Games, Design, and Play: Elements

1. Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).

Game: Minesweeper

• Actions: In Minesweeper, players may select an unexposed cell to reveal its contents, being either a number, blank, or a mine. Players may also flag a cell as a potential mine.
• Goals: Players play with the goal of revealing all of the non-mine cells on the board without hitting any, leaving only mines remaining as “unrevealed” or flagged cells.
• Rules: The game starts with a certain predefined quantity of mines scattered on the board. At any point, players may take an action of revealing or flagging a cell. Revealed cells will display the number of mines contained in all cells adjacent to itself; if blank, there is no number, and adjacent cells are automatically revealed. A player loses the game if they reveal a mine. The player continues taking one of these actions until the number of remaining cells unrevealed is exactly equal to the number of mines (which results in victory for the player).
• Objects: Objects include each cell, the numbers a cell can be, flags one can place on a cell, and mines.
• Playspace: The playspace of Minesweeper is the 2-D grid on which all the game’s cells exist. Once the game starts, the playspace does not change size, but visually adjusts to the player’s inputted actions.
• Players: Minesweeper is a singleplayer game, with one player attempting the earlier stated goal.

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.

Consider swapping the playspace of Call of Duty and Bloons Tower Defense; that is, Call of Duty would exist in a top-down, cartoony world with a lined path where one could not stand, and Bloons Tower Defense would instead be played on 3-D realistic-looking maps explored via first-person. With no other changes, the Call of Duty experience would be altered due to a different method of seeing enemies and aiming to defeat them, and the cartoony environment would also change the tone of the game away from the realistic first-person shooter to a sillier strategy combat game. Bloons Tower Defense, on the other hand, would grow more intense, requiring physical movement of the player to place down towers, and entering a more serious tone with the implication of defending a war-torn environment from an incoming Bloons attack.

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.

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.

Real-Time Game: Among Us

1. Spawn in as a player with an assigned role on the dropship.
2. Walk around the map to complete your goal.
   1. As a crewmate, complete tasks (by interacting with game objects) without dying OR vote out all imposters.
   2. As an imposter, fulfil an action of killing crewmates without being caught, or triggering Sabotages to delay/kill crewmates.
3. A body is found, or an emergency button is pressed, sending players to the meeting.
   1. Players discuss what they did to try and sus out imposters during the meeting.
   2. Players vote on who to eject.
   3. Players either die or return to the world.
4. Repeat step 2 and 3: Walk around the map and talk during meetings, until one of three ending conditions are met
   1. There are an equal or larger number of imposters than crewmates (imposters win)
   2. A killing sabotage successfully completes its time limit without being prevented (imposters win)
   3. Players voted out all imposters (crewmates win)
   4. Players completed all tasks (crewmates win)

While Among Us is real-time, its game states can be simplified to 4 key game states: Get a role, act in accordance to your role while walking around the map, discuss during meetings, and game over. In the first 3 states, there is a lot of interactions between the game’s basic elements, which create a large space of possibility for players. The playspace of a large, confined 2-D map allows players to walk around in groups or alone, kill/sabotage, or complete tasks, allowing each player to act in accordance with reaching their goal. Map objects such as tasks and doors force players to interact, oftentimes losing vision. This playspace swaps to a basic meeting panel of where the only existing objects are each players’ names, limiting players’ actions to discussion with other players, or voting on somebody to eject. The game’s rules of ejecting the individual with the most votes, and limitations on how often imposters can kill or sabotage. All of these basic elements help create an intricately suspenseful social deduction, despite the minimal number of key game states.

Turn-Based Game: Exploding Kittens

1. Set up according to rulebook (properly distributing and counting defuse cards and exploding kitten quantity)
2. Player 1 starts, and can play card(s) (if able/willing), or proceed to skip playing a card.
   1. If a card is played, follow the text on the card (which involves interacting with the deck or other players)
3. Player 1 ends turn by drawing the top card of their deck.
   1. If the card is an Exploding Kitten, they reveal it and
      1. Either discard a defuse card to stay alive, and replaces the Exploding Kitten anywhere they want in the deck OR
      2. They lose the game, and discard the Exploding Kitten
   2. If not, add it to your hand
4. Repeat from step 2 for the next player. The game ends when 1 player remains (that player wins!).

As a turn-based game with a rule limiting players to playing only 1 card a turn, and/or drawing 1 card a turn, Exploding Kittens has a small set of simplified key game states: set-up, play card(s), draw a card and possibly explode, and rotate player turns. There are substates, such as playing a “Nope!” card in response to another player’s card, or placing the Exploding Kitten back into the deck after playing a defuse. Cards, including defuses and the Exploding Kittens, act as the sole object in the game, but the limited playspace of a table (containing the deck, discard pile, and each player’s hand) gives players the ability to calculate odds and psychologically analyze their opponents, creating a generally large space of possibility, despite appearing to be a simple game with minimal states and objects. The set of elements such as restrictive rules and quantity of actions one can reasonably take on a turn creates 2 goals for players: “Don’t explode,” and “Sabotage others to explode.” Overall, the game’s basic elements interact to successfully make the game a chaotic mess of fun and misfortune.