9.1 - figuring things out

Play with rules, or games in other words, is a lot harder to manifest than I considered. The rules have to make logical sense and still create a challenge by maintaining a structure built on having fun. Chapter 1 of Macklin and Sharp’s Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design, details this very experience my groupmates and I were having with much better wording, “...you might say that a game doesn’t take form until it is played.” As someone who has always been the one playing the games and not making them, wrapping my head around this idea was the first hurdle toward the finish line of the task of merely modifying an existing game.

After taking this into consideration, things started to move around and make more sense. In the next class, my groupmates and I were making a considerable amount of headway, but as we were tinkering, we kept running into the same problem. What is the goal? What is the objective?  To determine that, I kept asking “Well, what’s the bigger picture?” Macklin and Sharp similarly describe games in the same fashion, but instead using systems. Their interpretation suggests that “games are systems that dynamically generate play.” So, next after establishing that games are more abstract than anticipated, we realized that we had to create a playspace or system. Unfortunately, game designing eats up time, so we didn’t come to this conclusion until it was a little too late. But, in those moments right before we had to leave, we were all rapid-firing ideas for how our system would function, aka discovering and defining the rules of the game. It was interesting to see how reclarification and repositioning of our mental perspective acted as a catalyst for creative expression. 

Finally, in the midst of trying to modify what is essentially a mix between Mafia, Among Us, and Psychiatrist, we realized that there were lots of nuances that weren’t apparent until we attempted to run the game. As it exists for many systems, like car engines, “many of the parts are hidden from us or take an intangible form.” This was the last obstacle that we faced and where we currently stand. 

Macklin, C., & Sharp, J. (n.d.). Chapter 1. Games, Design and Play. In Games, design and play: A detailed approach to Iterative Game Design. essay, Addison-Wesley.