P3 Reflection: Fashion Domination
Overall, project 3 was extremely fun to work on, and I was very happy with the end game of Fashion Domination that we created. This was the first game that I helped create in which players were visibly having a lot of fun — drawing references to the outside world, laughing, and being very invested in the game.
At a high-level, I felt that our game embodied the fashion world’s business model very well, although these design decisions could have been more explicit to the players. For example, our decision to have a relevancy score reflects the quick pace of fashion, and the need to innovate at a higher rate than competitors in order to acquire other company’s consumers and markets. Furthermore, our decision to include the “trending internet” shows that commercial space is no longer limited to physical advertising in markets, but that consumers can be acquired and served online. Lastly, the inclusion of fashion event cards shows the broad range of events that can impact fashion designers and companies. Despite this system-modeling, we could have made a better attempt to explain the parallels to the fashion world in setting up the game in the rules.
In developing our game, our biggest struggle all along was providing players with ownership over their actions and allowing for the use of strategy. In our first iteration of the game, players simply rolled a die to spread to new cities Our second iteration of the game provided game cards, but simply subjected players to the law of proability in order to spread or increase their relevancy score. At this point, players still had little to no strategy. As such, through more and more iterations, we added the following components to make strategy a hallmark of our game:
1. Seasons were created with different win states
a. These different win states allowed players to strategize (do I focus on conquering the hat region to get +10 points this round or should I conquer other regions and get +4 points for each region?)
2. Roll OR Relevancy increase
a. A player could choose to either roll for spread each turn or roll to increase their relevancy
b. Players had to strategize between spreading or investing in a higher relevancy to conquer others or avoid being conquered
3. Designer abilities were created
a. Special powers can be used by each player once per season
b. The most effective strategies were to use the special spread cards early to conquer territory where others were not, and to use the harm cards towards the end in order to cause irreparable damage
4. The trending internet forces players each turn to consider whether they invest to dominate it and not be subject to connectivity rules or to gain instant gratification via spreading. Additionally, players needed to consider whether to lower their spread in order to stop another player from trending
Overall these mechanisms made players heavily strategize, which was one of our main goals.
