Print and Play Game Deconstruction

  After exploring a few print and play games, it's now time to analyze one of them. The game I have chosen to deconstruct is called Paiko (http://paikogame.com/). Paiko is a turn-based strategy game with some similarities to chess and chinese checkers.

Paiko- Initial game setup

Goal and Core Mechanics

  Essentially, the goal of Paiko is to obtain 10 points before your opponent. Players gain points by positioning tiles on the board. This positioning of tiles is the core mechanic. A secondary mechanic is to capture tiles that your opponent places on the board.

Space

   The game board is a discrete two-dimensional space, meaning that tiles are placed on individual points that are marked by grid lines. You can chose to move a placed tile by at most two points in any non-diagonal direction. As a whole, the board is split into four sections, two of these sections are middle ground, and the other two are the players' home ground. Tiles on the middle ground will give the player one point, while tiles in the opponents home ground will earn the player two points. The half grid spaces along the border and the four black spaces in the middle are not open to tile placement.

Objects, Attributes, and States

  Aside from the board space itself, the only objects in this game are the tiles. These tiles have many different attributes. The first of these attributes is the symbol of the tile. This symbol describes the "threat" attribute of the tile. In Paiko, tiles have a certain space on the board that they threaten depending on their symbol and positioning. If a player's tile is within an area of threat from an opposing tile, then there is a chance that the tile can be captured. It's similar to the way that pieces can be captured in chess depending on their movement and proximity.

  Another attribute of the tiles is the spaces that they can provide cover to. If a tile is receiving cover from another piece, it takes an extra threat to capture. Some of the tiles have a few extra attributes. For example, the earth tile can only move one space in a turn, rather than the standard two spaces. The Paiko rule book offers a good illustration of the different attributes of the tiles (http://paikogame.com/documents/instructions-quickguide33d-text-printable.pdf).

 The tiles have various states that they enter as the game progresses. These states include the tiles' positions on the board, their orientations, the section of the board that the tile is located in, whether the tile is threatened or covered by other tiles,  and whether the tile is in the player's hand, the reserve, or if it is discarded.

The tiles from left to right: air, fire, bow, sai, lotus, earth, water, sword

Operative and Resultant Actions  

  There are three essential operative actions that a player can take in Paiko: placing a tile, drawing a tile from the reserve, or capturing a tile. These base actions lead to many resultant actions, such as threatening certain tiles to distract your opponent, placing tiles to offer coverage to pieces that are under threat, and favoring sections of the board for placement depending on if you decide to take an aggressive, defensive, or balanced approach. Players often need to shift their strategies in order to counter the decisions that the opponent is making. 

Rules

  An interesting aspect of the game is the initial asymmetry of it. The player with white tiles goes first, but only gets to pick out seven tiles, while the opponent gets to pick 9 tiles. To balance this, the white tile player gets to pick one more tile after seeing the black tile player's hand. All tiles must be placed on either the player's home grounds or any space that one of his or her tiles is threatening. If a tile is threatened by at least two opposing tiles, then it is captured. These are all operational rules of the game.

  Another point of interest is the written rules of the game, which are presented in three different forms, a quick text guide, a more visual illustrated guide, and a video tutorial. For me personally, I learned the game quickly by looking at both the text and illustrated guide, as they each explained certain aspects of the game better to me than the other. Having two versions of the guide to refer to made it surprisingly straightforward to learn the game.

The visual guide (left) and the text guide (right)

Skills

  The physical skills necessary to play the game entail having the strength to pick up and position the tiles, as well as the ability to place the four separate pieces of the board together. Although the physical requirements of the game are fairly low, it does involve many mental skills. Players must observe each others tile choices and placements and decide how to react. They must also keep track of the score and adjust strategies to ensure that the opponent doesn't end up getting the upper hand. Paiko also involves social skills, such as observing your opponent's reactions to get a sense of what he or she is planning.

Chance

  Chance plays a fairly subtle part in this game. Most aspects of the game are fairly open and controllable. For instance, if the player chooses to draw new tiles for his or her hand, they can choose any three tiles that they want. This seems to put a lot of emphasis on strategy and decision-making, rather than chance. The primary use of chance in the game is at it's start, when players must play rock, paper, scissors, or roll dice to decide who will play the white and black tiles. As I mentioned before about the game's asymmetry, the player will receive different advantages and disadvantages based on whether they get black or white tiles. This ends up affecting the player's decision-making throughout the rest of the game.

  Overall, I enjoyed playing Paiko. The game is a bit difficult to comprehend at first, but it becomes fairly understandable after an initial run through. The potential for different strategies interests me, and the brevity of the game allows for lots of experimentation. I think the game would benefit from having more chance built into it. It seems to me that the game intends to give the player a lot of control over his or her strategy, but I think it would be more engaging if there was some element of chance mixed in with this controlled decision making.

Print and Play Games

  I played a few print and play games for my game design class. The games were called micropul, Shape Up!, and Air Traffic Controller. Here's what I thought of them.

micropul (http://neutralbox.com/micropul/)

  This is a two player game that involves matching tiles together. Players gain points by collecting tiles and claiming groups of black and white dots that are formed as tiles are placed together. If you run out of tiles, then you lose. I enjoyed the logical aspect of the game, and I like how the game makes you carefully consider the spatial relationships of the tiles and how you can make the most of them. The main problem I had in the game was that someone would end up running out of tiles within the first few minutes, causing the game to end. There isn't too much satisfaction in winning just because your opponent ran out of tiles and vice-versa. Maybe this is something that gets better with more practice. A possible way to address this could be to give players a small starting supply of tiles so they don't run the risk of losing too early. This would at least be a good modification for beginners.


Shape Up! (http://www.goodlittlegames.co.uk/games/06-shape-up.html)

  This is a card game where players line up cards based on the displayed shape, color, and solidity or hollowness. At the start, players get a "victory card" with these aspects that he or she must try to line up on the board. It took me a while to understand the rules, as doing so involves breaking the mind's natural tendency to categorize things. Once you wrap your head around it, the game is interesting in the way it gets you to think about the shapes in the cards and line them up in unique ways to gain points. I feel like the concept of this game is difficult to convey in writing, and for that reason, I think the instructions should have made use of more pictures and graphics to more clearly get the idea across.


Air Traffic Controller (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29084/air-traffic-controller)

  In this game, you get to take on the exciting role of an Air Traffic Controller. The game comes with different scenarios with arrival and departure times for planes, as well as the terminals that they must go to and from. On each turn, the player can order a single plane to stop, continue, turn, or backup. Aircraft will collide if the player is not careful, in which case, he or she loses. My biggest issue with the game is how difficult it is to keep track of the plane movement, scenario actions, turn numbers, and points. Even though this is supposed to be a solitaire game, I think it would be better if there was another player who could be in charge of the scenario and points recording. The yellow text on the board is also very hard to read. I like the idea of the game though. I think it would be fun with a bigger map and more planes, as well as additional hazards on the tarmac. Of course, this would all make the game even more complicated, meaning there would definitely need to be some sort of score-keeper. In a way, though, the complexity of the game did help me sympathize with real air traffic controllers and the difficult job they have. Next time I am stuck waiting on a plane, I'll think back to my memories of playing Air Traffic Controller and realize that they are probably doing a better job than I could ever do.

B. F. Skinner

  In game design class, we have been looking at the effects of rewards on gameplay. We were asked to do some research on the psychologist B. F. Skinner. Skinner is notable for his innovation of a new philosophy of science called radical behaviorism. This theory is based in the idea of operant conditioning, where one's behaviors can be modified by their consequences. Central to all of this is Skinner's principle of reinforcement. In psychology, reinforcement is the strengthening of a behavior due to its association with a stimulus, as opposed to punishment, which weakens a behavior. Skinner's principle of reinforcement says that if the consequences are good, then one's actions will be reinforced, while if the consequences are bad, one's actions will be punished.

  Skinner tested his ideas in his "Skinner Box," more scientifically known as the operant conditioning chamber. This apparatus allows researchers to expose animal test subjects to stimuli like lights and sound signals. The chamber delivers a reward to the animal, such as food, after it successfully performs a behavior. These devices allow for experimentation in behavior and conditioning through reward and punishment mechanisms.

  I suppose the idea of the Skinner Box can be applied to game design and testing. Reinforcement and punishment can work very well in giving the game an interesting balance. For example, the game Dishonored makes good use of this idea by offering the player different sets of rewards and punishments depending on if they want to approach the game violently or nonviolently. A game is a lot like a Skinner Box. Players are conditioned by the rules and mechanics of the game, which they must follow in order to receive a reward. This means that there is a lot of potential for experimentation in the conditioning that a game allows, and by experimenting, maybe developers can find new ways to influence player motivations.

Thoughts on Steve Hickner's Lecture

   I think Steve Hickner's lecture last week was a great introduction for me to some of the ideas behind storyboarding. He gave a list of storyboarding dos and don'ts, such as don't underboard, don't field too tightly, don't cutoff the characters in an awkward place (such as a joint), don't push the character or action too far out of the "golden egg" (this is an oval shape within the frame that characters should stay in to attract the viewer's attention), don't be afraid to move the camera, don't keep every shot at eye level, don't move everything (it's hard to create a single focal point when everything is moving) do watch eye trace, do separate planes tonally, do watch perspective. I haven't done much storyboarding or video editing before, so it was great to learn about these general guidelines.

   It was also great to see Steve Hickner's reworked versions of the CA senior storyboards. The storyboard revisions helped me to see how some of the story boarding theory presented can be put into practice. Something that I really liked was Hickner's attempts to give every shot a purpose within the context of the entire story. In one of the storyboards, he eliminated a setting to be replaced with a single recurring location. This serves the dual purpose of saving time by having to create one less scene, as well as making all of the events in the story more strongly connected.

  So overall I thought that this lecture was very informative. It was a great first look for me into the process of storyboarding and how to convey narrative to an audience. The next step for me is to start putting these ideas into practice in my own work to build a better understanding through experimentation.

3D Game Environment Concept

     Here is the concept drawing I did for my environment idea in 3D class. The idea was a soviet mining town on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The story was that all of the people left their homes to travel to a strange tower structure that appeared out of the island's heavy fog.