RTS Boardgame
~ Tues 06 Nov session ~
So after having discussed the MDA paper
(found
here) we began to talk about how we can start with a base
structure of a game and add certain aesthetics to it by implementing
mechanics and dynamics to it. The game we were given to implement
these changed to was a very basic RTS game where each player selected
whether they would move, move & turn, turn or fire by using a
card mechanic where as we would all show our selected cards at the
same time and then depending on what cards you had selected there
would be a set order in which they get to go :-
Move -> Move & Turn -> Turn
-> Fire
There was no limitation to the range of
your fire but you could only fire in the direction you were facing.
There were no obstacles on the board
and the board itself was made up of hexagons so there was 6 different
paths in which you could move. We decided to play a 6 player game
with each player starting at a different point on the board.
After some play testing we found that
it was near to impossible to kill another player as firing was the
last play to be made so your enemies could simple move out of your
line of sight and as there were no move & fire or turn & fire
cards it came apparent that there was no strategic thought behind
playing the game other that "don't stand in their line of
sight".
The only possible way of someone dying
with the game in this state was by them not paying attention at all
to the other players positioning and mistakenly moving into someone
light of sight as they were firing which quiet honestly was nearly
impossible to do unless you weren't actually playing the game.
The Changes
Now we have a understanding of how the
game plays in its current state and figured out what is the core
mechanics behind the structure of the game we can start to implement
changes to the rules and dynamics of it to induce an aesthetic of our
choice.
In all RTS games you have a element of
tactical thinking (strategical play if you will), either that be
against a real players or against the game itself. Your choices in
the game are reactions to their choices and theirs to yours. This was
the critical dynamic and aesthetic missing from the game in its
current state and we begun to discuss how we could implement it into
the game while still keeping it in its relatively basic form so we
could clearly see the impact on the game state.
We began by adding obstacles into set
positions on the board and play tested how it works. We found its
became even more impossible to kill someone, not exactly what we
thought we would achieve but at least we figured out which way we
shouldn’t go. We then started to discuss different guns in the game
and how we would put them in. How would we balance the guns and would
they counter each other in certain situations.
How we decided to implement the
guns was by placing them in set positions on the board so the players
have a type of goal or objective if they so choice to do so but
adding the fact all 6 players might be going for these guns there was
a element of risk involved but for reward.
The guns we implemented were Shotgun,
Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Machine Gun and Pistol. The Pistol was
your starting weapon and clearly the weakest of all the weapons which
we did to give the users a sense of getting stronger by getting
better guns (Power Up). We first thought about placing certain guns
in position that would re spawn every so often but we found this may
implement a element of camping where the most powerful weapons
spawn.
As a result of this we decided on
making a random element to it where you would draw a gun card from
the pile that would be face down so there was no way of knowing what
gun you would get. The different gun types are :-
We play tested this structure and found
a few things that were working well and actually added a lot more to
the game than we first intended on. By adding the guns to the game we
gave the players a goal and a power up, by placing the different gun
positions we implemented strategical play by forcing you to pay
attention to where you enemies were and what kind of guns they had
and finally by giving the guns a random chance we implemented a sense
of discovery as you would only know what you got when you got it.
Unfortunately we only had a very small
amount of time to play test this build but what I had seen from it
was very interesting and showed how adding only one or two dynamics
to the game can implement multiple aesthetics to it. Our original
goal was to get more tactic play involved but we ended up with a lot
more. There was drama in who got what weapon, discovery in the
unknown chance of the weapons, power ups with different types of guns
and challenge by implementing more tactical play with different gun
ability’s.
We really wanted to add a fellowship
aesthetic to the game by playing in teams of two but we didn’t have
time to play test this version but I believe it would of enhanced the
strategical play of the game and resulted in a lot of different and
interesting possibles for the game.
My Thoughts
Really good exercise yet again but had
some issues when it came down to play testing the game. It wasn't
down to how much time we had overall to actually make the changes or
play the game but more about how working in such a large group and
having all these designers thinking of idea's while we play tested
meant we would stop for 5minutes during play just to discuss more
possible changes or even implementing them while play testing which
to me was highly frustrating.
We wasn’t really able to see the
effects of the original changes we had decided on once we had either
stopped for debates or put more stuff in while we was playing and to
me it took away from being able to really understand how that dynamic
or mechanic we added were inducing a certain aesthetic.
I'm thinking of it like making a
smoothy with a blender. You want a banana smoothly so you add
banana's, but then your friend comes along and wants a little apple
in it so you add an apple. After a short debate and a little taster
you decided on adding two more apples because one more just isn’t
enough. You go to drink it and it doesn’t taste anything like what
you originally planned and you can barely taste the banana in it.
I’m not saying these idea's were bad,
in fact most of the idea's were great but I’m more focused on how
these idea's are great and what do they bring to the overall game
play in terms of MDA. Getting down to the core of each idea and
understanding how they work with other idea's. I don’t believe
these lessons are about how many idea's you can splurge out in a
given time frame, I believe these lessons are to understand the
difference between what works or what might work within your game
structure and why it does or doesn’t after play testing.
