Exercises 

● 3.6: Rules Restricting Actions (p77) 

[There are many types of rules that restrict action. Here is a list of games: Twister, Pictionary, Scrabble, Operation, and Pong. What rules within these games restrict player actions?]

1. Twister: Players cannot share the same circle, so if a new color and a limb with that is called and they both reach for the same one, the latter player has to find a new circle that fits the called criteria. How you are placed on the mat of circles is how to stay put until the next criteria is spun by the referee and if one of the player’s limbs is already on that called color and limb, then you move that foot or hand to another circle of the same color.
2. Pictionary: Pictionary is a board game in addition to having outside resources to draw something under a particular category, which are color-coded on the pictionary board. Players can be separated into two teams and roll a dice to see which team gets the first choice in having a drawing representative who will become a sort of neutral faction while the players in both teams will try to guess what the representative has drawn in order to get a point to progress in the board spaces.The drawer has around a minute to draw and is not allowed to “cheat” their drawing with dashes or words.
3. Scrabble: In Scrabble, players are restricted to using the letters they have in their hand, but are able to replace these letters when they have fit in a word on the board. As the letters on the board expand, so does the difficulty of fitting new words as players are only allowed to play words vertically or horizontally (not diagonally). There is also a limited amount of letter tiles.
4. Operation: Players are not only restricted physically by the triggering of an accident when the surgical tweezers touch the metal board that represents the patient, but also by the deck of doctor cards that direct the current player to what specific part they have to remove from. The specialist cards given at the beginning of the game are also a chance for other players to pick up from what the current player might fail at if they have that specific limb on their specialist card.

● 3.7: Rules for Blackjack (p77)

[Write down the rules of Blackjack]

1. Aces count as a numerical value of 1 or 11
2. A total score from an Ace and a 10-point value card is considered a “blackjack” and is a higher rank than any other total of numerical value adding up to 21.
3. After players have finished betting at the beginning of the round, the dealer will give two cards to each player, which they will be able to see while only one card will be shown faced up to the other players, and two to themselves, one card also faced up.
4. If the dealer has an ace of a 10, they will peak at their other card to see if they have “blackjack” if they do, they will turn over their cards and declare blackjack. All the other wagers of the round will lose unless one other player also has blackjack.
5. If the dealer doesn’t have a blackjack, the round will go as set starting from the dealer’s left.
6. Players will either stand, hit, double, spit, or surrender. If the total, caused by any of these actions, reaches above the value of 21, then they will bust and lose their wager.
7. If the dealer goes above 21, then all players win their wager.

● 3.8: Utility and Scarcity (p78) 

[What are the resources in the games Scrabble and Call of Duty? How are they useful to players? How are they made scarce by the game system?]

1. In Scrabble, the main resource of this puzzle, word-game is the letter tiles that each player has a hand of. When completing a word on the board, all draw from a larger pile of letter tiles, but this resource is scare and depleted each time players make words. This helps progress the game forward to the end goal that all tiles are used up and scores are counted to conclude the winner with the highest number of points.
2. In the game Call of Duty, I don’t know that much information on this game, but I do know that there are custom guns and other customizable things relating to appearance that may even boost armour against bullets, that players can get in a store. It’s not really a limited resource unlike in CS:GO, where they actually have a market and an economy of trading and selling gun skins.

● 3.9: Resource Types (p83) Reading 

[Create a list of your favorite games that use resource types just described. If you can’t think of any games that use a particular type of resource, research games that do and play several of them.]

1. Qwirkle
2. For Honor
3. Monopoly
4. Mario Party
5. 100% Orange Juice
6. Fortnite
7. PUBG
8. Rainbow 6 Siege
9. Cards Against Humanity
10. Connect 4

Reading

● GDW Chapter 5 Sidebar: A Conversation with Will Wright (p150—154) 

Will Wright's manifesto in designing game is to ultimately creating a world where what the player creates is directly interacted within that world. He wishes to set up a space where the solution to situation the player is facing is broad, so how and what the player solves it with creates a sense of empathy and a more emotional attatchment to the whole ordeal since they have put themselves in that space. "The more accurately you can model that simulation in your head, the better your strategies are going to be going forward. So what we’re trying to do as designers is build up these mental models in the player (page 152)." These mental models in his franchise, The Sims, are also related to how the player project themselves in the game. But what's interesting with Sims is not the storytelling aspect from the player putting themselves in the game, but to how the "little actors" the Sims sometimes oppose the player creating funny moments where the "storyline" goes off track. 

● GDW Chapter 9: Playtesting (p271—272, p283—288, p302—304) 

Playtesting is when people unrelated to the designing of the game are brought in to play the game throughout its entire development through iteractions in order to gain insight through their feedback and the way they approach things within the game. Playtesting doesn't only have to be on the gameplay, but also done on the marketing, engineering, and interface team's side. The goal through playtesting is to have a fully functional game in the way you have envisioned it to be.

Tips for playtesting: 

1. Playtest before you think you are ready/Strategizing the current version of your game for a playtest
2. What feedback are you looking for? What kind of question are you going to ask for that
3. Prepare variations of the prototype to test out
4. Remember to remind your playtesters that the game is unfinished, blame yourself not the playtesters
5. Try to explain less (and keep talking to a minimum when they are playtesting) about the game and observe and take notes
6. Encourage them to talk aloud
7. After the playtest, discuss what happened using your notes as the structure
8. Ask for feedback, but don’t take suggestions literally

Controlled game situation, laying down specific parameters in which players will test in. This might be for the end of the game, a random event that might occur, a special situation within a game, a particular level or new features.

Playtesting

1. Create the Prototype
2. Prepare Your Questions and Script
3. Recruit Testers
4. Playtesting
5. Alternate the Grid Size/Size of Space
6. Alternate the Objective
7. Alternate Turn Procedure
8. Alternate Number of Players

Research 

● Killer Queen (Arcade) by Nik Mikros and Josh Debonis

Looking at some pictures already, I can tell this is a team versus team game with the aesthetic of bees being (hah bee-ing) the playable characters. More specifically it is a 5 player versus 5 player arcarde game and the arcade machine was beautifully built to accommodate both teams on the same machine by having the backs of two machines face each, but on an angle. There are four controls on the machine that involve a movement joystick (left and right) and a jump button for mere drone characters, but the controls in the middle is a queen bee whose controls are left, right and down and a button to start flight. However, the game is a "battle royale" game where each team have the same three winning conditions being: filling the 12 spawning hive points with berries located on the bottom side of the map, controlling a snail and riding them to a goal on the bottom right corner (a game of tug-and-war), or with the queens themselves. With the down directional control , queens are able to swoop down with accelerated speed and attack drones, but queens are not invulnerable and have three lives. Once those lives are up, the surviving queen wins.