetic value. This game was interesting to play because of the options the game gives the players. This game is also a type of game I would like to recreate. I also played burn the rope which was easy, but had a nice song at the end. This game made me realize that you could create one level and hook the player into staying for something else. Only one level was also interesting how one level could be played many times by changing one thing. The researching and playing of different types of games was helpful to understand the variety of ways to create a game.      

Paper Prototype

Battle Dice

This game was created in the first exercise for paper prototyping. Me and another classmate started drawing grid on a piece of paper and blocked off some dead squares. The materials we had were a pair of dice and paper. It looks similar to chess or checkers board game. In the beginning we decided to just play and see where it needed it to be refined. After couple play test and several trials and errors and the condensing of the rules. We came up with Battler Dice.

The second play test at home I decided to see if I could add more rules to make it more complicated. The problem that I found out is that it slowed the pace of the game and made it more boring for the players. I decided to leave the rule minimal and simple for a faster pace game that is more fun to play.

Purpose of the game is to get your 3 tokens to other side of the grid.

Rules:

Higher Roll

Starts

Roll Dice

1,2,3 to Advance

Up, Down, Sides

When players meet you have to battle:

Both Players roll dice whoever gets higher

Roll wins. Loser moves back to starting point.

When Landing on M space you are able

to move 3 spaces to wherever you like.

When Landing on B space you move

back from where you came from. 

The winner is the player who has

all 3 coins on the opponent side.

   

Farkel Dice Game

 We also played Farkel dice game which was also fun and easy to understand. It is a game of collecting points and being able to stopping at the right time. The game is played: Farkle is played by two or more players, with each player in succession having a turn at throwing the dice. Each player's turn results in a score, and the scores for each player accumulate to some winning total (usually 10,000).

• At the beginning of each turn, the player throws all of the dice at once from a cup.
• After each throw, one or more scoring dice must be set aside (see sections on scoring below).
• The player may then either end their turn and bank the score accumulated so far, or continue to throw the remaining dice.
• If the player has scored all six dice, they have "hot dice" and may continue their turn with a new throw of all six dice, adding to the score they have already accumulated. There is no limit to the number of "hot dice" a player may roll in one turn.
• If none of the dice score in any given throw, the player has "farkled" and all points for that turn are lost.
• At the end of the player's turn, the dice are handed to the next player in succession (usually in clockwise rotation), and they have their turn.

Once a player has achieved a winning point total, each other player has one last turn to score enough points to surpass that high-score.