During this week’s critical play, I decided to play an online Roblox game due to the wide variety of choices and the ease of finding a social PvP multiplayer game. The game I chose was “Up For Debate”, created and published by rayraydog on the Roblox platform. This game is targeted to the Roblox demographic, typically younger kids and teenagers, but can be played by anyone. The game supports up to 25 players at a time, but requires at least 3+ players to effectively work. The premise of the game is simple and similar to other debate games like Debatable, two players are randomly selected to debate with one another over a randomly chosen topic. After the round is up, the spectators get to vote on which was the more convincing argument. The winner receives a point added to their leaderboard score. While the game doesn’t include any social deduction like my team’s CS247G P1 game, “Yap Battle”, it has similar mechanics, such as a 1v1 debate between two players, with spectators being the voters, and randomized prompts that are casual.
To further compare the mechanics of “Up For Debate” and “Yap Battle”, I want to go over some of the key mechanics and discuss them. Firstly, in “Up For Debate,” there is a chance based system for who gets to debate next amongst the players. The rate at which players are picked to debate is a little unclear and nontransparent due to the pay-t0-play nature of boosting your chances. For example, if you look at the two pictures below, I had a 5.5% chance, which later turned into a 7.2% chance to go next, but where the denominator of the fraction comes from isn’t very clear. However, in “Yap Battle,” you are always guaranteed a round as players get to go in order. The person they get to debate against is randomly chosen using a die or a spinner. In terms of the debate, both of the games use silly prompts that aren’t too political or controversial. Additionally, many of the prompts are easy for anyone to understand in both games, although in one round of “Up For Debate,” there was this prompt, “Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of national security.” For younger players, these prompts may be too difficult to understand. In fact, one of the debaters said they didn’t really know what the prompt meant, so they couldn’t really say anything. Another similar mechanic between the two games is the length of the debates. In “Up For Debate,” each debater gets to present their arguments for 60 seconds. Similarly, we limit each debater to 1-2 minutes (we are still deciding). Lastly, another similar mechanic is the the voting system, where spectators who listened the debate get to vote for the winner. From there, the winner is rewarded in both games. While many of these features are similar, there are many differences. For example, in “Yap Battle,” there is an aspect of social deception, because you need to sneak in words, phrases, and/or actions based on cards that you drew into your debate speech without getting caught. Additionally, players are penalized in some way for not winning, such as losing out on points, which doesn’t happen in the Roblox counterpart.
[screenshots of “Up For Debate” gameplay]
These mechanics work together to build the dynamic of competitive and engaging gameplay experiences in both “Up For Debate” and “Yap Battle”. However, each game introduces its own unique twist to keep players hooked. Additionally, both games add a dynamic of interactiveness and community engagement through the democratic system of voting on winners. The competitive and social dynamic of both games both build onto a similar aesthetic of challenge, expression, and fellowship the most, though I argue that “Yap Battle” incentivizes more of the challenge aesthetic compared to its counterpart through an extra layer of social deception. In my opinion, “Up For Debate” can get repetitive and boring for spectators who are unlucky, because spectators only get to vote, meaning their ability for experiencing expression and challenge is limited. If I were to add a change into rayraydog’s Roblox game, I would like to engage the audience more through a more unique mechanic. While I am unsure of what kind of mechanic to recommend since there are so many different ways the creator could go about it, adding a more nuanced and interactive addition to the game would greatly increase audience retention and balance out the unfair way to picking the next debaters.
All in all, I appreciated playing a similar debate game in an online and massive platform like Roblox. To synthesize my points, “Yap Battle” and “Up For Debate” are both social multiplayer debate games that build a competitive and engaging dynamic that bolsters challenge, expression, and fellowship. However, “Up For Debate” lacks a unique mechanic that increases the game’s aesthetics, whereas “Yap Battle” integrates a social deception aspect to it, leveraging the challenge and expression aesthetics more effectively.
