Iteration, implementation and creation - Battleships reborn

When reviewing or analysing a game, there are many questions you have to ask yourself, to truly capture the essence of the game this may be simple, or quite difficult. Below are some questions you might ask yourself to start to get to grips with what makes a game tick.

• What challengers do the players face, what actions do they take to overcome them?
• How do players affect each other?
• Is the game perceived by the players as fair?
• Is the game re-playable? if so why?
• What is the games intended audience?
• What is the "core" of the game, second by second minute by minute the things you do over and over that represent the fun part?

Let's start off by looking at these in relation to the game 'Battleships';

What challengers do the players face, what actions do they take to overcome them?

There are many different ways to approach what the players challenges are in this game, but I guess in pure simplicity it could be summed up as a nebulous challenge, a game of hit or miss once you've totally stripped it down. While there may be ways and tactics in which you search for ships, it none the less can end up coming down to either how well you know your player through multiple battles, or it can be something as simple as pure luck.

How do players affect each other?

They affect each other through randomly attacking squares on each others side of the battlefield, unknowing to the location of their opponents ship, once they find one they may still be in the dark on which direction the ship is facing.

Is the game perceived by the players as fair?

It has to be, there is no favouratism or handicaps either way, whether you have one ship or three left you both end up taking a turn, and taking a shot. I'd say the most you can go to making the game unfair in its original state is if you are up against someone with Amblyopia(lazy eye) or other factors that might alter a persons bodily functions, because one way you might try to catch your opponent off is by their body language. 

Is the game re-playable? if so why?

Yes, every game can end up playing out very differently, due to the freedom players have when placing their pieces, and players behavior.

What is the games intended audience?

It's hard to say really, the game due to its nature would seem intended for children, however at the same time you could argue the game requires some patience and is a time passer requiring little skill or knowledge to pick up. So it could be said that this games intended audience could either be children or more mature/elder people who aren't as bothered by straight up skill based competitive games, and simple wish to pass time.

What is the "core" of the game, second by second minute by minute the things you do over and over that represent the fun part?

In a very dumbed down and visually unnoticeable way, it's about the thrill; the excitement of whether you hit or miss. It's fun element comes from the cloak and dagger nature of the game, 'did I hit? Did I miss?' and when you find out you missed you become more determined to find a ship especially when you realise your opponent must be closing in on yours.


Our job was to take this well known game and iterate it, adapt it rule by rule into something new, testing it each iteration along the way to see if that element of 'fun' still remained or was improved upon.

We started off by throwing a couple of ideas around and then decided to begin by adding in a feature of retaliation, doing this would in essence make the game quicker, more interesting and would add more depth to play then what usually seems like a basic tennis rally. The idea was that different ships would be assigned gun blocks on them, when a ship gets hit, depending on how many guns are still operational on that ship, the ships weapons fire back the number of functional turrets left on the engaged ship. If the retaliation shots hit an opponents ship, after those shots are taken the other player would take their retaliation shots. In basis, there is a possibility (a very small one though) that the game could be over in a single turn.

So if for example player A took his shot, and it hit player B's 5 square ship, then player B will fire at 3 squares in retaliation due to the 5 square ship having 3 guns. However if the initial shot from player A hit one of player B's gun squares, then player B would only fire back 2 shots.

Following on from this iteration we then began to consider expanding on a few other elements of the game, for one thing grid size came into question, and the possibility of making it larger or smaller. Smaller might be more fast paced, however it might detract from the mystery of the game and your opponents actions. Making it larger however might extend the length of the game, making the possibility of boredom more likely to crop in, which you never want with a game.

One thing I considered was the inclusion of the devils object; DICE! I considered the inclusion of dice in a 'double or nothing' scenario, the idea for implementation I had was simple; if you hit a ship, you have the option to double up, by doing so you must obtain a 5 or a 6, doing so will give you a second follow up shot before retaliations can occur. The cost of this is however, that if you fail to obtain a 5 or a 6 then your first shot becomes null, and your opponents ship makes 'repairs', this means you have to waste your next turn attacking that square again. The good thing about this is it adds an interesting risk-reward element to the game.

A thought I liked was the idea of a 3 layer grid, with a new theme for space. The idea would require a lot of iterations to make sense with the inclusion of certain functions like special 3 layer piercing shots versus 1 layer 3 square shots. The game would become quite different in my opinion and would give more choice to the player.

The most interesting and hectic thought for iteration though would probably be movement, movement would make a game like Battleships quite ridiculous to play. It would probably remove a lot of tactical elements and make the game more luck ridden than dice could make sense of. For this reason, such an iteration would require some heavy thought to either grid size, or attack capabilities. Maybe players could be given an increased number of shots dependent on operation boats, however as realistic and straight forward as this may seem, if would more than likely deduct from the balance of the game, which could quite easily ruin the game completely for a lot of players.

All in all there're some interesting thoughts for consideration there. When you think about it it becomes quite intriguing how different a game as simple as Battleships could become without deducting from the basics of the game. But when we think about it; could we still believe a person if they walked up to us and said Company of Heroes was derived from Chess? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But once we begin to analyse a statement like that, it's interesting to see the comparisons we begin to make.

Bibliography - how to

This post is to cover bibliographies and their use to reference books, contributions to books and journal articles. All given examples shall be formatted using the Harvard referencing.

Referencing a Book is simple enough:  

Author, Initial (Year of Publication). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher. 

For example:

Adams, E. (2010) Fundamentals of game design. New Riders.

Schell, J (2008) The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press

Referencing a Contribution to a book requires a bit more specificity as you'd expect:

Author, Initial (Year of Publication). Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher. Page number.

For example:

Bittanti, M (2003) "The Technoludic Film: Images of Videogames in Movies" In Nakatsu and Hoshino., Entertainment Computing: Technologies and Applications. Springer. 307-312

Rettberg, S. (2008) “Corporate Ideology in World of Warcraft”. In Corneliussen, H. & Rettberg, J.W. eds, Digital culture, play, and identity: a World of Warcraft reader, MIT Press. 19-39.

Then finally we have Journal articles, which slightly differ from the previous:

Author, Initial (Year of Publication). “Full title of the article in inverted commas”.The full title of the journal [volume + part if given and/or] Month, or Season, or volume/part number.

For example:

Keighron, P. (1993) “Video Diaries: What’s Up Doc?” Sight and Sound. October. 24-25.

Gonzalez et al. (2013) "Learning to Stand in the Other’s Shoes: A Computer Video Game Experience of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict" Social Science Computer Review. 31. 236-243

Games Britannia – part 1

Here are the notes I took after watching the first part of 'Games Britannia' the documentary seems to delve well into our past and pose good questions while giving relevant insight into the pure essence and origins of games.

Interesting how people approach working out games origins and mechanics and how they work.

Games are a human specific thing. Different from play, which other species would have experienced across the ages, for this reason it could be argued that games are one of the things that makes us human (take that nostalgic critics of the game industry!).

Perhaps the Stanway game is not a game board, but in fact a tactical map layout? With different stones resembling units within an army.

Refers to video games as being played by teenage boys; that is subjective/ stereotypical; there are many girl gamers and mature gamers.

alea evangelii – game seems like it could possibly be more about extensive patience of slowly moving your whole defence across in a direction, at first look at least, this could be proven wrong; by the look of it the removal of pieces operates in such a way you might be forced to rush. Personally I would have to do play it to truly understand it, as is the case with many games.

A game that mixes both the elements of skill and luck; this type of game would be the perfect analogy of life itself, as life involves both skill and luck. The game that was used to represent this was backgammon.

Games are essential to the homosapien due to our inherent nature that animals do not possess; a nature to get bored.

9 mens morris – essentially noughts and crosses. Although on a bigger scale, kind of like when playing noughts and crosses you try to play on a 4x4 grid, but it doesn’t work. 9 mens morris was a vastly played game used repetitively in medieval times to pass time.

Hazard – a basic gambling game and thus considered a game in service of the devil in the times of its creation. Reason being that dices are considered a thing of evil, demise and deconstructive to civilization. The game simply incorporates betting on the roll of a dice, each round you must bet more and more to stay in.

Faro – gambling game of 50/50 chance to win, it became very addictive, and was very easy to become submerged in debt.

But all of these gambling ‘games’ raises the question; do gambling games really count as actual games? Don’t games involve fun, challenge and no tangible direct material gain? In fact the dangers and aggressions in gambling seem to have a negative stereotype on games as a whole, they seem to promote nonsense that games encourage violence, and simply not the attitude of the player themselves.

18^th-19^th century dice were replaced by spinning tops in children games as dice were still more than ever hit with a stigma of being ‘evil’.

Goose – a game about the moral and virtue choices in life. The virtues were harder and more challenging, leading to the point that life is about overcoming hardship to be virtuous, whereas greed and morally wrong decisions might be easier, but may have incurred issues later on. This game in fact could be considered the origin of the games industry, the point where it all began to kick-off.

Snakes and ladders – based on a Hindu game that’s objective is to achieve enlightenment, the objective of the game isn’t to be fun or challenging, but to understand the religion and to give a true insight into what enlightenment is. Snakes and ladders straight away removed the moral elements and over time snakes and ladders went from circle to square, from complicated to less complicated.

Ludo – a perfect example of another Asian game altered into simplicity, this becomes an issue with games, oversimplifying can pervert the true experience of complication that presents a true challenge to the player.

Chess – origin in Asia again, but from country to country each played the game differently, possibly one of the best examples of this is the Egyptian version; which in comparison to most is a very thin board. Chess is possibly the most skilful and evolved form of gaming ever, there is no chance, no messing around. It is simply incredibly unique. There’s a theory that chess started off as a method of developing tactical skill. The game is essentially a game that anyone can get into, but a game that is incredibly hard to master. These sort of games are incredibly hard to produce, a game that anyone, absolutely anyone could learn fairly quickly, but you could take years upon years to win!

What is a video game? Rules, puzzles and simulations.

So on Thursday we took the time to tap into this thought mainly through the work of Newman J. (2004) Videogames Routledge: London. It raises some fair points and while there were some smaller documents up for discussion, this seemed to be the one most chose to stick too.

For anyone interested in games design it might be worth a look, here's some points from different segments that I felt the need to break down and dispute or agree with;

What truly defines a videogame? Surely things such as Furby and Tamagotchi can be considered to be computer games due to their electronical nature and use of technology?

Not true, while they do involve playing and have similarities to a videogame the essence of the device is subjective; video games primary function from a designers point of view is to deliver an experience through the median of a game, I would argue electronical devices for play such as Tamagotchi are the experience themselves, and while they may be using a median for the experience, it’s a wholly different kind of experience. Video games that create experiences from scratch immerse the player, removing them from their plane of existence, and throwing the player into another. Something like furby does no contribute the same outcome. At the same time the generic and broad concept of the word 'video' at its origins as a Latin word shouldn't be overlooked, for if we scope that far back we can see the word is in fact derived from the word see, this ensues an argument about terminologies and their ability to change definition over time and whether their original description is mute or of relevance.

Are video games an extension of a certain industry?

I personally consider them to be a combination of many different industries, and each industry will inspire ideas and innovation in one another. While you could compare a good narrative to an interactive movie, the difference between watching the movie and playing the game is the freedom, a film is set on a linear sequence of events that once seen once, will continue to happen. A game however is a variable, you can choose to do everything the exact same way, or you can vary your choices, even games that have very little split from a linear story technically still have decisions, even if it is something as simple as should I kill or be killed?

Classifying videogames

Genres might simply be a way of labeling a game within a generic category, but there are constantly new categories being created, more to the point the definition and embodiment of a genre will change over time, most peoples definition of a shoot ‘em up now would be along the lines of a Call of Duty game, where as someone like me would immediately identify it with something like Space Invaders, while my identification of the genre is technically correct by categorized standards, to someone from a different, younger generation, something like Space Invaders means nothing to them, and they instead immediately relate the genre to something they've grown up with, this would once again have to bring in to argument the point of whether a words origins still should be taken into consideration after the generalized use of the term changes.

The point about the importance of a celeb game designer being tagged with a project is contemporary and subjective, it can have an effect on people’s drafted opinions before a games release, but will it make the game better? Or worse? Most sequels never live up to their former because they fail to innovate enough, but if you were to identify a celeb dev with a project at for example its third game in a trilogy, people suddenly start paying attention and either view it in a different light or lose faith in their favourite celeb dev. 

In relation to the point about making a game you want; It is important to make something you feel comfortable with, something that you actually enjoy, everyone wants that and thanks to the indie market boom it can work. But in most cases, especially after your first major game… you have a market to appease, you have to consider other peoples thoughts and opinions of a game, what they will feel, what they will think. When you enter the business side of the industry and aim to make money, it is no longer about your wants. PLAYER PLAYER PLAYER, the customers have to come first, that’s a sacrifice you have to make, only a few celeb devs can have it their way because people respect them, most devs don’t have that luxury.

Coin-op

Coin-op games have to deliver reasonable experiences in small quantities to engage their players, they need the social interaction along with the competitive edge support by the aura of the area of play to actually function. Without these features the whole thing becomes null. The difference is that video games at home don’t need these parts to be successful, you can pace yourself according to your choice, and the game is yours, no one elses, you can choose to share, when to play and aren't hindered by any requirement past the purchase. Also in terms of challenging, surveying and learning from players; with the big move towards online gaming, these elements can now be provided from the parameters of your own house, you no longer need physical, tangible socialising to analyse a players style because most of it is visible in games thanks to the way they are laid out, this further deducts from the need for coin-op games anymore! Also with recordings being a consistent and notable thing, and games creating their own systems that allow you to monitor yourself or others performances (such as COD elite) coin-op’s unique experiences become of even less care to the player.

Why players play

The problem with true immersion is it isn't technically possible, while we may become immersed in a game, we still know it’s a game. Small things make this obvious to start with, which escalate into bigger things, because games are all about mechanics, rules and limitations it stands to reason that we will eventually be hit in the face by the realisation that it is a game because it can’t do a barrel roll or eat a chocolate bar, silly things matter to a person, I've personally seen so much entertainment out of something as simple as a slide to cover system that lets me trip over enemies, small things tend to make the difference, you learn over time that people will pay much more attention to the small defects in the long-term than the large ones. I know it sounds insane, but next time you're nit-picking a game, think about it.

Rules, winning and losing

All games have rules, with digital games these are usually set in place by the limitations of the software, the program created. However limitations still exist even in real world games, a six year old could be playing super heroes, and the child can change the rules of the game all they want, but there are limitations to rule changes that can occur; a child might say they’re superman, but they know they aren't really flying, they’re simply immersing themselves in their imagination to pretend they are, the fact is their movement on a Y axis will still be limited whether immersed or not.

Paidea and Ludus

Ludus (rule based) rules are important, more games are focusing on paidea (freedom) as their primary pivot for innovation; players are less bothered about flashy features and more worried about play time, games such as Minecraft, SimCity and DayZ are the logical path for the games industry to proceed. They offer limitless player time because the player creates their own story, their own choice, and while they’re still controlled to a lesser degree by the rules and mechanics, the games possibilities are huge in number because for example Minecraft is all about the players interpretation of the experience.

Types of game: Puzzles are not games!?!

Not at all; Puzzles are more generic a thing than most realise, a puzzle could be induced as the game as a whole. It presents a mess of a kind, something that needs fixing or breaking, whatever. The point is it creates a challenge you have to overcome, that you must solve or resolve. A puzzle is simply something created to test someone, and a game in general is a test, because there is a challenge to passing it.

Also another way that games have been categorised in the past is Agon (Challenge), Alea (Chance), Mimicry (Simulations, RPG's etc) and Ilinx (Movement). Some of these categories are more or less generic than you'd actually expect and the degrees to which they are Ludus(Rules) or Paidea(Free 'play') is varied.

Minecraft - Minecraft is by far one of the most Paidea games out there at the moment, it provides you almost limitless freedom (especially thanks to plugins/mods) in a seemingly limitless world (most peoples computers give up before the world generation does). I'd say this one can prove fairly hard to categorise into one or two of the four above as it's quite varied; For one thing I might consider placing it in Mimicry due to its RPG elements, it's ability to be who you want to be, and its focus on doing tasks others would in a similar way (dumbed down mind you). I would also place it in Agon; even if you're playing it in peaceful you could be challenging yourself; for example 'I made building A, now let's see if I can make building B even more impressive. It's very subjective but then again so are most things!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - A more recent game XCOM is more central between ludus and paidea; it offers you freedom within a degree to the choices you make, but there are many choices and you can choose the speed everything progresses. XCOM fits into Agon; you have to defeat the enemies and survive to win, Alea; 90% chance to hit yet you miss? Perfect example of chance, and lets not forget random generation of enemies at map entrance, and last but not least Mimicry; you can customise and modify your characters in a whole bunch of ways, change their equipment and level them up.

just two more and then I'll let you go back to your own copy of XCOM or PayDay. ;)

Tony Hawks games - These games focus mainly on movement and thus they're Ilinx games, they can present Agon when you compete with friends or proceed with the story, but the fact is this is not required; you could choose to free roam in an area never having progressed therefore the games main focus makes it an Ilinx mainly Paidea type games.

Mirrors Edge - Right away you're probably thinking it's a paidea games right? Wrong, while the game might involve parkour or 'free-running' as it is referred to in game, there isn't a whole lot free about the experience; your missions while fun and varied in approach are basically linear, you're set on a linear path with a few small branch offs that eventually bring you back, there is no free roam in this Ilinx game it simply drives you on in a story based environment.

Well I think that about covers it for this post, we've covered a lot here and if your head has exploded then don't worry we'll be sending Ramone around with the dust pan and brush and he'll mail it back to you in a doggy bag, toodle pips old chap and chaperettes!

Boss idea - A golem turned sword sheath...

A novelty but also good idea for a boss that I had, I'm thinking of using this as a boss in the group project, obviously the whole thing would in general need to be dumbed down to be feasable!

Bonus Boss > Golem Lord

Reward for defeating boss > Excalibus sword

Description: A being of ancient myth, folklore branded this being as an abomination of natures force incarnated. The truth of this beings nature and rise from slumber lies in the legendary sword stuck in its back; it seeps energy into the beings long dormant core, essentially providing it with a recharged battery!

Plot twist> Novelty

 Killing it gains you the immensely powerful Excalibus, but removing the sword causes a paradox; the world of King Arthur and your own get entwined, you must then create a mission to replay the events prior to your arrival that brought the golem to its existence, failure to do so will see you rip apart the fabric of time (that might postpone your marriage further!).

Side-quest> Collect

You must find several shards that help to reassemble the pile of rocks, you must then reposition the sword within the golems back.

Reward> Loot> Excalijunior

You have to sacrifice Excalibus to get this sword (not that you had a choice). Excalibus was to overpowered for your main adventure anyway, but this sword should still be quite useful.

So I scanned this idea in and started working with it a bit, feel I've got a long way to go before it really starts to show its potential but here's where I'm at so far;

Mainly smoothing out and adding in some different colour mixtures, need to experiment more and add a lot more depth to the character design before it really has the level of detail I want in it. Good thing is that I'm learning the importance of shades and gradually learning how to reflect that understanding in my work.

One way to make it more relevant for a game scenario on the level we're making could be to purposely lose detail and relevant sizing through pixelation. Stretching, minimalism and resizing might lower the detail enough and make it fit in with the retro feel we're probably aiming for.

This is a really poor example as the way I was doing it meant detail wasn't lost, but what this kind of points out is the point I'm trying to make about retro suitable character design; it's not just about the detail that is there or missing, it's also about the scale and sizing ratios, most retro games tend to have a squished and sometimes widened character base, it's more beneficial for hiding small defects and skipping on detail I guess, as you have to remember retro games are hardly meant to be known for hi-def graphics.

So we were setting up blogs yesterday, and our tutor Ed gave us some basic questions to ask each other to give us something to fill up a desolate and empty blog, here's the questions and my answers;


 what is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading (or the
last fiction book you read)?

Subtitles... just kidding, although I do tend to prefer my stories accompanied by a video. It's been quite a while, the last one I can recall that was an actual fiction book was Charles Dickens 'Christmas Carol', and that must have been about 4 years ago. In retrospect I guess this tells me I should be reading more books as they can help so much when it comes to game content, conversion of ideas, story-lines, lore etc.

 what is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently
reading (or the last non-fiction book you read)?

The art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. I've only read about fifty pages in, it's quite an interesting read I just haven't gotten around to continuing reading through it, it throws a lot of different points of view around and has a great contrast of ideas. Which is a very valuable perspective to possess as in Games Design there's no one way to do it, and as Jesse states; we haven't yet found our periodic table like set of rules for making things in the games industry.

 what is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended?

Probably a Primary School play that I was a part of. I'm not going to lie, I don't tend to have an interest in watching  a bunch of people leap around a stage, or trying to listen to music while being nudged in the back by fifteen people! I prefer the art and experiences the games provide instead, because while they're still limited... they're essentially limitless in possibilities.

 what is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema / online or
watched on dvd?

I honestly can't recall what I last watched, but ConAir seems to be fresh in my mind, I think back a few years Nicholas Cage was a great actor, he looked great, he performed great, every role he took he formed well. This film in my opinion must have been a standout for him' Nicholas tends to fill the role of a witty or charming character, a master of the art of linguistics to get his own way, yet in this film he's simply a touch prison hick who you really don't want to get on the wrong side of!

   how often do you read a newspaper? (which one? online or physical?)

I don't read everything, but I do tend to scroll through newspapers on a regular basis, there are some interesting things that can be found. News around the world can point you towards points of interest that could be good for a game, and also sway you away from sort spots that could have a ripple amongst the community and get your bad publicity, perfect example; now would be a terrible time to make a Jim'll Fix It game.

 which art gallery / museum / exhibition did you last visit?  

Has to be EuroGamer, I loved it. It was fun to get to grips with a lot of games not out yet, and allowed me time to rant on my website in small reviews about my experience with them (for once I was nice). Problem I had is a lot of companies really didn't have enough booth space. The three best by far were Relic's Company of Heroes 2 booths, Assassins Creed 3's booths and the PS All-Stars booth, all of them ran quite smoothly, there was minimal wait time and they were all very enjoyable! PS All-Stars didn't even need many booths, the fact it was 4-player meant you could just play with 3 random gamers and no one was really that bothered.

 how many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

...Holy F**king sh*t, you really want to go into this huh? 20-40 hours? I'm being lenient and trying to not look like a waste as much time of my life just bashing buttons and hitting crap. Erm I've always played a lot of games a lot of the time, since the age of about three I think. Problem is still to this day there are games I remember on the MegaDrive that no games currently seem to manage to beat in similar areas on the fun factor.

 how many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video
games?

Well because of my recent obessession with Munchkin, it's at least bumped up to about 7-10 hours, which isn't bad really seeing as I usually prefer digital games; non-digital games tend to press the iffy issue of amassing enough people to play the game you want. I've got to say though Steve Jackson is a genius and I take my hat off to him. The game is brilliant, fun to play and just devious, I keep winning without lieing which is quite funny, because everyone thinks you're lieing.