Elevator Action: The Board Game - Game Design and Production Blog 4 (INFR 2330)

Elevator Action - The Board Game

Welcome to my blog! This post is for my Game Design and Production class. In this post, I shall be talking about the recent game we had just made for this previous class.

In the last class, we were talking about feedback loops. To my knowledge with what I had learned, there are two feedback loops. Positive and Negative.

A positive feedback loop are effects within the game in which get stronger in magnitude in each interaction. For example, it rewards player on player, so their probability of winning is stronger. It destabilizes your games, gives it a faster ending, and  the emphasis is put on the early game in which determines the victor.

A negative feedback loop are effects within the game that get weaker with each interaction. For example, in a racing game, the 1st player is at a disadvantage. These effects stabilize the game, it can cause the game to take longer, and has emphasis on late game.

There are three ways to eliminate feedback loops. One way is to sensor, in which means deleting a rule. A comparator and or activator, is changing or deleting rules.

This week, our professor told us to make a prototype game, and then he also gave us a side project in which was individual writing, but group effort.

What was funny with us making the prototype, is that in preceding classes, our professor broke down prototyping for us so that we could have fun, but not too much difficulty with it. So far, within our class, we came up with a few points that lie within prototyping games.

Pros:                                                                             

• Cheap
• Fast
• Easy to change
• No guilt
• Model most gameplay
• Eliminate junk ideas

Cons:

• Can't model twitch games(dexterity, time)

• Fog of war(losing general idea of game)

• Complex Calculations

• Eye Candy

• Risk of losing focus(minds wandering)

With these points in mind, he gave us a project to remake a game in which was in the 1980's. We chose Elevator Action. It was a lot of decision making, thought processes and effort. However, with what our teacher said the last class, it was easier than what we would have done before. In previous classes, although things were prototyped, we were making more detailed versions.

What was hilarious, was that in one of our classes our teacher pretty much said, that between fine and grotesque? Its more 7/8 grotesque and 1/8 fine. (The lines used, were funnier, but I don't know if he'd want me saying it online...just being respectful...I'll ask him later...and if he says its fine, ill change the text!).

It took us two hours to complete the game. When we are done presenting, I will upload pictures at the end of this post.

Sorry! Back to the main story and thought.

After we had finished the board game of elevator action, we had another group project to do. This one was to change or delete a rule within the game "Liar's game" which is a game played within the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean". Here's a YouTube link that explains the Liar's game well.

Liar's Dice Video    

For our individual part, we had to give the positive feedback loop within Liar's game, make a change or delete a rule, and then show the repercussions for this.

If you know the Liar's game or have just watched the video, then this next part will make sense.

Within the game “Liars Dice”, the positive feedback loop appears more and more often, with each die that is lost. The more dice that are cast out of game, means that liars are more apparent, and whoever has more die has more probability of not lying, therefore winning.

I changed the rule with losing dice. What I had said, is that instead of losing dice, to make it so that people have strikes. What I would think would happen, is that people would take more risks and the game would be longer.

As I had predicted when I changed the rule, I was right, which gave me a little self satisfaction.

This was a fun project, and the work was quick and successful, so I was happy having no real homework to do that weekend. I hope to have more enjoyable classes!

Thanks for reading my post!

Kazekumaru -- Peacing Out!

Questions to consider:

1. After reading through this, and watching the video, would you play the "Liar's Game"?
2. With the rule changes I made to the "Liar's Game" do you think that I made it worse? Or made it more even/better? Let's get a discussion going.
3. Would you like to see the "Elevator Action" game that we made into a board game?