Week 5: Learning Card Games

In class this week, we finished our group board game based on a sport. We had other students gather to play our game titled Disco Spoon Race. Our game was based on the Australian sport,  where players attempt to sprint to capture a spoon and make it back to start. This sport is similar to the card game "Spoons" and captures the flag.  Our board game created a playspace where players could choose any direction to "run." The board is colored to match the colors of Uno cards. Each player has a starting space, similar to the sport, and the goal is to capture the spoons. Each player can move horizontally or vertically the amount of areas based on the numbered card they draw. Whatever color they land on, the next card they draw will be that color. After everyone has collected a spoon, or all spoons are distributed, players can then "steal" spoons. The goal is to capture all the spoons. While the players are playing, an hourglass is flipped. Once the sand reaches the end, the spoons will change places on the board based on a dice roll. This creates obstacles for players who will have to change their route. We called it the "disco spoon race" because the board looks like a disco dance floor. Chapter 5 of Games, Design, and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design states, "The best way to figure out how the game will look, feel, and act is to dive in and start making it. The faster the game moves from the pure ether of ideas into a prototype, the closer it will get to showing the kind of play experiences it can generate. " Last week, we mapped out our game and tested it. We had other students come and test out our prototype. This was beneficial because we learned that our game had errors and lacked information.  After adjusting our rules slightly, we began to play quickly, and it was more entertaining. Even this week, when we tested our final game, we received suggestions that ultimately made the game run better.  I enjoy mapping out our ideas, testing them, and receiving feedback from our peers. Chapter 8 says, "Put talented, passionate people together, and you are bound to encounter differences of opinion, personality, methodology, and so on. This is inevitable. The trick is to find ways as a team to work through your differences and turn them into strengths, not weaknesses." This is another reason I enjoyed working with a team and having other classmates join our game. We found that putting everyone's ideas together made the game better. When a student made a suggestion I wasn't sure of, we still tested it and attempted to make it work. When the idea didn't work, we adjusted it together, making the game design experience more fun and informative.   Seeing our ideas come to life and mesh other students' ideas with ours was fun. If we have more time to adapt this game and make it something of higher quality, it would be a fun game. While learning about card games in The Playing Card Platforms by Nathan Atlis, he touches on how board games and sports are very similar, "Board games, like many sports, clearly demarcate a play space set apart from their surroundings, provide a literal platform for other play implements, make quantifiable spatial comparisons straightforward, and provide a large canvas for illustration and text. So both sports and board games excel at games of territorial capture and control, spatial mastery, mapping, and traversal." This is interesting because we took the simple sport of capturing spoons and made it into something fun, interactive, and playable almost anywhere. I enjoyed this lesson and working hands-on with materials. I have learned a new perspective on how sports and board games are designed.