Exercise 

● 6.7: Describe Your Game (p182) 

[In one or two paragraphs describe the essence of your game idea. Try to capture what makes it interesting to you and how the basic gameplay will work]

Kabedon-Birb is an AR game where you "approach" distinct birds and capture their heart. To "approach" them, the player will first have to chase a bird against a wall or corner and then "kabedon" them, a gesture in Japanese pop culture where one entraps someone else by leaning  in close and slamming their hand (or both hands) next to the target. The meaning of the gesture is to create an atmosphere of intimate tension. After the player accomplishes this, they are able to unlock the "quest" to fully capture the bird's heart, this is essentially just a minigame. After the player has captured all the birds, they can take a photo will all of them, revealing who you really are within the game.

● 6.8: Write a Treatment (p184) 

[Take the description you wrote in Exercise 6.7 and expand it into a three- to five-page treatment for your game idea]

Define each player’s goal. 

• What does a player need to do to win? 

Sub goal: complete minigames to capture a bird

overall goal: capture all birds to take a selfie at the end, mystery reveal

• Write down the single most important type of player action in the game. 

Chasing a bird that runs away

• Describe how this functions. 

All birds will have the function of running away when you are near, this is the "herding" mechanic that came from the core concept of the game from Cindy's original idea of herding chickens.

• Write down the procedures and rules in an outline format. 

1. Players will open the app and click the play button (this menu screen has room for other buttons)
2. The birds will spawn in a room around the player
3. the player will start chasing birds until they realize a highlighted color against the wall indicating something
4. a button will pop up indicated that you have approached it against a wall or corner
5. player will KABEDON
6. unlock text box dialogue from the kabedon-ed bird and a minigame to capture it
7. unlock a "check-list" of other birds and current quest
8. complete quest for the bird and fully capture it, the bird will follow you around 
9. when fully captured all the birds, proceed to the option of taking a selfie with all the birds

• Only focus on the most critical rules. 

1. the player can "herd" multiple birds at once
2. however, after they have kabedon-ed a bird, they cannot kabedon another but have to complete the bird's quest before going after another
3. the player needs an open space to play this game (it does not require geo location)

• Define how many players can play. 

a single-player game

● 7.8: Diagramming Core Gameplay 2 (p211) 

[Now try diagramming the core gameplay of your own game idea]

Reading 

● GDW Chapter 4: Working with Dramatic Elements (pages 102—125)

Play is defined as the freedom players use to interact within the structure that is games filled with the constraints of rigid rules and procedures that make it so. Play is something spontaneous, it is unscripted and loud. It can be also used as a tool to develop skills for other areas, even in the real world. “...play is not any one thing but rather a state of mind, a type of approach to an activity (page 103).”

Roger Caillois, “Man, Play and Games” (1958) four fundamental types of play [free-form play vs rule-based play]:

1. Competitive play
2. Chance-based play 
3. Make-believe play, or mimicry 
4. Vertigo play

Types of Players:

1. The Competitor, wants to be the best
2. The Explorer, curious and disregards physical and mental boundaries
3. The Collector, acquiring items or knowledge
4. The Achiever, ladders [leaderboards] and levels are incentives 
5. The Joker, more social than competitive
6. The Artist, driven by creative and design
7. The Director, puts the pants on
8. The Storyteller, loves to imagine worlds to fantasize in
9. The Performer, loves putting on a show
10. The Craftsman, constructing things and thinking of solutions to puzzle things out

Levels of engagement will vary among players (designing a game for players and spectators, spectator play)

There is Spectator play (little risk), Participant play (players are active and involved) and Transformational play (in which a deep level of play affects and alters a player’s life, this can be used in educational games for children but it’s also interesting how this play can be utilized in narrative games or as an art form)

The concept of a premise establishes the action of the game within a setting or metaphor (dramatic premise overlayed on a formal system to create an emotional attachment to the game). Without a premise, a game may be too abstract of a system for players to get into. It sets the time and place, the main character(s) and the objective, as well as the action in which the player comes into play, and allows a game’s formal elements to be conceptualized accordingly.

Emotional attachment to the game’s story elements is also helped by the character, the “agents” of the narrative who players can emphasize with through their moments. A character can be a direct mirror of an audiences’ emotions, they can be representative or symbolic or historic, using real-life figures from history. All this depends on how a story is being told.

Protagonist vs. Antagonist, Minor vs. Major Characters, flat vs. “round” characters (changes in personality throughout the story)

Four Key Points in Characterization:

1. What does the character want? 
2. What does the character need? 
3. What does the audience/player hope? 
4. What does the audience/player fear?

Agency (practical function) vs. Empathy (the potential emotional attachment of players, connection with their goals and perhaps the game’s objectives)

The character that the player controls can be one of “free-will”, an AI; an “Automaton”, an entirely player-controlled character or a mixture of both, a character with an identity provided by elements of simulation (i.e. cut-scenes) that the player simultaneously controls.

(How you decide on these elements depends on what player experience you want)

As part of the formal elements of a game, the outcome should always be uncertain, this uncertainty is resolved by the players. A story’s backstory is limited to the game’s premise but sets up character motivations and the overall conflict. The storyline is not affected by gameplay in a linear progression of a story, but games with branching narratives can rely on player actions/choices to reach an ending out a number of endings. The disadvantages of these games are that they can feel too structured to the player and therefore restrictive, simplistic and unchallenging. The Sims is a system where players can choose their story, the innumerable possibilities being endless. The most prevalent use of story is to propel adventure games along their mainly single-player campaigns (i.e. The Last of Us (linear), The Walking Dead (character development, branching narrative)).

What comes with storytelling in games is the natural component of world-building. It is the deep and intricate design of a fictional world and the lore that brings players intrigue and curiosity about the world they play in. 

Meaningful conflict doesn’t only create a challenge for players, but cause them to be emotionally invested by creating a sense of dramatic tension (this tension gets worse before it gets better) to the outcome of the story. The character’s action of attempting to resolve the conflict is considered the “rising action” until it reaches the climax of the story, in which the deciding event of the outcome happens and then, shortly after, the falling action and resolution. Conflict can be character vs. character, character vs. nature, character vs. machine, character vs. self, character vs. society or character vs. fate. 

Emotional intensity vs. literal elements

● GDW Chapter 6: Conceptualization: Sidebar: Experimental Gameplay by Richard Lemarchand (p171) 

“...experimental games are those that have been created in an attempt to do something new with games or to make a game design discovery (page 171).”

From this comes forth new ideas, mechanics and a new realm of creative exploration.

Research 

● Walden by Tracy Fullerton

Walden is a game that forces the player away from the fast paced society that we live in and into a world of fishing and other mundane activities. It is a breath of fresh air from the many actions games, but still manages to stimulate a life of peace a life we can actually imagine reality to be. Although it praises its tranquility, the game is not without its "challenge" - that is, promoting its said gameplay by having an inspiration bar that stays on the high whenever the player is interacting with nature. If the player's inspiration bar is low, the color and music of the game will gray out.