1. Identify the basic elements in a game of your choice (actions, goals, rules, objects, playspace, players).
Volleyball is a competitive, team-based game where players’s actions combine bumping, setting, and spiking to get the ball to the other side of the court. Players also serve the ball at the start of each round and block attacks from the opposing side if they are in the front row. The goal is to be the first to score 25 points in a match by making the other team drop the ball or fail to return it as many times. If both teams are tied and the game is pushed to the final round, the aim is to reach 15 points first. The rules that dictate the player’s actions are as follows: each side may not touch the ball more than 3 times, the ball must stay in bounds when crossing the net to the opposing side, you cannot cross the court line when serving, and contact with the ball should be a brief touch (no holding, carrying, or throwing). There are a few more rules that keep the game in play, such as the libero (a back-focused player) not being able to spike in the front half of the court and players not being allowed to block serves. The playspace for volleyball is a court of some kind, which could be in a gym or an outdoor sand court. Finally, the players are six team members on each side, three in the front of the court and three in the back of the court.
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.
For this thought experiment, I will swap the action of solving a mystery from Clue with the action of moving through life stages in The Game of Life. In this version of the game, players could solve mysteries at each fork space on the road that begins a new life stage (ex. when having a child, solve the mystery of what the best daycare for them is). In Clue, players move around the board to find clues and solve a murder; instead, in this version of The Game of Life, players move around the board and gain clues based on life events. For example, a player who is a detective may find more clues before a guess than a doctor player would for why a house is being sold cheaply, but the doctor would be better at solving the mystery of what sickness their partner is dealing with. However, regardless of choices, each life event’s mystery would need to be solved before progressing. Then, the first player to reach the end would win.
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.
I loved Poptropica as a kid, and one minigame that I had to strategize to complete was a game where you had to transport a chicken, fox, and bag of grain from one side of a ravine to the other.
The website itself does not exist anymore (at least not with all of its previous islands,), but I played it on paper and mapped the possibilities and outcomes of each round.
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.
For the real-time game, I watched my dormmates play round 3-1 of Overcooked: a round where they would be making pizza. I missed the chaos of previous rounds they played but I learned when I got there that the timer on the first level of each stage does not start until the first item is served. Because of this, the strategy for the players was to make as much pizza as possible to prepare for the round ahead before serving anything. This should have made for a calmer round, but the cooking area would change as the players were making their pizzas and they continued to yell at each other while completing the pizzas. By the beginning of the round and the end of their prep period, they gathered 14 pizzas ready to serve for the upcoming round. When the round began and the timer started, they proceeded to run into each other and get stuck while serving the pizza they made, but did not begin to make more. When they had 2 pre-made pizzas remaining, they began to prep more pizzas to serve but three of the four players became trapped behind one of the moving level pieces, leaving one player to hand the others ingredients to chop and to finish the pizzas. Ultimately, though, they ended the round with 3 stars. Overcooked allows players to move, place, chop, cook, and serve food (potentially with other mechanics in rounds I did not see), which lets players interact with the food as if they are real chefs by preparing each ingredient, plating a dish, and washing plates afterward. This game’s space of possibility is limited to the kitchen, but adds elements like the map changing to spice up gameplay.
For the turn-based games, I watched episode 1 of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity by Critical Role on YouTube, since I’ve watched the DM Brennan Lee Mulligan in Dimension 20 content. Since it was the first episode, it was a lot of character set-up and states did not change much, but there was a realm of possibility for worldbuilding. Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game, and the mechanics in the version I watched can be boiled down to creating a character with strengths and weaknesses and rolling dice to succeed or fail tasks. In Exandria, the character we open with is having a nightmare (which is not initially posed as one) where they can hear voices in a pond they are at with their son; however, this information was only gained from a successful perception roll. Once they repeat what they hear, their son is pulled into the pond and a demon emerges. As the campaign progresses I am sure there will be more roles associated with battles and gathering information.
