- Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, play space, players)
- Game: PacMan
- Actions: Move Pac-Man through the maze to eat pellets and avoid ghosts
- Goals: Eat all pellets to clear the level while avoiding or eating ghosts for points
- Rules: Avoid ghosts unless powered up by a power pellet, then eat them for bonus points
- Objects: Pac-Man, pellets, power pellets, fruit (bonus points), and ghosts
- Playspace: A maze where Pac-Man navigates and interacts with objects and ghosts.
- Players: One player controlling Pac-Man against AI-controlled ghosts
- 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.
- Swap Rule: Chess with Poker Hands
In Chess, each piece moves based on the hand dealt from a deck of cards, combining chess tactics with the unpredictability of poker, creating randomness
- 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.
- Game: Tic-Tac-Toe: Two players take turns placing Xs and Os on a 3×3 grid, aiming to align three in a row. Players alternate, placing marks in empty spaces. The game ends when a player wins or there’s a tie if the grid is full.
- Space Possibility:
- There would be 3^9 possible outcomes (19863) every possible combination of X, O, and empty spaces across the 9 positions
- However the valid space possibility would be lower than that when considering valid moves and game ending conditions (this is about 700)
- Example of Single Moment in the game:
- 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 interac
- Real time game: Table Tennis; Turn based game: Tic Tac Toe
- Game State Logs: Table Tennis
- Game Start: Score: 0-0, serve in progress, no movement.\
- After Serve: Score: 0-0, ball in play, quick exchanges.
- Mid-Game: Score: 5-3 ex: intense rally, players moving side-to-side.
- Match Point: core: 10-9 ex: critical rally
- End-Game: Score: 11-9, point won, match over.
- Game State Logs: Tic Tac Toe
- Game Start: Grid: Empty, X to move.
- After First Move: Grid: X in center, O’s turn.
- Mid-Game: Grid: X in center, O in top-left, X in bottom-right.
- Late-Game: Grid: X has two in a row, O blocks.
- End-Game: Grid: X wins with three in a row.
- In Table Tennis, the possibilities evolve continuously, with fast-paced interactions between the ball, players, and table. Each moment brings fresh outcomes as the game state changes swiftly. On the other hand, Tic-Tac-Toe progresses in a more orderly, turn-by-turn manner, with available moves reducing predictably as the game unfolds. It steadily moves toward a clear result
