Game Design World from Zhuo Zhu

My Blog Always Have Problems in Edit/Save/Publish, So It Will Have Many Omissions and Errors. I have already done my best.

David’s Guidance

We had a brief discussion with David after class on Monday. David made several very helpful comments:

1. Don’t confine the performance to the action. It can be further expressed by voice and other forms. (this is good, if the player can’t think of a suitable action, he can perform it in another way.)
2. When players have successfully identified the spy, the spy will get a chance to guess the words they are performing. (this gives the spy a chance to reverse the game. It’s a good balance when spies don’t perform well or are confused because they appear too early in the sequence.)
3. Except for the spy, players are cooperative, so players can confuse the spy. If the first player is too obvious, the spy will easily associate with the relevant words. Then, later players can perform different directions to confuse the spy.

David listed several games that are worth referring to:

Spyfall

1. At the beginning of the game, everyone will receive a card showing the same position, while the spy will receive a card marked “spy”.
2. Players began to ask each other questions about the location to determine who did not know the location.
3. The spy should listen carefully to guess the specific location and make up a reasonable answer.
4. At any time during a round, one player may accuse another of being a spy. If all other players agree with the accusation, the round ends and the accused player has to reveal his identity. If the spy is uncovered, all other players score points. However, the spy can himself end a round by announcing that he understands what the secret location is; if his guess is correct, only the spy scores points.
5. After a few rounds of guessing, The player with the highest score wins.

Spyfall is the most similar board game to the game we are designing, especially the dual spies variant –spies can win early by successfully identifying each other.

Insider

1. In this game, there is a “master“, an “insider“, and other “commons“. The master secretly chooses a word, and then all players close their eyes. Insider can check this word secretly, and then he mixes into commons.
2. The commons then have approximately five minutes in which to ask the master “yes” or “no”-type questions so that they can deduce the secret word. The insider attempts to secretly lead the commons towards the correct word. If the commons fail to guess the correct word, everyone loses.
3. If commons guesses the correct word within the time limit, they need to discuss who the insider is within the new time limit. If the guess is right, commons wins the game, otherwise, insider wins the game.

Insider is a good embodiment of the concept of reasonable control over the degree of information revealed in the game we are designing –humans need to make teammates aware of the secret word as much as possible, but not let the spy understand it.

Group Discussion

1. In the first version of the rules, “the first person to start the show can’t be a spy, or the host should take the lead to start the first performance” but we hope that the spy as one of the players can also become the first The opportunity for performers. So we set the rule as “the host should take the lead to start the first performance“.
2. At the same time, we found that in the video conference, the position of each person is different on the screen of different people, so we changed the order of performance to “Every time a player finishes performing, he/she appoints the next player to perform.“
3. We have relaxed the behavior of players in some extended rules. They can choose one of actions, voices, and speaking a word to perform, but they cannot repeat the form of the previous person’s performance.
4. Scheduled the first round of game testing time.

The First Time of Playtesting

Because of the small number of players, we only tested the single spy version.
The following are the revised rules:

A. Who’s the spy?

Play 1.0.1：

1. Suppose there are six people in the meeting. Need a host. There are five players left. One of the players is a spy.
2. The host will give the remaining four players a noun (it can be a movie, an item, etc.), but the spy doesn’t know what the word is. (*it can also be a verb)
3. Let the host take the lead to start the first performance –make an action. Then the host chooses a player (including spy, if he wants) to start his/her show.
4. The player can only make one action. The action can be dynamic. (*The player can choose to make some sounds, or mention a word. If add sounds and words, the performance form cannot be repeated with the previous player.)
5. Every time a player finishes performing, he/she appoints the next player to perform.
6. After the five players have put their actions in place, countdown 321, and each player gives a name through the chatbox to identify who is the spy.
7. If the spy is identified by most people, the spy needs to answer the word given in this round. If the answer is correct, the spy wins; otherwise, the spy fails.

The red * rule means that we will enable or disable them in different testing phases.

In more than a dozen rounds of tests, we tried different categories of words such as animals, verbs, an acquaintance everyone knows (David King :D), food, celebrities, games, etc.

Yanis made a detailed record of the game process in his blog. [Here is the link] So I will make a summary here and discuss the positive feedback and problems encountered.

———————————————-NEED TO BE UPDATED———————————————-

Here is a Googledoc Link for the Rest of Development Log (wk3):

[The Rest of Development Log (wk3)]

What is Video Conference Game?

Video Conference Game, which is a very strange category for me. I rarely have a video conference experience. So the first thing to do is to understand what video conferencing games are, with a few questions: Is it a light game? Is it designed to enliven the meeting atmosphere or break the ice? What are the restrictions on game props?

I saw the whole content of Parlour Games, Drama/Theatre Games, One Page RPGs, TV, Radio and Youtube Shows in the Inspiration and Research section. And the game that I am most interested in is sorted out, also I made a brief summary of their rules：

One Word At A Time
Each person says a word, one by one, and then string it into a story.
Give an example: I-find-a-dragon-and-defeat-it.

Greetings Your Majesty
Choose a person to be Your Majesty. Everyone turns off the camera, and one player uses a disguised voice to say “Greetings, your majesty”, and then ask Your Majesty to guess who the voice is.

Guess The Leader
Choose a person to be a detective and let him turn around. Choose another person to be the leader, then call the detective to turn around again to look at the screen. And then the leader will change their actions constantly, and everyone except the detective will quickly follow suit. Detective needs to guess who is the leader based on observation.

I’d like to summarize what I think is the Video Conference Game here: Video Conference Games are leisure games that require team cooperation. They tend to perform without props, and play games through body movements, voice, observation and interaction between players.

How do I determine the design direction of the game？

So I’ve made some restrictions on the games we’re going to design based on the common features of video conferencing Games:
1. I hope our video conference game will be paperless and propless.
2. The game can be completed only by human performance.
(This can effectively reduce environmental constraints.)
3. Meanwhile, we need to control the time of the game, because the purpose of video conference games is to activate the atmosphere.
(We can’t forget the business/meeting.)

Based on these limitations, I exclude many types of games:
The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow (too long for a single game, too complicated rules)
One Page RPG (need paper, pen, and other tools)
Script Kill (this is a very popular game type in China. Each player plays a role. Through the identity information given in the text, after many rounds of discussion, the final inference is who is the murderer. It takes too long for a single game, and a large part of the script needs to be prepared in advance)
Other games that use various items, counters, etc

I considered the Number Bomb Game (host set a number between 0 to 1000, and everyone takes turns to guess the number, then the host tells the player whether the number is larger or smaller, and the person who guessed the right number detonates the bomb), but I think the rules are too simple to innovate.

I also considered the Clapping Fighting Game (thank Ya Gao for the link). But because of the large number of the players and they are not face-to-face, it is difficult to achieve.

I look for inspiration from movies and TV works. I think Gold Rush Game in the TV series Lair Game is very suitable for team interaction, but players can’t get good results without props to performance.

I also studied other games, but they were mostly ruled out.

After a second thought, I had an idea: It can choose a spy through the private chat of the meeting. From the perspective of the word “spy”, I designed the basic rules of who’s the spy? And several variants.

I want to reflect the characteristics of Video Conference Games, which other types of games are difficult to achieve –play through body performance and voice.

Group Discussion

We discussed in WeChat, including the idea of ​​the general design direction, the interpretation of assignment requirements, the restrictions of game rules, and the ideas that can be referred to. Samuel thinks that we can refer to some of the challenges of TicTok, and put forward some ways to play word games: give each player different information, try to get each other’s information; and some ideas about drinking games. Based on the information I collected before, I put forward a preliminary rule of play. Finally, we decided to think about as many possible directions as possible, and then choose the most feasible way to continue.

We also played Among Us, and I entered the game with a name similar to Yanci’s net name, which successfully helped me to confuse Samuel and others.
I think there is some imbalance in the play of Among Us: if a player happens to be hit by another player while committing an attack, and if he framed the witness as the murderer, as a result, after the witness is exiled and found to be a good person, we will naturally judge who is the murderer. It may take more practice to make the killer play better.
And there are a lot of troublemakers in the game. Some people choose to quit the game directly, thus destroying the game experience of others.

Prototype

The following are the preliminary ideas we adopted after discussion, and we will test the game next week.

A. Who’s the spy?

Play 1:

1. Suppose there are six people in the meeting. You need a moderator. There are five players left. One of the players is a spy.

2. The host will give the remaining four players a noun (it can be a movie, an item, etc.), but the spy doesn’t know what the word is.

3. The host designates a person to perform – put on one action. (the first person to start the show can’t be a spy, or the host should take the lead to start the first performance)

4. Then players perform in sequence (including the spy), and can only make one action.

5. After the five players have put their actions in place, count down to 321, and start to identify who is the spy.

6. If the spy is recognized by most people, the spy fails; otherwise, the spy wins. (are spy tickets valid? *)

The difficulty of the game: players should ensure that their actions are understood by their peers, and not be easily discovered by spies. The key lies in a degree, not too obscure, not too obvious.

Play 1.1 (variant 1)

1. Suppose there are six people in the meeting. You need a moderator. There are five players left.

2. The game will last for five games. The host will give each player four nouns (which can be movies, articles, etc.) and an “empty” one time according to the order of the five games. This means that everyone in different bureaus could be a spy.

For example, when you receive: monkey, Star Wars, empty, apple, baseball cap, it means you are a spy in the third inning.

(in other words: the game will last for five games, and the host has five words, but he only gives each player four different words, and the remaining word will be replaced by “empty”. If the player gets “empty” information in a game, he is a spy.)

3. Randomly assign a person to perform – make an action.

4. Then players perform in sequence (including the spy), and can only make one action.

5. After the five players have put their actions in place, count down to 321, and start to identify who is the spy.

6. In the settlement of single Bureau, if the spy is identified, the person who has successfully identified wins; if no spy is identified, the spy wins.

The difficulty of the game: players should ensure that their actions are understood by their peers, and not be easily discovered by spies. The key lies in a degree, not too obscure, not too obvious.

Play 2 (variant 2)

1. Suppose there are six people in the meeting. You need a moderator. There are five players left. Two of the players are spies.

2. The host will give the remaining three players a noun (it can be a movie, an item, etc.), but the spies don’t know what the word is.

3. The host randomly designates a person to perform – put on one action.

4. Then players perform in sequence (including spies), and can only make one action.

5. During the performance of players, if spy A finds another spy B, he can immediately identify him. If the identification is correct, spy A wins; if the identification is wrong, spy B wins. After all five players have put their actions in place, if the spies can’t find each other, the next game will begin.

The difficulty of the game: everyone should try his best to perform, while the spies should grasp the clues to judge the existence of each other.

Play 2.1 (Variant 3)

1. Suppose there are six people in the meeting. You need a moderator. There are five players left. Two of the players are spies.

2. The host will give the remaining three players a noun (it can be a movie, an item, etc.), but the spies don’t know what the word is.

3. The host randomly designates a person to perform – put on one action.

4. Then players perform in sequence (including spies), and can only make one action.

5. During the performance of players, if spy A finds another spy B, he can immediately identify him. If the identification is correct, spy a wins; if the identification is wrong, spy B wins. After all five players have put their actions in place, if the spies can’t find each other, all of them will vote. The spy’s ticket is also valid.

6. If a spy gets the highest number of votes, the TA task fails; if two spies are even and both get the highest votes, then both tasks fail.

The difficulty of the game: everyone should try his best to perform, while the spies should grasp the clues to judge the existence of each other.