Lessons Learnt after Designing Board Game - Designing for Mass Audience, Mechanism and Storytelling
- FONG SAY KIAT
- Feb 3, 2018
- 5 min read
This article was originally written on instagram as self reflection purpose. Few insights were re-written and expanded for further elaboration.
Back when I was involved in organising activities for school society, we had one event repeated every year - something similar to the Amazing Race, where participants form teams and solve puzzles by receiving hints from a variety of challenges each stop. For gamers, think of it as a quest, where you have to hop from town to town to collect hidden gems, or, say, talk to certain useless NPC just to gain a few percent of experience.
Goddamn NPC
Flashback to third-quarter of 2010, where South Korean variety show RunningMan begun its legacy, inviting popular star idols to team up with the original eight member host cast, which then splits into groups to compete between each other. The goal of the show is similar to Amazing Race - solve quests, gain hints, be the first to reach destination, or sometimes last-man standing. Although the concept of both shows are vastly different on appearance, the similarity lies on its mechanism.
RunningMan - Jaesuk
Shows like this would be scripted to spice up things (we hope it's not, otherwise, where's the fun?). But after few weeks of studying screenwriting and cinematography, variety show like RunningMan shines well when it has a theme (synonym to genre of a movie), well-curated game based on the theme (synonym to the setting of a movie) and increasing difficulty in the game (synonym to plot). This paragraph could go much longer, but let's stick back to our original topic, shall we?
Additional links / Interesting reads:
Game as Mechanism
We've talk about variety shows, and we found out that the bone of a well-curated game lies within its mechanism. As important as storytelling in movie, mechanism is the key to a good game. Without mechanism, you can't navigate out of a game.
When asked what is game mechanism, I would picture these questions: "what is this game about and how to play?". This two questions are the main component to drive your game towards goal.
Here are the two videos that I highly recommend to watch for better understanding game design & mechanism:
M A R I O A E S T H E T I C
Of course, those two questions are the conclusion I've arrived after days of research has been done, how godly am I if I could ask myself those two questions right after I received the assignment brief?
Game as Event
Let's roller coaster ride back to the first paragraph (hope I don't make you puke with that), which "Amazing Race" was organised as a part of school activity. A complete game is like a big event. This idea came to me as surprise because it's the best answer to describe what a game should (typically) look like - a cluster of mini games. A huge-complete-ready-to-play game is just a cluster of mini games tied together for players.
Use Maplestory as an example, essentially, all characters are story-driven (how many times you're told that you are the chosen one?) with plenty of quests to complete. In the game Megaman, you are a blue Robocop who has to fight 16 bosses to get to your ultimate enemy's laboratory (Dr.Willy, Gate, Sigma, whatever).
Walking on ice in Megaman X Series is just headache.
Thus, a game is just a set of challenges put together with a clearly defined goal, which is the motivation to finish the game (read: Create Motivation in Design?)
"I've talked about design with motivation on my blog half a year ago. Pokemon game wanted you to catch em all (which I don't), or at least defeat the Elite Four. Digimon World wants you to save the corrupted data world. In Yu-Gi Oh you want to be the strongest player by collecting Dragon and Knight cards. It could be a story or an element that moves the game. A good design is design with motivation."
-Excerpt from original instagram post-
Meaningful Game Makes Us Feel Small
Almost every kind of design requires user engagement, especially in graphic design (less relatable to, say, fashion and architecture). This kind of user-product relationship can be easily summarised as user experience, or in gamers' perspective, the playing experience. This engagement exists to enable players have an emotional resonance with the main character.
Awwwww.
"Playing Mario character makes you feel brave, playing trading card makes you feel like you are "the chosen one". Still don't get it? Remember the last time you watched a movie that makes you feel small and powerless and touched? (Hinting Kimi No Nawa). Players are no more special than the game mechanism itself, everything is equally important."
-Excerpt from original instagram post-
Design Means Repurpose
This is a big topic to talk about, I'll dedicate another blog post on this sub-topic.
"Designing means repurpose, and this definition is perhaps the most universal definition that can be applied across different design field. We repurpose an imagery to become a symbol (semiotic and hermeneutic), we assign a certain material due to its characteristic (e.g. product design), we incorporate elements such as texture on fabric to make a clothing piece story-full."
-Excerpt from original instagram post-
Technical Aspect In Mind - A Game For All
Last but not least, I have to thank whatever spirit for putting this thought into my mind while designing the board game. It was near November (couldn't recall clearly) where I had a very long night conversation with my fellow campus juniors. They've share a story of their friend who happened to be colour blind.
It was that point I got home starring all the colours chose for my board game design, wondering how many games are not optimised for colour-blindness just because they've used colour to help player identify assets. It is important to know that colour is important on signifying message (such as traffic lights). But if we build a system around colours, it's an indirect call to colour blindness's discrimination.
In The Nutty Shell
You might wonder, heck, this person had a long long talk about his final assignment thoughts, but where is the design? I'll upload the full collection of photos to the portfolio section as soon as possible, but here let me share with you a few photos taken:
Graphics inspired by Nimura Daisuke, click on image to expand
Designing a game isn't easy, so combining games works better with me. After all, there is no original design in this world ain't it? Anyhow, I'm grateful that this project had push me in graphic style (I'm not a drawing person), while exploring the ideas of storytelling prior to my intensive study on research methodology and screen writing / cinema plot structure. There are definitely more things to write after books of reading done during semester break, till then, thanks for reading.
Nimura Daisuke's Quirky Daily Life Illustration
Comments