The art of making friendly enemies

I participate in a group called Board Game Tuesday (or BGT). We meet weekly to play and discuss board games. Our primary focus is the playing, but we always set aside a time to analyze the structure of the games (mechanics, dynamics, art, components etc.).

However, I quite like to analyze the behavior of players during matches. I like to observe the nervousness to roll the dice for something important, the glory in the eyes of a player with a well-structured combo of cards, the malignant partnerships between players and – of course – arguments and "fights" because of the final results of a gaming experience.


(Playing ISLA DORADA. Big, Vince & Snow. Pic: Estevão)

This last feature, particularly, impresses me. The “magic circle” of a game has the power to transform friends in enemies with established social rules (and gaming rules). As Juul says (2013, p.11) “when playing a game, a number of actions that would regularly be awkward and rude are recast as pleasant and sociable”. So, we can say that a game can generate a kind of friendly enemies during the time of a match.

About this context Juul (2013, p.14) also says that, to play a game is “to make an emotional gamble: we invest time and self-esteem in the hopes that it will pay off. Players are not willing to run the same amount of risk – some even prefer not to run a risk at all, not to play”.

The gaming ecosystem is a complex and privileged field of studies. But we must never forget that behind a game there are human players full of feelings and this is an important part of the experience to observe, analyze and discuss.

At this moment, I’m reading again Jesper Juul’s “The Art of Failure” and Bernad Suits “The Grasshopper”. I’m full of new ideas about the role of the player inside the gaming universe and I count on this inspiration for a “wave” of posts with this subject this semester.

Keep your radars alert for that.

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Reference:

JUUL, Jesper. The Art of Failure: an essay on the pain of playing video games. Cambridge/London: MIT Press, 2013.

SUITS, Bernard. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. EUA: Broadview Press, 2005.

Talks at Google in conversation with "Ticket to Ride" co-creator Eric Hautemont

For board games fans and game designers. Awesome stuff.

Made for Play: Board Games & Modern Industry

Excellent content. Brilliant documentary. One master piece about the board games industry in Europe.



Jettingen Germany is home to Ludo Fact, one of the world's largest manufacturers of board and card games.

This documentary shows how a board game makes the leap from an idea to your table. You'll see every aspect of the manufacturing process: the technology and machines, the many detailed steps, and the hundreds of people that are involved in the production of a single game.

Mostly, we hope the film gives you a greater appreciation of the time, effort and investment that goes into every quality board game that makes it to the marketplace and your home. The business of fun requires a lot of hard work!

For more information on The Spiel and our media coverage of the game playing world, visit thespiel.net

Three levels of player enjoyment

Good visual idea from the author Stewart Woods.



Source: WOODS, Stewart. Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland, 2012.

A little bit about playtest

Few weeks ago, the famous game designer Reiner Knizia (@reinerknizia) tweeted a very good point about the gaming creative process. Knizia said: "even if you are a great mathematician, the lifeblood of game design is playtesting, playtesting, playtesting!".

I think Knizia pointed out one crucial feature about game development in his post. I use to say that playtesting is not about playing alone your own game ten times, but putting ten players to play once and get feedbacks.



A good playtest shows the game's aspects of weakness and positive attributes, and can be an important tool for future ideas on your game design projects.

My advice is: put different kinds of players to play your prototype, watch each movement inside the game dynamics, take notes of everything and, finally, improve your game to a higher ground.

Another important thing: always try to play new games to create a better repertoire and a good critical view.

Go gamers!

Quote of the day

"Like novels, games don't come out of the blue. They come from a given designer, at a given time, in a given social situation".

Bruno Faidutti, in Appelcline, 2006 (Excerpted from the book "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games").

Retrospective

In 2012 I had the chance to be in many conferences, meetings and see excelent presentations about game design and gaming concepts.

I discussed many ideas with great professionals in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre (Brazil); Cannes (France); Santiago (Chile), Antwerp (Belgium) and Copenhagen (Denmark). It's possible to say that 2012 was a good year full of ludic discussions.



It was a year full of discussions and new doubts. So, in 2013, I propose an attitude to dwell on: "discuss more about games", instead of only "play games".

As I said in an old post "the games of tomorrow need answers that last". I think that a broader research about games will bring us better answers about how we can use games beyond fun and understand how they can change the world.

My point is that this is the century of playfulness, and more than just thinking of a way to offer games to a diverse audience, we should learn how to offer various languages of entertainment – where the game is also inserted.

Finally, I wish you a 2013 full of games and ludic interfaces. GO GAMERS!

Now on to your opinion!

Essential books about game design & gaming concepts - EPISODE VI

I recently purchased the great book "EUROGAMES: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games". EUROGAMES examines the form of eurogames, the hobbyist culture that surrounds them, and the way that hobbyists experience the play of such games. It chronicles the evolution of tabletop hobby gaming and explores why hobbyists play them, how players balance competitive play with the demands of an intimate social gathering, and to what extent the social context of the game encounter shapes the playing experience. Combining history, cultural studies, leisure studies, ludology, and play theory, this innovative work highlights a popular alternative trend in the gaming community.



It's very easy to read and it's not a theoretical book. Strongly recommended to board games fans.

WOODS, Stewart. Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland, 2012. (CLICK HERE TO BUY)

PS: Happy new year!

Ecological concepts in a game

By Vince (@vincevader)

Today I’ll talk a little bit about Climate Game a game that I developed for a brazilian company named Games For Business (check out the english site here >> http://www.games4b.com). Games For Business works in the area of serious games, that, following the thoughts of Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst, may be explained as a game with a professional, educational or pedagogical use. It's a kind of game that mixes storytelling with mechanics that mean to send a serious message to the players involved in the process.

Climate Game is a game that, when played with strategy, negotiation and diplomacy, challenges its players to save the world from imminent destruction. With everyone’s effort and awareness, the emission of carbonic gas can be reduced before it is too late.



This game is both of competition and cooperation. It promotes competition because the player who emits no carbonic gas at all is the winner. But the integrated work of all the other participants is essential in order not to exceed the gas limits of the greenhouse effect that the planet can put up with. If this limit is exceeded, the Earth’s temperature will have risen to a level where human life is not possible and everyone dies/loses.

Therefore, participants must have a good degree of knowledge regarding gas emission and the greenhouse effect and also be very good at negotiating and formulating strategies.

This kind of game won’t make you a specialist in ecology or in global warming, but can reinforce important concepts about the health of the planet. The game can teach basic ideas and stimulate the players to search for more information about the theme. I think this is the core of a good serious game.

And if you want to play good serious games with a lot of contemporary concepts, check this URL: http://www.molleindustria.org/ .

SZIA!

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Reference:

Iuppa, Nick & BORST, Terry. Story and simulations for serious games: tales from the trenches. Burlington: Focal Press, 2007

Good graph

Game design process: a third approach

By Vince

In this present post I want to discuss the details about the creation of my new board game, PYRAMYZ.

PYRAMYZ is an independent title that will be hopefully launched next month. It is an abstract game for two players that uses pyramidal dice (D4) as pieces and has an area control game mechanics.

The inspiration for part of the game mechanics came from “Chinese checkers”, a very traditional abstract game where the pieces jump other pieces (or a row of pieces) to reach the player’s side on the board.

(Art by Marcelo Bissoli)

In PYRAMYZ, first of all, players must choose the color “black” or color “white”. This part is important because each player earns points by having the dice on top of their color spaces. It is possible to get points joining dice with the same color adjacent (orthogonally), when this happens the players achieve the number of points of the dice upon the respective color spaces.

The objective is to achieve the higher number of points.

In this game a player can put the dice from a bag on the board or move a die that has been placed on the board. A roll is required to put a die in the game , because the random number on the D4 will be the number of spaces the piece can move (orthogonally) by the board. A die will spawn from five special areas with different color.

For this game I created four prototypes with different dynamics, layouts and rules. It’s important to have many views in a game design process to choose the bestconnection between them. I started with a triangular board but it was not good, the traditional orthogonal grid proved to be the best option.

In this part of the creative process I defend the use of simple prototypes. It’s essential to use simple drawings, ordinary material and have total focus on the game mechanics.



After a lot of tests and a minimum certainty about the functionality of the game I recommend to generate a better prototype/layout. And remember: beta testing is not about playing your game alone by hundred times, it is about putting one hundred people to play once and have a lot of different feedbacks.

In two previous posts I’ve talked about the process to create another board game and a SMS mobile game (links here and here). I recommend the reading of both posts to complete the idea of this one.

Wait for news about the PYRAMYZ’s launching!

Transmedia Storytelling & Games

I want to delimitate in this short post the concept of transmedia storytelling (JENKINS, 2006): a kind of narrative which develops into multiple mediatic platforms, such as internet, books, video games, comics, television and movies. I want to highlight one specific use of this strategy in the entertainment industry.

I'm going to show to You the strategic appropriation of transmediatic narratives in the industry of entertainment using an established example: the Star Wars fiction series transformed into a Lego board game.

In the movie below it's possible to see how the idea of the movie "The Empire Strikes Back" becomes a board game.



Every game is an unique experience. Every game have a different end. The essence is the same of the movie but players have the opportunity to change the famous battle of Hoth with dice results.

What do you think about that?

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Reference:

JENKINS, Henry. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. NYU Press, 2006.

Think about it

"Games are a mirror of our lives and times." - Reiner Knizia (at DIGRA 2011)