- Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).
- Rock paper scissors
- actions: using a rock or paper or scissors
- goals: beat the other player
- rules: rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock
- objects: hands
- Playspace: not revealed yet, or every combo of rock paper and scissors
- Players: 2
- Rock paper scissors
- As a thought experiment, swap one element between two games: a single rule, one action, the goal, or the playspace. For example, what if you applied the playspace of chess to basketball? Imagine how the play experience would change based on this swap.
- If you swap the play space of tic tac toe with rock paper scissors, you might get a more aggressive tic tac toe, or a rock paper scissors with an added spatial element. In addition to beating the other player with their choice of rock paper or scissors, they would have to guess the correct grid coordinate for their action to take effect. The effect of winning may be emptying the grid, or being able to make a occupy the grid space.
- Pick a simple game you played as a child. Try to map out its space of possibility, taking into account the goals, actions, objects, rules, and playspace as the parameters inside of which you played the game. The map might be a visual flowchart or a drawing trying to show the space of possibility on a single screen or a moment in the game.
- These are the possible states of rock paper scissors:
- Nothing is revealed
- Player A chooses rock, Player B chooses rock, it’s a tie
- Player A chooses rock, Player B chooses paper, player A looses
- Player A chooses rock, Player B chooses scissors, player A wins
- Player A chooses paper, Player B chooses paper, it’s a tie
- Player A chooses paper, Player B chooses scissors, player A looses
- Player A chooses paper, Player B chooses rock, player A wins
- Player A chooses scissor, Player B chooses scissor, it’s a tie
- Player A chooses scissor, Player B chooses rock, player A looses
- Player A chooses scissor, Player B chooses paper, player A wins
- Pick a real-time game and a turn-based game. Observe people playing each. Make a log of all the game states for each game. After you have created the game state logs, review them to see how they show the game’s space of possibility and how the basic elements interact.
- After watching somebody play Pokemon Black and logging the game states, most of the game states involved which two Pokemon were battling, which Pokemon had fainted and were still alive, what moves each used and what amount HP they had left. It also included information about status of the Pokemon (poisoned, confused, etc.) the weather in the battle, and persistent effects from moves such as toxic spikes. The most varying element though was the combination Pokemon used on each team for battle. All of these things — weather, Pokemon combination, etc. — are part of the large and complex space of possibility in battle.
- I watched somebody play Minecraft. After making logs, I am not sure if I know how to define the game states. There are definetly elements of it like how much health the player has, and what tool they have equipped, what is in their inventory, which world they are in, and which mode of Minecraft they are playing (survival, creative, on a sever, etc.)
