1. Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).
Game: Catan.
Actions: There are a few main actions in Catan. One action is rolling the dice to distribute cards amongst the players based on the roll, and another is using those cards (resources) to purchase roads, settlements, and cities to expand your colony. A third action is using resource cards to buy development cards, which can allow the player to do various other actions based on the card pulled (ie, collecting more resources, stealing resources, etc.).
Goals: The goal of Catan is to get 10 points. Points are accumulated by building settlements and cities, buying development cards, or achieving feats such as Longest Road or Largest Army.
Rules: Catan has a lot of specific rules, but the basic ruleset is a player rolls their dice to begin their turn, can spend as many resources as they want during their turn, and can use those resources to expand their colony. When expanding their colonies, players must connect all settlements and cities by roads, but settlements have to be two roads apart. Players can only collect cards when the number on a tile that one of their settlements is touching is rolled. Players can’t steal each others cards, but they can make trades on their own turn if they like. If a player rolls a 7, they activate the robber which can block any tile, preventing other players from getting resources.
Objects: The main objects of Catan are the resource cards, development cards, road pieces, settlement pieces, and city pieces.
Playspace: The playspace of Catan is a customizable board. The players must put the board together at the beginning of each game, and can place tiles that represent resources within the 6 border pieces. Once all tiles are placed and the board is filled, players can place their settlements to begin the game.
Players: Players participate in groups of 3-4 when playing Catan.
2. 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.
The main goal of Mortal Kombat is defeating the other player by reducing their health bar to nothing and completing a finishing move. If you applied this goal to a game like tic-tac-toe, the play experience would become very different. Even though tic-tac-toe has a similar goal of defeating the other player, it is through getting three in a row rather than damaging the other player. Swapping the goals in this case would change the tone and player attitude towards each other in their respective games – bringing more antagonism to tic-tac-toe, and less PVP focus to Mortal Kombat.
3. 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.
Simran_Tandon_PossibilitySpace
4. 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.
I chose Mario Kart as the real-time game and Bluff as the turn based game. In Mario Kart, the space of possibility was constantly shifting and changing with the item boxes constantly changing the playspace by adding and removing hazards, increasing speed, etc. I observed two players playing the game, and saw how Player A, who spent most of the game in 10th and 11th place, recieved an item box that gave them a bullet and propelled them to 4th place, allowing them to rank up and begin targeting the winning players. Every time players come across an item box, the possibility space shifts as different players are granted different tools to use to affect other players and achieve their goals. In contrast, Bluff was a less shifting game. Each turn, players faced the choice to call bluff on their fellow players, or continue playing – it was slower and more contemplative, as players had time to make decisions. However, one thing I noticed was how the possibility space shifted as the game went on. The beginning of the game, players have less knowledge of where cards are, and the actions they can take are more based on luck or other player’s behavior. However, as the game continued, players could make more educated guesses on where cards where, which shifted the space of possibility in the game, since the choice to be dishonest became less and less viable when players could catch you instantly, forcing the space of possibility to become slightly narrower as the option to lie was no longer a reliable action. It was interesting how one of the main two actions a player could take became almost obsolete when players understood the distribution of the objects they were playing with well enough.
