The Royal Game of Ur

It would be a blatant lie to say this wasn't a difficult game to study, and iterating it into something interesting was a serious challenge. What passed for entertainment in the year 2 BCE explains how they got so much work done; if the games are this boring carrying an enormous boulder on your back to build a pyramid sounds like a pretty good night out.

At least it's better than Ur!

But I digress.

Our first thought was to speed up the gameplay itself.  Toward the beginning of the game especially, the pacing stagnates pretty quickly as players are unwilling to jump into the unsafe main play corridor from their start zones. A common iteration in our class was changing when you could add new pieces into play; we decided to keep the original rule of being able to play new pieces on any turn with any die roll above 0.

ITERATION 1 - KINGS

Our initial idea was to improve the mechanic of  "doubling-up" and increase the pace of the game with one stone. We turned doubled pieces into Kings, which have the ability to take pieces even when on Rosette squares (typically safe zones). Kings can only be created when a piece is moved onto a Rosette square which already contains a friendly piece. This MUST be a dedicated roll, i.e. the entire roll must be used on a single piece, and if you do not fall on the Rosette square you cannot make a King (a la finishing the game, exact rolls off the board). Each player can have only one King on the board at once.

This worked fairly well, though we came up with a few rules in medias res, which felt natural, and fed into iteration 2. Regular pieces attacking Kings resulted in the King losing a piece, but keeping it's position. Kings can also be used as "blockers", which are impassable by friendly or enemy pieces. This gave us the idea for iteration 2.

ITERATION 2 - COMBAT

We decided combat was a rather passive process in this game. The centre lane, especially toward the beginning, seemed to be entirely waiting for your opponent to move in front of you so you can take them, and then they take you etc. We reiterated combat so exact rolls are needed to take. When you take, you occupy the place of the piece taken (except with Kings). You can move past a piece if your have a high enough roll, which can be useful for accessing Rosettes or the exit.though you can divide your roll between pieces. For example:

If black is in this position and rolls 4..

He could take all 3 white pieces by dividing his roll. Unlikely, but possible.

Also, we removed some of the value of Rosette squares by having them protect you for a limited time, up to two opponent turns. This prevents "camping", keeping the game moving as no piece is permanently safe, and reduces the chance of Kings.

These combat rolls added a layer of strategy toward the end game as piece hopping became a more viable tactic in addition to simple taking.

ITERATION 3 - MORE DICE ROLLS 

A quick final addition was a board modification to further increase the games pacing. We added marked squares to the board; when a friendly piece occupies one of these squares, you gain a supplemental die roll.

A maximum of four squares are available to each player, with a potential of four supplemental rolls per turn. The squares are hard to hold for very long though; an optimal strategy is trying to hold a few early on to move pieces further down the board out of harms way.
These are a once-per-turn supplement. A Rosette stone extra roll, will not grant another set of supplemental rolls. A practical example:

If black rolled two, he could move a piece to his closest Rosette Stone...

Which would grant him an extra roll, as per the norm. As he now only has one marked square occupied, he rolls his one extra die, and does what he will with that result. On his Rosette extra roll though, regardless of the number of marked squares occupied he can only roll normally.

This had the effect of speeding up the game quite significantly, and added quite an amusing competition with territory control. This is probably my favourite iteration, especially combined with the combat iteration. Further refinements for this idea included making these marked squares harder to hold, and perhaps on a separate path on the board, as a risk/reward alternative.

Game pending.

Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design – A PopCap Case Study

http://learn.ucs.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-195672-dt-content-rid-353466_1/courses/IMDCGD110-12YRD/Week%20By%20Week%20Module%20Readings/Week%20By%20Week%20Readings%20Readings%20for%20week%207%20Space%20of%20Possibility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design_A%20PopCap%20Case%20Study/Space%20of%20Possilbility%20and%20Pacing%20in%20Casual%20Game%20Design%20_%20A%20Popcamp%20Case%20Study.pdf

The article begins with by discussing the idea of casual, pick up and play: what is the "casual" design methodology. PopCap leads market, so they and their games are studied.

Venturelli defines casual games as "games that offer the possibility of “pick up and play”, and experiences that can be enjoyed in small bursts and interrupted by the player without penalty or perceived penalty. Putting it simply, the key element is not the complexity of the system and  its  mechanics,  but  how  this  complexity  is  presented to the player." This definition helps avoid confusion as to what exactly constitutes a casual game.

Following this comes 5: DEFINING CONCEPTS.

 5.1 PACING

A large idea with a small tagline, pacing is the use of MDA to control game flow, and create relaxation, tension and repetition. Creates "pace".

 5.2 MOVEMENT IMPETUS, TENSION, THREAT, TEMPO

Four concepts are related to pacing, defined by Davies [2009]:

Threat is generated on the level of game mechanics, existing  as  the  power  struggle  tips  in  favor  of  the
system or the player's opponent(s). For the purposes of this work, “Tension”  is the perceived  danger  that a
player might become the weakest side on the conflict, while  “Threat”  is the  actual  power  of  the  opposing
forces  on  the  conflict  (the  system  itself  or  other players), a concept directly related to game balance.
Aesthetic resources such as graphics and sound can be used to increase or decrease Tension, but not Threat.

Movement Impetus, is the will or desire of a player to move forward through a level

Tempo is the “intensity” of play. It is the time between each significant decision made by the player.
(I had problems here: Low tempo = fast? High tempo = slow? Also, this sounds more like pacing to me than all 3 of the above concepts.)

Section 6 moves onto the ideas of the Space of Possibility and Player Experience

Space of possibility roughly equates to the amount possible within a game. Taking a definition of fun as "pleasure with surprises", no more surprises = no more fun. For e.g:

• Tic tac toe: very limited, , no surprise, boring fast
• Chess: unlimited, constant surprise, intriguing

However, it is not safe to assume that simply making a game with more patterns will turn it into a good experience. An example from PopCap is the sequel to Bejeweled, in which jewel movement is seemingly needlessly limited. However, the lead developer says that because players now have a larger space of possibility to analyze before making their moves. This made the game a lot slower and more deliberate. "No one wants to make uninformed decisions – if a player is forced to take  action  whithin  a  system  without  feeling  that he/she  has  assessed  all  the  possible  actions  and outcomes for that game state, he/she is very likely to become frustrated."Essentially, as the Space of Possibility increases, Tempo also
increases. Higher Tempo generates lower Player Impetus.

This design approach will lead to an inevitable Catch-22 while trying to find a “right balance” or a “sweet spot” between small and large spaces of possibility.

I thought this was a very interesting article. "Casual" games, and the PopCap revolution especially, are very new in gaming, having seemingly sprung up overnight. The article does a very good job nailing down the idea of pacing and its four connected concepts. I will say that THIS GOT VERY COMPLICATED AROUND THE END. Instead of tying everything together, several new concepts are bandied about on the last page alone, making it a lot tougher to swallow. Perhaps they could have used some better pacing (ha).

MDA - A Formal Approach to Game Design

MDA, or mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, is an attempt at creating a formal approach to video game design and game research, penned by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek (and run on sentence). It is designed to help bridge the gap between game design and development, game
criticism, and technical game research, as well as help "clarify and strengthen the iterative
processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts."

To begin, we must understand MDA.

• Mechanics - The particular components of a game
• Dynamics - Run time behaviour of mechanics, acting on player inputs and other dynamic outputs
• Aesthetics -Describes desirable emotional response evoked

This MDA framework formalizes video game consumption, which is necessary because of the difference between games and other entertainment (books, music, movies): game consumption is relatively unpredictable. The string of events that occur during gameplay and the outcome of
those events are unknown at the time the product is finished. MDA breaks games down into their distinct components and matching them to their deign counterpart.

Fundamental to this framework is the idea that games are more like artifacts than media. By this they mean that the content of a game is its behavior and not the media that streams out of it towards the player.

Thinking about games as designed artifacts helps to frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction. "It supports clearer design choices and analysis at all levels of study and development."

MDA as a Lens

Each aspect of MDA framework can be seen as it's own viewpoint, or lens. It is important to consider this, as a designer, as a player will almost always have an opposite viewpoint to you.

It is helpful to consider both the designer and player perspectives. It helps us observe how even small changes in one layer can cascade into others. In addition, thinking about the player encourages experience-driven (as opposed to feature-driven) design.


The article goes on to have a very in-depth look at aesthetics, dynamics before finishing with mechanics. It was a highly useful and informative piece, and I have a feeling it will come back to haunt me in every piece of work I do on this course.To be honest I couldn't think of a better article to help me.

As a final note, a very useful resource I have used for years now is Extra Credits, an online show which attempts to formally discuss games and help games designers both green and veteran. They happen to have an episode relating directly to this topic which may be worth a watch for someone looking to supplement their knowledge.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play