Now that my initial proposal for the project has been handed in, it’s time to begin working towards my project! For this entry I focused more on research than design, in order to establish a good set of base fundamentals for my game and for me to know what makes a quality product for my own game to be of a similar standard. I decided to first research and analyse some other board games to see what they did well and what they didn’t do so well.
To start-off I conducted some research into other well-known board games to see how they’re designed using various game design mechanics I researched extensively in the Games Design unit. I will be typing this analysis in the form of a gameplay journal, and will begin my documentation with both Monopoly and Risk. These games, as stated by (Beaumont Enterprise, 2013), are some of the most famous and popular board games on Earth, so picking them apart and analysing both what they do well and what they don’t do well can’t assist me when it comes to the creation of my own game, as I can really get an insight into why these two games are so beloved. At this point I feel my game will be well-suited as a hybrid of these two games, using certain elements of them (like individual character pieces in Monopoly and capturing areas in Risk), while also introducing my own concepts too.
(Marcelo, 2016)
(Reed, 2016)
The first game is Monopoly, which has the type of gameplay that’s the pinnacle of easy to understand and hard to master (allowing it to easily nail its large family friendly target audience), as the player spends their time traveling around the board endlessly in a circle while collecting properties. The game has a great level of endogenous value in its currency, an effective game design technique that gives the game’s fake money a real sense of value. Since every property you can own costs money to buy and upgrade, it’s something you have to save up for. Likewise, wherever you land on an opponent’s property or they land on yours, you either earn or lose money respectively. It adds a competitive element to the game where players strive to become richer than their friends and force them into bankruptcy (making them lose). I’ll be taking this into account for my own game, where each character will have health, which can either be lost or gained depending on the circumstances.
Risk on the other hand involves each player spending their turns building up an army and conquering different countries. Both your soldiers and acquired land like Monopoly also contain a great level of endogenous value, considering that you need to wipe all enemy forces out of the map to win. Having a stable income of troops and strategic planning of areas to capture is the key to success, which, like Monopoly, really nails the large target audience with its mechanics. The gameplay I feel is much more strategic than Monopoly is, but is much harder for less-experienced gamers to get into, due to the more intense level of planning required every turn. The game also has a much weaker flow channel compared to Monopoly, since a lot of your gameplay time requires you to sit around waiting for other players to take their turn. And since turns can take much, much longer in Risk than Monopoly, many players can find themselves feeling bored and frustrated as they’re left waiting to actually play the game. This is an issue I can take forward to improve upon my own board game, as I’ll aim to make turns quick and snappy to keep the game progressing forward at a brisk pace, while still having a layer of strategy with players deciding where to go.
Monopoly and Risk also help appeal to their huge target demographic by catering to a large amount of Bartle types! Achievers will strive to win the game, as they collect as many different troops/ properties as possible to win the game. Explorers will like to move their characters around the board to see what different events happen and what secrets they can find. Socialisers will enjoy interacting with other players, and also bargaining/ trash-talking the competition. Lastly Killers will enjoy the thrill of the hunt, whether that’s wiping out enemy forces in Risk or using trickery in Monopoly to trap players to spend lots of money in their very expensive estate. Both of these games as I’ve just evidenced have been deviously planned from the base gameplay to be enjoyable to as many different people as possible! Following on from this my game will aim to cater to all of these types too, in order to justify the large target market! Achievers will enjoy capturing all the different bases dotted around the map and outwitting the enemy team. Explorers will like to roam around the board, picking up lucky chance cards and discovering secrets. Socialisers are able to communicate and strategize with their team members, while also tricking and taunting the enemy team. And Killers will be able to actively hunt out enemy team members to kill them, and can even pick a character who’s better at fighting to assist them! This is a prime example of me analysing those two popular games, and applying some of their theories to my own project.
Monopoly and Risk both use a consistent form of semiotics to make the games easier to understand, and have a great use of imagery using recognisable icons and symbols. For example, in Monopoly all of the lucky cards have an iconic question mark symbol on the back of them, whereas the go to jail space has a picture of a police officer on it. Likewise Risk’s semiotics include different countries that look identical to the real countries on a world map, and your own soldier figurines look like military army men. This is so the players in the game instantly understand it’s supposed to simulate your armies taking over different countries for world domination, and it presents this concept in a very straightforward manner. This is a good use of semiotics when it comes to relating the board game’s mechanics to real-world terms, as everyone knows question marks represent confusion and policemen are associated with prison. This is a gap I have to bridge for my own game, and I want it to have a feel where people vaguely understand what they’re looking at when they play the game, even if they’ve never played it before. So a good use of semiotics will be key to keeping my diverse target audience.
There is a big loophole in the base gameplay of Monopoly, as talked about by (Reed, 2016), which is something I should try to avoid for my own game. Essentially Monopoly only has 32 houses for players to build on their properties (these houses being integral to the gameplay as they charge players more money when they land on them), and normally they’re supposed to be upgraded to hotels and replaced. However, if a sneaky player is able to get a Monopoly on two or more sets of properties, and put four houses on each property, it pretty much locks down the game and slows it to a crawl. Since the player can refuse to upgrade their houses (which normally puts them back into the box), nobody else is therefore able to upgrade their own properties to hotels, and prevents absolutely anyone from earning much money. This means the game can potentially go on for hours, until one of the opponents go bankrupt or give-up the game. This is an example of bad game balance, however the game Monopoly is over 100 years old, so the fundamentals of game design have changed a lot since then.
Both of these games are more free-for-all affairs, where each individual player competes against everyone else to win for themselves. After looking at these two big-hitting games I feel mine has found its niche to help it stand-out from the crowd, in a more team-based, simple, yet strategic market, which encourages teamwork and people strategizing together to succeed. Both of those games are also more family friendly, which is a similar target audience to what I’m aiming for. Both Risk and Monopoly can be played by a large variety of people being easy to understand but with deep, complicated mechanics underneath. This is a very similar approach I’d like to take with my own game, so analysing these base gameplay of these two games has really helped me make an executive decision on what I should and shouldn’t do when moving forward.
Following on from this initial research I began to design how my game would be played, so I created a flowchart (shown below) which exhibits each step of the game and what happens in a typical gameplay experience as they player plays out each turn. It really helps visually map out how every aspect of the game will be played and each step that’s taken in the gameplay, so it almost acts as pseudocode that I can base my actual product on when it comes to development, without me wasting time still figuring out how the base gameplay will work three weeks down the line.
So: following on from this research I have a firm idea on what my game will be like and how it’s played, meaning I will start my development soon! My game in its current form will essentially be a team-based board game that tasks each team as being the first to take over all 5 big spaces on the map. The first team that does, wins! There will also be a few extra gimmicks to it, like the lucky spaces dotted around the board where when a player lands on it, they draw a random card with instructions on it, which can either be positive or negative for the player.
As an added extra touch to the gameplay, I’ve decided that the player will be able to move either forwards or backwards after their dice roll, but they’re committed in moving in that direction after (and can’t continuously move backwards and forwards to make the game unbalanced and waste time). This adds an extra layer of strategy to the game in the fact the player has more control in their movement, and the game will be designed around this fact. Since being able to move backwards in Monopoly for example would make it very unfair and unbalanced, and would ruin the game’s entire concept of moving round in a continuous circle.
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