P3 Reflection — Systemic Game Design
If you don’t reflect, you don’t learn, I’ve recently heard. This is my personal reflection on P3, the group project in…
Although I’d heard about the 70/20/10 rule (keep 70% the same, make some modifications to 20%, and try something crazy with 10%), many of the struggles our team had while making City Roots likely would have, in hindsight, been much more…
This article presents advice on different skills game designers should have. One of the key skills game designers ought to have is listening — to playtesters, the game, and one’s self. The author draws an analogy between game designers and street performers; street…
P3 seemed almost impossible at the beginning. It took our team a week to decide on the system we want to model because we did not fully understand what systems game is. However, once we finally decided on our system, networking in the industry, we worked extra hard to make sure we end…
P3 was one of the most challenging games to make. Before making the game, I was not sure what I thought a systems game should be. The idea I had in my mind was that of a simulation as I was trying to show how a system works in the world. Afterwards, I came to realize there…
In our P3, we decided to model the networking system. The brainstorming part was the toughest part for us. Initially, we wanted to design a game that reflects the delivery system. Then we thought the idea might be too literal after researching the topic and trying to make the first…
The article begins with a description of the task, to look for reactions from our playtesters. To find fun, it is best to look at their unconscious reactions: body posture, facial expressions, emergent gameplay, than to simply ask, “Are you having fun?”
City roots is a game about preventing gentrification in a fictional town that starts will mostly low-income houses as local businesses. In this game, players take the role of the city hall who has to develop the town by adding corporations to the board. However, corporations will…
Thinking back, I do not believe that I’ve really had the occasion to test any of my small game projects, either for this class or otherwise, with non-designers. Whenever I have made games, I have done so in a context of Stanford’s small game design community which…
Another goal of mine in this second crack at P2 is to improve each storyline, specifically the ‘transparency’ one.
In P2, I received the note that at times, it felt like I was ‘hitting [the player] over the head with the message a bunch of times,’ before…
Playtesting with strangers is quite different than playtesting with yourself and with other game designers. Previously, the people you would playtest with could offer insight into what they believe is the root of an issue in the game. Now, the people you are…