Choosing the Three.
We had to decide which three games were the most suited to be presented and prototype. As normal, we discussed the pros and cons of each idea as a group.
The whole team has loved the Portage game from the start so this was an obvious choice to take forward.
The anti-game was a strong concept however we weren’t sure if the game play would be suitable for what the message we were trying to portray. Mink Ette, who was one of our guest lecturers, brought up a great idea of using subtlety. She explained that players don’t always finish the game so having a big finale of “look what’s happened to the forest” might not be suitable and the player would never understand our message. After hearing this, I thought that combining the anti-game message and the campsite management game would work well together. My reasons for this were that we could easily show the effects of deforestation by reducing the wildlife you see or simply thinning out the forest the player can harvest from. This turns the game from what looks like a happy campsite tycoon game, into a unique medium for tackling a large economic issue.
The third game we chose was the Food Webs game. We hadn’t described in a large amount of detail on how the game would function, however we all agreed that the idea of transferring energy between animals could be an fun and interesting mechanic to explore.
Creating Rules:
The three games had been decided so we worked out some core rules and “cool ideas” that we would implement into each game.
This helped us really figure out exactly what each game would be. It also allowed me to establish which mechanics I could prototype.
Year Three - Semester One 