Look Ma! I made me a boardy game!

One of the class-sets that we take in term one brings us way back to the very beginning of games: the analog game. In a two-part class, we learn the fundamentals with playing board games as discussed in an earlier post. But in its counter-part, we get very analytical and discuss the theory behind all the games we grew up with and loved, why they continue to stand the tests of time and why we love them so much.

Don't get me wrong, Game Theory (Analog) is no walk in the park. It is very much a uniquely heavy class if board games aren't your regular gig. Admittedly, I don't do board games all that often. In fact most board games I've ever played have simply been at home with family or friends, and they have usually been the fan favourites: chess, checkers, backgammon, monopoly, life, risk, etc. Of course you can only play your Mom and Brother so long before getting screwed over in Monopoly by a younger sibling gets old (I'll get him...one day).

However, this class is a crash course in analog game theory, and if you didn't think critically about analog games before, you'll definitely be analyzing the hell out of them after this course. It's very similar to studying how movies are made, and then when you watch them you deconstruct the thing piece by piece to see how it all fits together. We learned the difference between purely competitive games (Agon) and chance-based games (Alea) and all the game types within those two main categories, such as ludus, paidia, mimicry, etc. If you don't know what those terms mean now, you'll definitely learn them!

But what's the end game you might ask? Well, you get to make your own damn board game, man! Right from scratch, you build the foundation of a game from a mere concept. It's a very open ended assignment that lead to a variety of games from all my fellow classmates. My game started off with an incredibly simple notion: a six sided die can be compared to an old west six-shooter. I wanted to build a game on the whole wild west duel concept, but have players use dice for their weapons. Of course it was a very loose and fragile idea that had absolutely no direction or concept basis, so I had a lot of work ahead of me.

I built up a quick prototype that actually took me far longer to put together than what it was worth. If there's one thing when it comes to early development and prototyping, definitely aim for quick and efficient even if it means it isn't pretty. You can deal with beautifying it later when everything works, and in my case, it was much, much later. It ended up looking like this (there were printed out player pieces too, but those aren't shown):

The premise was simple enough, player's each had three playing pieces that moved around the "town" and it became a tug-of-war to gain control of the town. After a few play tests, I found a lot of flaws in how the game was actually being played and then opted to try to refine the map and rules a little further which resulted in this:

After I built up this prototype, I scrapped trying to go for the artsy look with the buildings and just get the raw build on paper. A lot of changes took place between the first game prototype and the second, mainly the winning mechanic and how player's interacted with each other. I dropped the tug-of-war win strategy and decided to make it a little more linear because I hit a saddle point early on in development (another thing you'll learn in this nifty course!). I felt I was getting somewhere with this idea, and after a few more playtests I ironed out more kinks and ended up with what was essentially my final working prototype, this guy here:

This became my last real prototype that I play-tested. It's funny when you get to this point, you really get a sense of what you want to keep, and you tend to throw away a lot that doesn't work. I took a lot of feedback from my playtesters in what they enjoyed about my idea, and what things just weren't working. Every time I drew up a new game board, it felt like I was almost making a brand new game rather than refining my own with the changes I was implementing. But in the end it all becomes so worth it, because if you do your due diligence you'll end up with your final game! And from start to finish I have to say I'm pretty proud of the final product I put together.

In the end, it took a multitude of hours (don't even know the end tally), a multitude of dollars (roughly $100 or so) and a whole lot of patience but I ended up with a really nifty board game that I can say I made myself from scratch. I'm certain there are many people before me, and after me, who probably didn't or won't enjoy the process of making an analog game for this class. It's certainly not for everyone. I can say I didn't anticipate coming into Game Design, during the pinnacle of high-end graphic gaming, and designing a board game. However, I find the application of what I did an extremely invaluable tool not only for learning how to build a final product from a simple idea, but also how important the process of iteration is. If I didn't playtest my ideas and prototypes, I probably would've built an entire game off the first prototype I showed at the top, and frankly, it would've been a complete pile of crap. 

And ultimately, I created something I can take home and hopefully kick my little brother's ass at.