Here have an essay. Its the cherry on the cake.

To what extent do modern games use personal identification and escapism as a tool for engaging audiences?

     There has been a vast change in the structure of modern games as opposed to their predecessors. As the market and production of these games has inflated over the years, potential customers haven’t exactly been limited for choice as they once were. Therefore developers have `had to adapt in their approach to attracting customers, and being the first to offer something different. A key element of this adaption has been to focus on audience engagement, in particular by focusing on the potential of escapism and personal identification within these games.

     Why do we play games? What is it about them that appeals to us. In my mind it is that they allow us the opportunity to briefly become that which we have long sought after yet never accomplished. Ungrateful though it may sound, life thus far has been a disappointment. Whilst it is true that I am lucky enough to have been born into a country where it is ensured that I will be well watered, well fed, sheltered and kept in good health, none of these things excite me. I have no otherworldly powers, no godlike strength, and no extreme abilities in hand to hand combat- as a result, life has become tiresome and dull. Playing games is one of a few areas where this ceases to be true. In the blink of an eye I can choose to be a high rolling 1930’s New York gangster, or a demi-god warrior, or a cute, fluffy Labrador with big eyes and...Maybe scratch the last one. My point is that we are finally given the chance to become our heroes. “We play games because we want to feel like rock stars, warriors and gods. We play to shape the world that has been given to us. The developers give use the space to move, and the rules to follow; the rest is up to us.”(http://videogamewriters.com/the-death-of-escapism-the-demise-of-america-in-video-games-1549. ) This temporary suspension of reality as we live out our fantasies is escapism in it clearest form. By identifying the disappointment of our own lives and offering us the chance to reverse it, developers easily manipulate an audience into buying their work. Thus they have effectively used the opportunity of escapism as a viable tool for audience engagement.

     Furthermore some have decided to go a stage further. Nowadays it is a common concept, particularly in genre types such as MMOs, or games like “Fallout” and “Fight Night”, to be given the option of a fully customizable character. Now not only can we act out the moments we always dreamed of, but we can do it all with a character that is an exact replica of ourselves. This level of self delusion draws us into the realms of personal identification. No longer is this character merely controlled by us, he/she is now a walking, talking, clone. As a result the game is no longer just a fun relaxing timekill. It is an extension of our own lives. For example; my character now works on the side as a fisherman in order to support his second family as they struggle through the global recession so no, I will not be going to work tomorrow, and yes it is important. Whilst reading this now seems ludicrous and comical it is, in fact, shockingly in touch with the lives of modern players. I know people who have dedicated entire weekends to “building up their character”. I know more still who have taken a day off work so as to stand in a queue to pick up a game that could just have easily been bought that evening. Now not only have the game developers led us away from the focus of our own lives, they have encouraged us to establish a new one, structured as we see fit, and much easier to fix/eradicate should things turn sour. So in this instance developers have used escapism in the form of personal identification as an audience engaging tool.

     What is arguably a helpful factor of gaming for those in the industry, whilst potentially damaging to players, is the idea of game addiction. Rather than focusing on the most extreme, exaggerated, and most definitely rare cases, eg. Boy dies of exhaustion after 11 day Xbox marathon, I am, instead, more interested in the more common, yet often ignored, element of achievements/unlockables/scoring in games. “Some argue however, that escapism may ultimately become addictive. For example, current studies are now focusing on the emerging condition of Internet addiction. In Internet addiction, people may spend most hours of the day and night surfing the Internet. They may do so in preference to working in the world, or in preference to having “real life” relationships with other people. What begins as a mere search on a topic, may end in a life lived in front of a computer monitor when escapism becomes extreme.”(http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-escapism.htm. ) Achievement lists and gamescores as they feature on console networks have become virtual trophies in the world of gaming. These things shouldn’t matter- yet somehow they do. Many a game I have played has survived an extra 3+hours purely by having me jump through hoops in order to gain something that, with an outsider’s perspective, I wouldn’t really care about. I would consider a key example of this to be “Spiderman 3” on the PSP. After letting me use the black suit through the majority of the narrative, the game then has the audacity to reward me for my commitment and patience by stripping me of my only incentive for buying it in the first place. Then it tells me I can earn it back by collecting the web pieces scattered across the city. This was a laborious, painstaking and most certainly NOT fun exercise which I heartily undertook purely because I knew just how much it would mean to me to spend the next year of my life swinging round New York in my flashy new threads. Not so. Shortly after gaining the suit I realised that New York was simply not the happening kind of place it once was and that there was little fun left to be had. Did I learn from my mistake? No. Did others learn from theirs? No? Time after time we cast away precious man hours trying to earn a fancy cape, or a diamond machine gun or the bronze plated tea set- only to forget about it when we realise it actually humoured us very little. This is the kind of addiction that has a true impact on gamers. Only this level of involvement could encourage a man to invest his own, real-life, hard-earned cash, into buying his virtual horse a new saddle because it comes in this seasons shade of blue. Once again an extreme level of escapism, addiction via distraction has become a tool for game developers to engage and manipulate their target audience.

     In conclusion the use of personal identification and escapism in games seems to be used to a vast extent, often in ingenious ways- and on various different levels. Not only to engage players, but also to entice them and draw them away from the focus of their own lives.

Finish Line

 Sent box design to printer. One and a half days later the above was printed off. Result. I then cut out the net using a scalpal and a metal ruler. After this I used the scalpal gently to score the fold lines and applied double sided tape to the box flaps- then proceeded to assemble the box.

 These next pictures display the finished result. I made some minor adjustments to the flap sizes so the box slid together more easily. I also applied sticky backed magnets to the cover flaps so it can be held down.

 Essentially our project is now finished. All that is left to do is submit our work. It has been a rewarding yet tiring experience. Overall, whilst there are certain areas I would like to improve I am happy with the outcome- and confident that our group has been able to produce a successful game.

     Just to give an idea of what to expect from the box design before I create/ print it, I have very quickly marked out the major details and where they will appear. Planning it out in this way will also help me to shave small but valuable amounts of time from when I get round to creating the design. The main issue at this point is that the design requires pictures of the finished versions of certain parts of the game- eg. character pieces, gameboard. However these are not completely finished as yet, therefore I am currently caught between trying to include these, and getting the printing done as soon as possible. We'll bring you more news on this matter as the situation develops. Back to the studio.

Not long to go now.

I have now begun creating the net for our box on Adobe Illustrator. When I am completely satisfied with the net I will begin adding the design. Before this happens however I will need to obtain images of the game board and character pieces, that will be included as part of the design. By showing a picture of the board at the back of the box it will allow potential customers to quickly establish an idea of what type of game this is and how it will be played. It also gives us an oppurtunity to show of some of the more exciting features of our board such as the turntables which could, in their own way, contribute to encouraging a potential buyer.

More contextual studies

     For our next piece of contextual studies we were required to read through the article "I have no words, I must design" by Greg Costikyan, and highlight the some parts we felt were particularly relevant to us in our experience of playing games.
    

Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure

military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making
an optimum attack at this point with these units. In fact, if a game involves
any kind of decision making, or trade-offs between different kinds of
resources, people will treat these as “puzzle elements,” trying to devise
optimal solutions. Even in deathmatch play of a first-person shooter, players
will seek to use cover and terrain for advantage – ‘solving the puzzle’ posed
by the current positions of opponents and the nature of the surrounding
environment, if you will. You can’t extract puzzle from game entirely.

And he responds as best he can to achieve his objectives – his goals.

Does every game have goals? Most do, very obviously; most games have
an explicit win-state, a set of victory conditions (to use a term from board
wargaming). The basic transaction we make with games is to agree to behave
as if achieving victory is important, to let the objective guide our behaviour
in the game. There’s little point, after all, in playing a game without making
that basic commitment.

Just so SimCity. Like many computer games, it creates a world that the

player may manipulate, but unlike most games, it provides no explicit
goal. Oh, you may choose one: to see if you can build a city without slums,
perhaps, or one that relies solely on mass transit. But SimCity itself has no
victory conditions, no objectives; it is a software toy.
That’s true – and in a sense, that is a failing.

In both types of games, character improvement is a key concept;

through play, your character can become more powerful, gaining hit points,
skills, spells, equipment, whatever. In many games, power is achieved by
killing things

I’d agree this is vastly important. There’s been many a game I’ve played religiously just to earn some tacky bonus suit that I barely used but just had to have because it was in this season’s colours. The second I finally earned it, the game lost all appeal and I sold it. How do you like me now?

Here’s a game. It’s called Plucky Little England, and it simulates the

situation faced by the United Kingdom after the fall of France in World
War II. Your goal: preserve liberty and democracy and defeat the forces of
darkness and oppression. You have a choice:
A. Surrender.
B. Spit in Hitler’s eye! Rule Britannia! England never ever ever shall be
Slaves! Which did you choose? You chose B? Wow, good choice. Congratulations.
You won! Wasn’t that satisfying? Ah, the thrill of victory.
There is no thrill of victory, of course; it was all too easy, wasn’t it? There
wasn’t any struggle.

With action games in particular I like my struggle in the game to be worthy of an action film fight scene. Close enough that I feel the pinch and tension of the situation, but not enough to leave my character dead on the floor with his brains sprayed across the walls every time I turn a corner. It ruins the realism for me. So don’t do it. Please.

That isn’t to say that we want them too tough, either. We feel frustrated

if, despite our best efforts, we wind up being slogged again and again. There
needs to be game balance – a term, incidentally that means very different
things for solitaire and multiplayer games. In a multiplayer game, it means
that the players need to feel that they’re on a level, that no one has an unfair
advantage; in a solitaire game, it means that the player has a reasonable shot
at winning, and that the harder he works and the cleverer he is and the better
he’s mastered the game, the better chance he has of winning.

As stated I find it infuriating to repeatedly lose at a game. I feel the worst culprits are those that force you to replay a long yet childishly simple part of the level for nearly half an hour, before your abrupt and untimely death ten seconds before finishing. Racing games do this to me a lot. The screen of my PSP bears bitemarks as proof.

What you cannot do is assume that order will spontaneously arise

through the good will of players – at least, not when the rewards for murder
are intense and personal, while the rewards for acting like a good citizen
accrue mainly to others, are slight and diffuse.

Whilst I immensely enjoy playing games with a moral choice element or righteous/sinful path narrative- a key problem I have often come across is that the potential rewards can be slightly one sided. For example when playing a Fallout game, do I break my back working endlessly without complaint for the rich old lady, praying that the tight old cow will eventually show some gratitude by handing over the treasure/weapons/money that I so dearly crave? Or do I quite simply slice and dice her on the spot, and take all her worldly posessions without a backwards glance. Hmmm let me think….

Yet when you’re playing Monopoly, Monopoly money has value; Monopoly is

played until all players are bankrupt but one, who is the winner. In Monopoly,
the gaily coloured little bills that come with the game are the determinant of
success or failure. Monopoly money has meaning endogenous to the game
of Monopoly – meaning that is vitally important to its players, so much so
that you have to watch your little sister like a hawk to make sure she doesn’t
swipe bills from the bank when you aren’t looking.

The value of in-game materials/good seems to me to have become vastly more important recently, to the point where game companies stand to severely boost their income by including an online market system, encouraging their customers to hand over real life money in exchange for these game items. Personally I feel that the majority of the time these can be a detrimental factor towards the game, and quite often comes across as a cheap and thoughtless tactic to earn some easy revenue with minimal effort.

Good visuals provide one form of sensory pleasure; we like pretty games.

Audio is important. For some games, tactile pleasure is important, too;
sometimes a game’s controls just feel right. For some games, muscle pleasure
is important as well – sports, obviously, but perhaps that’s part of the appeal
of Japanese arcade dance games, like Dance Dance Revolution.
As an example of the difference that mere sensation can make.

     Something I feel about new/modern gamers is that we have been somewhat spoilt in recent years with the sheer graphic quality that accompanies our games. While this is clearly something gained, the down side would be that it can become very easy to start judging games, at a glance, on nothing more than their visual quality. Resulting in certain other important factors that could easily make or break a game, being simply overlooked.

Something different.

     In order to have a little more input into areas of the game, and to help us meet our time commitments, I spent some time this week creating totem pole pieces out of modelling clay and, once robin had fired them, painting them up. I like that the pieces, as they stand, have a distintive homemade feel to them. This is all the more effective in my mind considering that it accompanies Sean's hand drawn board design. I was particularly happy to help out with this part of our game. Not only was it fun but it gave me the opportunity to get involved in something different within the project.

This does not come easy. Blogging feels weird.

     Im here again. Catching up. Like before. How about some more contextual studies?  Our next bit of writing required us to analyse the opinions of Roger Callois, and decide top what level we personally agreed with it. Here it is, since you asked so nicely: 
     "A characteristic of play is that it creates no wealth or goods, thus differing from work." To accept this statement as true we would have to agree that wealth is established purely as an accumulation of material posessions/finance, and not via an enriching or rewarding experience. Another opinion of Callois is that: "Play is an occasion of pure waste, waste of time, energy, ingenuity and often money. Again this only becomes true when we devalue periods of recreation and label them as wasteful. In fact for the most part, it is these periods that we spend most of our time working toward, suggesting the experience is far to valuable to be considered a waste. This is quite likely the reason why old folk who have been working all their lives are so psyched for retirement."                Over and out.

Don't take it out of context.

     Ooh, a snappy title! Down to business. While we have been working on our project we have also attended weekly sessions focusing on contextual studies, aimed at helping us in our development of our board game. It was suggested that some of the tasks we were set in these sessions should be documented within our blogs. The first of these tasks was a short narrative of our experience a game so here it is: "The game begins with my character waking up after being shot in the head by a casino owner called Benny. I will later retaliate by having him crucified but that's not important right now. What's important is the old man sitting in front of me telling me that I'd been found in the wasteland with a hole in my head, and that I'd been promptly transferred to my present location to be patched up. A likely story- I don't know what kind of sick stunt this man is trying to pull, but I know it somehow involves me....and America. I excuse myself to the bathroom where after some shameless cabinet rummaging, I locate a straight razor. 30 seconds later the "doctor" is in 5 seperate pieces over his living room floor. It would be more but this is all the game would allow. Bloodlust is clearly only acceptable to a point. I then spent the remainder of my afternoon hiding his body parts in humourous locations around his house. In the evening I ransack the possessions of the house just to see what this guy was all about. Oh...oh dear...Turns out he may have been a doctor after all. Awkward." As you can see looking at a game in this way shows just how easily an audience can become immersed withing a game. Focusing on this level of involvement when creating our boardgame is the type of practice that will help us create a successful piece of work. Signing off.

Behind...again

     As I am in charge of the board game box within our group, and have already begun looking at deifferent box structures I decided it was time to begin making some trial versions. To begin with I made a very simple design in keeping with the decision I had made from earlier research. These can be seen below.

     After discussing this design within our group, It was mentioned that in the Disney version of  "Trivial Pursuit" the box had a front cover type effect where a layer at the top folded over like a book. It was decided that it would be worth using this kind of design as inspiration, and in turn giving our box design a little more visual appeal.

     After discussing this I made a second version which, after discussing with my group, I feel will likely be our final design, and therefore, for now, I will be treating it as such which will allow me to focus on creating the artwork for it. Pictures of my new design and how it unfolds can be seen below.



Still catching up.

        As we needed to rethink our concept drastically we worked from home the next day giving us the full 24 hours to focus on it. My personal role withing the group was the creation and artistic design of the box, therefore to make up for lost time whilst we re-evaluated our idea I also created the concept page above to help me prepare for the design of the box cover. I tried to create a variety of character styles as at this point we no longer had a definate age range and I did not want to create one solitary style when there was no way of knowing that it would suit our target group. I also considered a female character within the design as a member of our group had raised concerns over the game becoming too male orientated and potentially alienating female players.

     Over the next couple of days we recreated our concept. As a group we agreed that we believed our cowboy and indian theme to be a winning formula, and therefore decided to keep that idea on board. For me this was a positive move. Research into modern day boardgames had shown me that general interest, particularly that of young children, was on the decline. Modern day entertainment such as T.V, films and videogames are now so advanced and well integrated into family life that boardgames have steadily lost their appeal to many. With this in mind I felt that a once hugely media dominating theme such as cowboys vs. indians, could be just the kind of idea that would help to turn this around. By going back to basics and using a theme we know works, we could include the influences of modern board game mechanics and create an idea that is not only original, but also appealing to play. We also decided that the idea of building a tower to win the game was another feature we wanted to keep. Whereas before the games focus was purely Native Americans, in the revised version we had players spit into either cowboy or "indian" teams. Realising that a totem pole structure was unsuitable for the cowboy team I decided there should be two different structures, concept pictures above and below. We now have the origional totem pole idea for the "indians" to build- whilst the cowboy's structure is a typical Wild West guard tower.

     Before the end of the week I also drew up a quick plan of different box net ideas (below). It had been brought up for consideration within our group that a unique box shape could be an effective idea for our game as it would help it to further stand out from the crowd. The first idea I looked at was a cube shape. One main issue with this kind of box shape is that a cube shape as opposed to that of a cuboid has a larger surface area and therefore uses larger amount of packaging. If we were a company mass producing this product, the extra cost this would incur would have to be taken into consideration. As would European packaging regulations which limits the amount of unnecessary packaging that can be used per product. (For more information on these regulations see here: http://www.satra.co.uk/spotlight/article_view.php?id=375) I also considered a 14 faced polygon (tetradecagon) shape which was another unique style; however reseach proved that these kind of mathematical shapes for box designs were much more common for academic or logic based games, and would therefore be misleading for the style of our game, preventing us from getting through to a target market quite as effectively. I finally did a quick sketch of a typical box design. Whilst this design is commonly used, it is not only efficient for packaging, but also makes our product visually distinguishable at glance. Therefore for now I will use this as the net for my mock up box.

Hello again!

     My my...Whats all this then. A new post and the writing is in a funny colour...Swanky. Now lets sum up day two. 

     The picture above was an initial design for the box art. I decided to keep it in a child friendly cartoon style which suited our main target group for the game. I also decided that seeing as we had a relativly young children in mind, rather then having four characters that were only distinguishable by colour, it would be more appealing to give them further visual differences, which can be clearly within the above picture.

     Whilst at this point we felt fairly on track with our idea, by the afternoon a critical group session highlighted some key issues with our work so far. For example we had been inconsistant in our age consideration for different parts of the game. Whilst the game theme and artwork was typical of a children's game, the gameplay elements we had included were, in places, far too complicated. It was agreed as a group that if we wanted to continue with a children's game, much adjustment to the game mechanics would be required- as would a considerable amount of research on child psychology as an element of successful children's games, and how we could effectively use this ourselves. The alternative was to build around the more mature gameplay which would then entail us coming up with a carefully chosen game theme, and sufficient justification as to how this theme would be appealing to adult players. We gave ourselves till the next day to brainstorm our ideas and attempt to decide on a successful concept.

My first post....nearly a week after the project started...sigh...

     So we have been given our first project to design and create our own board game. We immediately began by talking about successful pre-existing games and what exactly it was that had made them so successful. With this in mind we then began to concept a game of our own.
     Mt initial idea was something of a two part game- Which commenced in a typical "traversing across the board towards a common goal" style of play. However the player would be dealt a hand of "monster cards" at the beginning of the game ready to do battle with at the final point of the game which would ultimately decide the winner. As we developed this idea we decided there could be multiple paths across the board where players could pick up various "boost cards" with the intention of optimizing their hand to its multiple potential.
     Our next step was to make our way over to a local toy store "Langleys" where we examined various examples of different board games for inspiration. Looking at these games made us realise that our intial concept may be too complicated for the age group we had in mind and within a couple of hour we had scrapped it and were working on a new idea.
     The new plan was for a native american themed game aimed at young children which had players racing against each other in order to collect up and complete their tribe's totem pole- thus winning the game. With the basic concept of our game in mind we assigned various roles in the creation of the game to different group members- mine being the creation and design of the box, and proceeded to work further at home on our ideas.