For my competitive analysis, I chose to do Minecraft Build Battles on Hypixel. This game had a similar theme of creatively building something to follow a theme. There are obviously some major differences between our paper drawing game and building in Minecraft in any capacity. However, I found that there were also a lot of feelings and emotions during play that were identical to those I felt while playtesting our game.
First, the differences. Minecraft build battle is a judgment-based artistic game in which each player who participates in the game judges the builds that other players make. Each player has the choice to judge a build based on a rating system of 1 (SUPER POOP) to 7 (LEGENDARY) and results are tallied at the end to see who was the winner of the build battle. While Minecraft is a game that is mainly built for children, and thus this game is meant to be a fun, creative, and expressive activity, this style of rating combined with my competitive drive made me immediately vote SUPER POOP for almost all other contestants in the game (after all, if I’m not there to win, what am I doing there).
This is in stark contrast with the judgment style of our game, which is about clarity and artistic communication rather than expression. This is the product of Build Battle being a “build from a theme” game, whereas our game is a “build to a theme” game. Despite this being very different from the core mechanic of our game, there were some unexpected shared experiences between the two games.
The first one is the feeling of surprise at the creativity that others displayed. More specifically, when given something to draw, the way the a person draws it. For example, in one of the rounds I played, the theme was “Money”. Immediately, my head when to the image of a dollar bill and I began to recreate what I saw in my head. The final result being this:
I was quite proud of this when the build round was over, but those feelings of pride were quickly vanquished when I saw what I could only describe as a masterpiece.
Incredible stuff, I know.
While this one surprised me creatively, some other artists hit a different kind of nerve and made me pause to think about the message they were conveying. This piece, for example, would fit right at home in the Museum of Modern Art:
From the mechanics side, one thing that was incredibly similar between both games was the pressure that a counting down clock put on my artistic ability. The more the clock ticked down, the more stress, pressure, and unease crept into my work. While stressful in the moment, I think it really added to the fun of the game because I knew that I couldn’t strive for perfection in just 5 minutes. I just had to make something easy and quick that anyone could recognize. I felt like this took a lot of pressure of off making my work perfect and let me just focus on making something that I would make me happy if it looked even remotely close to the theme.
