I decided to play a competitive folk game called Concentration, a game for all ages that can be played between friends or strangers in any setting. Despite its creator being unknown, the game is quite popular, especially among schoolchildren. Its mechanics are simple. The game generally starts with a large group of people holding hands in a circle, singing the game’s iconic song. Once the person to your right claps your hand, you then clap the hand of the person to your left, and this rippling effect continues until the song comes to an end. The last person whose hand was hit has to then choose a category, and then continuing around the circle, players have to name an item from that category as quickly as possible. If a player hesitates or repeats a word, they are eliminated, the circle shrinks, and the process continues until there is a winner. In this post, I will explain how similar mechanics between my game and Concentration create both fast-paced gameplay and ambiguity, and how differences in the games’ mechanics cause different degrees of social interaction and participation.
Like my team’s game, Concentration is a competitive category game, and the mechanics of both games create fast-paced, somewhat stressful, and exciting gameplay. In my team’s game, this effect is achieved by our imposed time limit of 30 seconds, the frame in which players have to name items from a category as quickly as possible. When play-testing our game, the time crunch pressured players to answer swiftly. In Concentration, this same effect was achieved by punishing hesitation. Another similarity between the games was this element of ambiguity when categories were not specific enough. During our play testing, for example, one category that appeared was “movies,” and players on the active team began naming movies as well as their many sequels. The opposing team, however, believed that movie sequels were invalid, causing some frustration and confusion. Similarly, when playing Concentration, a category that appeared was “kitchen appliances,” and I reasoned that by the definition of appliance, “fork” was a valid answer. However, another player disagreed, again causing frustration and confusion. It appears that category games are prone to ambiguity, and therefore, differing interpretations of game expectations. To combat this for my team’s game, we are considering modifying our categories to make them as unambiguous as possible.
Unlike Concentration, my team’s game achieved greater social interaction and friendship-building by making the competition team-based rather than free-for-all. Specifically, our game achieved friendship-building by employing one of Daniel Cook’s elements of game design: proximity. Since teams generally consist of 3-5 people, our game offers good density for encouraging social interaction within teams without players becoming overwhelmed. On the other hand, Concentration is often played by a large group of people, which can overwhelm players, thereby hindering social interaction. An element that Concentration achieves differently than our game is participation. In Concentration, players are forced to try to name categories. In this regard, it promotes participation better than our game. However, if a player is eliminated early, they are unable to participate for the remainder of the game. In our game, players do not necessarily have to name categories and can instead depend on their teammates. In one round of play-testing, for example, the category was “spices,” and only one player on the active team was actually naming spices. However, unlike Concentration, our rotating representative mechanic forces participation from all players. All in all, while our game succeeds in promoting friendship-building better than Concentration according to Daniel Cook’s design principles, both games fall short in some aspects of participation. To combat this for my team’s game, we may try to correct this by alternating which players are allowed to name categories.
