Describing 5 games from my early game history
Created by Cysote on Apr 2, 2011
Last updated: 04/02/11 at 10:15 PM
1: Why was this game important to you? Gunz is important to me because it showed me that following the original rules that a game gives you is not the only way to play that game. Gunz was programmed so horribly that the players o the game discovered glitches in the game that game them an advantage over other players. The glitches were hard to perform, but mastery of them increased the fun and competitiveness of the game. 2: From a Designer’s Perspective, what skills was the game trying to teach? And how did the game try to teach these skills? Although I doubt the designers planned it, Gunz taught me how to look at a game for all of it's parts and how these parts worked together. It taught me causality and relationships. In order to discover more glitches and ways to gain the upper hand in Gunz, I had to look at the relationships between each move in the game and how it all worked together.
1: Why was this game important to you? Starcraft was important to me because it opened up the world of design. I wasn't particularly good at the game or even understood how real time strategy games worked, but when I went online to play it, I found many different 'custom' games that people created out of starcraft's map editor. I was amazed at how different you could make starcraft work with the map editor that I started messing around with creating my own games through it as well. 2: From a Designer’s Perspective, what skills was the game trying to teach? And how did the game try to teach these skills? Starcraft itself is about management. Managing your resources, managing your army, managing your base, and even managing your opponent. It requires you to split a lot of your attention between many different aspects of the game. Starcraft teaches you how to control all of your forces, and how do to so effectively.
1: Why was this game important to you? Star Fox 64 was important to me because it represented my first true skill based game. My older brother was better than me at the game, and I sat next to him watching him play so that I could learn how to play myself in order to get better than him. Being able to explore the game's universe in only certain pathways in one playthrough made the game very enjoyable to me for a long time as well. 2: From a Designer’s Perspective, what skills was the game trying to teach? And how did the game try to teach these skills? Star Fox 64 was all about physical dexterity. Aiming at the right place and time, shooting at right place and time, and correctly using your skills when you needed them. If you did well on a mission, you were awarded a gold medal for mastering it---and those gold medals were one of my biggest motivations to play the game and learn the dexterity required.
1: Why was this game important to you? Tripoley was important to me because it represented a more adult game that I could play with my parents, instead of a simple game like Uno which I only played with my friends. Tripoley was harder because it involved math and remembering a lot more rules, but I remember it being more fun regardless. 2: From a Designer’s Perspective, what skills was the game trying to teach? And how did the game try to teach these skills? What Tripoley teaches is more math heavy than anything. Most card hands that score in Tripoley are similar to poker hands, and winning a pot or starting a new round moved the chips between the game board and the players (which meant counting them all, because you really wanted to know if you were winning, losing, or somewhere in the middle.)
1: Why was this game important to you? Uno was important to me because it represented a way to play games with a whole group of my friends. I got this game on my 6th birthday and played it with all of my friends. Having a whole group of kids I knew and liked together playing with me was great. 2: From a Designer’s Perspective, what skills was the game trying to teach? And how did the game try to teach these skills? Uno is a game of numbers, colors, and special rules. The basic skills the game was trying to teach was color and number recognition. Uno did this by only allowing you to play a card when you had a card that matched the same color or number as the card played before you. There are special cards like the skip and switch cards, but they seem to be only for more excitement in the gameplay and don't seem to be a part of any kind of teaching mechanism, besides learning to follow the rules.
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