Journal Wk8: Mafia

What makes mafia work?

The tension, the unknown, everyone starts on equal ground in relation to others but everyone knows something different. People having to disprove others and prove their own innocence without having any evidence to show. In fact i think the game has a bias towards more charismatic players.

What is good strategy?

I’ve found if you keep consistent in terms of your behaviour while you are a citizen it sets up an easier round for when you are mafia. If you speak commonly but not overly frequently you can get away with less notice than if you talk too much or talk too little.

There are actually already a few mafia games (or variations of) online, provided players have different roles and theres is a large element of the unkown and keeping the main mechanics an online version of mafia would be more or less the same however you would lack some of the “tells” you might notice from seeing the faces of your fellow players. Having said that, poker seems to work online and people can type word of accusation or defense, it’s just that players would find alot more inferred meanings from the talk.

Design Idea Wk8: A social game

I realise that i’ve fallen behind in the posts… anyhow..

It is a bit hard to design a game based on facebook considering i’ve never used facebook but i think a game that utilizes one of the main social networking features of making friends would be an interesting idea. You can challenge a friend to a race and given a period of time, say one week you make as many non-mutual friends as possible and the one who makes the most friends wins! Graphically this could be visualized via two columns, each with an avatar and as the number increases so does the height of the column. I would imagine this would be simple enough that you can even host the live results into your user home page or “wall” as a plugin.

Week 6 – Hardware driven game

It would be interesting to explore the possibilities of learning and recognising sign language through these sensor-gloves. A semi educational game where you attempt to learn sign language with reward and punshments as well as try to interact with npcs using sign language.

The npcs could have varying ability to understand sign language and as your only form of communication it can lead to frustration but most importantly an increased awareness to what it is be unable to speak.

The player can experience day to day activities without the ability to speak.

Week 5 – Mechanic Driven

A cool mechanic of fluids is that when placed on speakers fluids will start to dance from the vibrations. A fun mechanic driven toy would be given an amount of fluids introduce and place speakers wherever you want and try to get the fluids to dance to your tune or if you have too many speakers with too high power in too many directions it may just splatter and disperse etc.

Week 4 – A Game for Mum

Since my mum seems to be more appreciative of games on the wii than any other type of gaming and also due to the fact that the interface of the wii is generally more intuitive the game will be a wii based game. A cooking game would be inline with her interested and it could be similar to cooking mama, however it would be less bound by its platform. An interesting and fun mechanic would be for example stir frying and using the wiimote to toss the stirfry up in the air and catch it again with the frying pan.

Week 3 – Design a toy

My toy idea is a room filled with large inflated balls with a lot of spring and bounce.
You are dropped into the room in an even larger inflated ball that you can run around in and bounce with freedom.

To make it more fun drop another person in, also in a ball and interact however the two “players” wish.

Week 2 – digital vs non-digital games

Essentially the difference between digital and non-digital games is similar to the difference between movies and books. That is, in digital form the ideas and concepts are conveyed through the designers interpretations. However in non-digital games your interpretation and understanding of presented ideas are open to your own interpretation and imagination. The comparison to the relationship between movies and books is the same in terms of through movies you are receiving the directors interpretations which may be different to how you visualized the same story as a book.

However the direction of game design is leaning towards greater freedom of actions and movements to allow your own creation of interpretations or usages of games. Such examples include sand box games such as GTA.

Idea 1

With the Dogma Manifesto in mind.

Train Hopper.

You are in a randomly designed city with a random generated traffic/timetables and goal location.
You are given a timelimit to get to your location while taking the shortest route or you lose.
You will have to hop on and off trains, occassionally before/after they reach their stations, inside/outside(hanging on for your dear life) and basically utilize current traffic flow/ timetabled public transport to make the deadline for your final location.
You will earn reward points for the faster you get there and the more creative means of transport you use.

Week 1

rel link
SN: z3187700

Hi Malcolm!

This is my first blog entry for COMP4431 Game Design Workshop.

I’ll be covering the two issues of Why am i here? and why do so many games have guns….?

I’m here because i like to game and although i seem to like everything i do at uni, entering the game industry is one of future options that i may consider truly pursuing. That is along with my other interests of graphics/web design, 3d animation/modelling, programming, animation, interactive design/media, sound the list goes on… That’s why i’m enrolled in the Digital Media/Computer Science double degree.

On to guns. Guns are a fascinating invention that have revolutionised the rules regarding wars and combat. To begin with many games are focused on wars as they are one of the most terrifying and mass destructive interactions that can occur between humans.
Secondly i believe that games, like stories and movies, are a way for people to creatively express strong ideas that with reason and the limitations of social constructs would not materialise into reality. There are many people that want to play with guns but know of the risks and the dangers and so the alternative is to play with the in a world that is not the real world in which we live and so will bear no real repercussions.