Sunday, 12 October 2014

Year 2: Tuesday lesson: Game Jam part 2

We began the second part of the day by watching a lecture about a game design and called Brenda Brathwaite. We looked at her take on games and wafts influence her design of the board game she would make. Though she was making board games are not digital games you could tell that the similar design principles were still there. We first lock that’s FS design for a game which was about Ireland and Ireland being invaded she then walked us through the design process that she went through to create the board by herself about how each part of the board meant something to her or a family as she had descended from Ireland. But I feel personally the video really start to pick up when she talked about her most recent game which was called train. The way train was constructed it had three train tracks set along a window with broken glass here is example image.

The way the game is played is that three players each take a train car and put the yellow figures inside. They then take turns to pick up cards which may have certain disasters on them and then at the end of the game they are told the name of a concentration camp and is at this moment that the fall message of the game is revealed that is about the Holocaust. I think is a message this game is absolutely brilliant and has such a strong keep acting message that can vary from person to person the committee think a lot about the past and about how you read managed to experience a certain emotion in a certain way.



After watching the lecture we were asked to come up with a game idea involving a certain subject matter that was shown up on the board many were deep social issues and philosophical issues also.

The issue I started off originally looking at was a religious issue between three of the main religions Christianity Judaism and Islam. My original game idea was to have three players each taking on the role of the religion what they have no idea that they had these rules they were then in some way had to overcome obstacles together but then near towards the end of the game they would have to do work individually and try to actively work against their comrade’s.

What after having a talk of Mike shooter Mark Wickham he advised me on not such a complex gameplay method is why a lot more into just human behaviour on to make a game that would allow people to if they wanted to work against their peers but also depend on them at the same time.

Personal notes:
Found this to be probably the most enjoyable part of the day as a really grounded games and our work in the real world. I also really enjoyed listening to other people’s ideas and thinking of ways that I could even improve them but also listen to people’s feedback on my ideas. One concern that I do have about this is that how this is going to affect my prototype game for the submission of this unit because I always value gameplay in a game almost as important as the game’s message

but when one is compromised in one to suit the other that is when I see flaws within a game. I’m just worried that this may happen within my game prototype but hopefully as the point of this unit is to refine an idea this will be eradicated from the production process as I go forward.


As for Brenda Brathwaite game found this to be an absolutely amazing concept and just at the sheer emotions it can produce within people is a very powerful game and I could even say that most high production of high-quality digital games there are on the market today and I think that’s a real shame that train will only be shown as a board game and the message will be shown to the digital game audience but as Brenda said with an air lecture it would dissolve the message of the game it was to be brought into a digital world and I think I agree with her and I think that train is definitely a milestone within games that should be well considered and studied. I hope that I’ll be able to look at her work again in the future to draw inspiration as I think the messages in her games could be a key to a very interesting storytelling.

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