Storytelling in Games

For this week`s assignment we were required to create a character from the ground up who either lived in the past or present. Now many game characters like Ezio Auditore from Assassin`s Creed, Link from Legend of Zelda,  Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid and Mario from well Mario are memorable video game characters who are bigger than the games they are in. Our task was to create a memorable character from the ground up. I began thinking up my character after our lecture on storytelling in games, which helped me to begin think and planning out my character. 

Link - Legend of Zelda                          Mario - Mario

  Ezio Auditore - Assassin`s Creed 2

 

Now I talked with a lot of people in my class about what some of their ideas where, some people decided to create a historical figure that lived in the past and while those are interesting enough I wanted to make my character someone people could easily relate to. Now I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I spent about half of last Thursday at work sitting through those educational seminars about Bullying (which was basically a really, really sad video about families who have lost members who committed suicide because of bullying and kids who are currently being bullied) and a little bit of family`s own experience with the issue which greatly influenced my decisions when creating my Character. 

Here is a description of my character, I will upload a picture of him later after I get my drawing program working (now I could draw him on paper but I don`t feel like it):

Character Name: Alex Colt

 Age: 12

Place of Origin: London, England

Nationality: British

Date of Birth: January 20th, 2000

Current Year: 2012

Physical Description:

Alex is small for his age standing at 3.5 ft and weighs 75 pounds, making him one of the shortest kids in his class. He inherited his mother’s bright blue eyes and his father’s shaggy brown hair which he keeps at medium length. His body is very lanky and his skin is extremely pale. He is always seen in his red hoodie which he uses to make his body seem more filled out but unfortunately gives the opposite effect considering he appears to be drowning in his sweater. He pairs this sweater with a pair of ripped blue jeans and a pair of worn out black converse. Due to his up bring in England he has a strong thick accent.

Past:

He was born on January 20^th in the year 2000 at South London Hospital in London, England a month premature and with a weak heart. While it was predicted that he may not last the year he was able to grow stronger and survive past his first year. He was very close with his mother and was devastated when she died just after his second birthday. In order to try and build a connection between his son and wife, one which they were unable to properly develop, Alex’s father signed his son up for dance since his mother was a dancer and he wanted his son to have at least one thing in common with his mother. Alex continued with dance as he got older because like his father shared the desire to have something in common with his mother. At the end of Alex’s 6^th year of Elementary school his father got a job transfer to Lima, Ohio. After the move he starts dance up again at a studio near his new home and begins grade 7 at a school called Pine Valley Heights where many of the faculty including the Principal have anti-British sentiments. At the beginning of the year Alex is able to make a few friends however he is quickly abandoned when he started being harassed by his teachers and the principal, which led to numerous students to start harassing him. One day he needed to head to his dance class earlier for extra practice and other students discovered Alex dances which worsened the bullying. Alex was viciously bullied physically, mentally and emotionally for 3 months before one incident puts him in the hospital. After the hospital incident Alex and his father begin a personal mission to help stop bullying once and for all to prevent others from suffering the way he did.

Disgaea Character Description Example: 

 

 Interview Time:

After creating our character we were required to conduct an interview with our character and answer the questions as if the character himself was answering. We were given some general questions to ask some of with I utilized, I later added some of my own that fit and were relevant to my specific character. Below you can find my questions and the answers:

Interview with a Character:

Name: Alex Colt

Gender: Male

Race: Caucasian

Religion: Protestant

Age: 12

Where were you born?

I was born in London, England but now currently live in Lima, Ohio with my Dad.

Where were your parents born, where are they and are they still alive?

My Dad was born and raised in New Jersey, New York in The United States but moved to London, England for work where he met my Mom; He now currently lives in Ohio with me. My Mom was born and raised in London, England; she died 10 years ago when I was two because she got really sick with a rare disease and the doctors couldn’t help her.

When you were growing up, did you struggle, and if so, in what way?

When living in England the only real struggle was growing up without a mom. My dad was always busy with work and dealing with losing my mom that he wasn’t always around when I really needed him. He did his best but sometimes it just wasn’t enough. There are things that a mom can do that a dad cannot.

After moving to Ohio growing up without a mom was the least of my struggles, I then had to deal with bullying from the students, the teachers and the principal at my new school. They harassed me emotionally, mentally and physically every day without remorse.

What year is it now?

2012

How would someone stereotype you at a glance?

Most of my classmates and teachers stereotype me a weakling, a sissy who is too weak to do anything because of my size.  That isn’t true at all since I have built up a lot of strength from dance.

Why do you dance? Do you like it?

Originally my dad put me in dance classes so I could build some sort of connection to my mom, who was a dancer for English National Ballet, a ballet company. Slowly I began to enjoy dance and understood why my mom loved it so much. It allows me to express myself in a way words cannot. Dance also helped my work out my anger and frustration at what was happening at school.

How were you bullied? If it is too hard to talk about, that`s fine.

The bullying was a horrible experience that I don’t think I will ever be able to forget. It showed me just how ugly humans can be at such a young age, I’m sure that I will never be the same. My classmates and teachers did everything from excluding me, to harassing me, verbally and physically, to physically abusing me, at one point bad enough to put me in the hospital. I don’t want to get into exactly what happened because it’s too hard for me to relive that experience.

How badly do you think the bullying affected you?

Pretty badly I would say, I think more than my mother dying did. It’s hard going to a place where it’s clear people hate you and want to hurt you. I don’t think I will ever fully be able to trust someone other than my dad fully ever again because of this experience. I’ve seen just how cruel people can be and I’m afraid to see any more of their cruelty.

Do you have a romantic partner or a crush? If so, whom?

I did have a crush on someone during my first week of school at Pine Valley Heights her name was Emily Johnson, however she has never once looked at me since the teachers and the other kids started bullying me. The sad thing is she dances at the same studio as me and before this whole mess started she wanted to be friends and dance partners.

Who is your best friend and what is he/she/it like?

I had a best friend in London, England whose name was Sebastian Winderman. Sebastian was one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He and his parents were kind to everyone one they meet and were essential in my upbringing helping my dad as much as they could after my mom died. We still talk over skype and the phone at least every other week.

How would your friend descried you?

He would probably describe me as the quietest, most passive aggressive dancer you would ever meet. He would also probably describe me as a bit of a shut in and rather shy.

What is your economic situation? What have you done for work, rather what does your Dad do?

My dad and I are pretty well off I suppose, I’m not really sure since it is not something we talk about. My dad is some engineer; I’m not sure what exactly he does since he never talks about his work and when my mom was alive my dad says she was a great dancer.

What do you want to do in the future?

I’m not sure at the moment but I do know I want to make bullying a thing of the past. I’m not sure how I will do that but I never want anyone to ever suffer like I have ever again.

Are you still being bullied?

Yes but not for long. This is because after the incident that put me in the hospital my dad decided that my school wasn’t going to do anything about the bullying so he is having me change schools to a school that one of his friend’s from work’s son, Joshua, goes to. Which I’m not upset about since it’s not like I had any friends I’m leaving behind and Joshua and I are friends.

Do you hate the fact that you were basically run out of your own school?

Yes because if the students there had just given me a chance I know we could have been great friends, and it makes me sad to know that I will never have that opportunity.

What makes you happy? What makes you sad?

Dancing, spending time with my dad and my friend, Joshua, are some of the things that make me happy because it helps me forget about all the things I have to go through at school. The only things that upset me are that I never met my mom and that the girl I like will never like me back because of the bullying. I’m not even upset anymore about the bullying, I was at first but slowly I stopped caring about what they did anymore a while ago.

What is the one secret that no one must know about you?

One secret that no one must know about me is that I sometimes when I`m trying to sleep at night I break down and cry because of everything I have had to go through, but the other kids must never know, I will never hear the end of it if they did.

Are you afraid to die?

A little, I`m afraid to leave my dad behind mostly I`m all he has left but what I`m really afraid of is that if I do die I won`t be able to go to the same place my mom is and that’s what scares me the most.

Do you have any phobias/ fears?

I am now very afraid of people and what they are capable of doing to another person, how they can hurt one another. I use to be afraid of normal things like spiders or the dark but not since moving to Ohio.

Are you quick tempered or patient?

I think I am pretty patient, especially when dealing with the kids and adults who torture me. Joshua and Sebastian seem to think I have the patience of a saint for never once blowing up or attacking the bullies back. 

 MY THOUGHTS:

Now I personally feel that this assignment was one of the most important ones since it helps to teach us about creating memorable characters for our games. While some games can get away with not having any memorable characters because they are heavily dependent on game play, many games today are incorporating strong and memorable characters and strong storyline along with the strong game play to make their games more enjoyable. I think this is extremely important for game development especially for some of the games that are being released now like The Assassin`s Creed Series, The Uncharted Series and the Halo Series are all examples of games that contain memorable characters and developed storyline. These games wouldn't be as fun, entreating or as successful (well at least my opinion. I’m not so sure about Halo because I don't play it but I`m currently writing this while my friend is playing the new Halo game and it seems to incorporate a lot of story with its game play and Master Chief seems like a pretty memorable character) with a solid storyline to move the game along and memorable characters that players can get invested in.

Remixing Ant Hill

So a few posts back (actually I think it’s more than a few considering that it was one of the first ones about the games made in Game Design and Production 1, our second assignment and our first group game) I talked about my tutorial group’s Territorial Acquisition game, Ant Hill ( you can find the blog about it Here).  Now since this was (at least in my opinion) my group’s best game, I felt that it would be one of the best ones to use for part 2 of this week’s assignment, Remodeling and Remixing. Now for the first part of my assignment, we were required to take the classic game of Tic Tac Toe and remodel it. The goal was to take that game, which is a skill based game and change it to be purely back on chance and luck, the blog about my Tic Tac Toe modifications can be found Here.

Now before I explain what the second part of my assignment challenged us to do, I am quickly going to give a short overview of our Territorial Acquisition game, Ant Hill. Now in Ant Hill you play as an ant trying to collect resources for winter, these resources come along with certain territories along the board. In order to determine who starts first players must roll dice, with the player with the highest score going first. Players must draw a general card every turn and must claim territory by forming chains of ants to go from flower to flower (the resources). In order to claim the flowers players needed to claim each layer of the flowers (the leaf, the petal and the nectar) by rolling a dice to roll the appropriate number that corresponds with the number required to claim that space. 

 

After looking back at Ant Hill I saw that our game was purely based on chance and luck rather than skill, which for some is exactly what they like but what about players who want a more skill based game, well that’s exactly what I focused on in the second part of my assignment. Now for part 2 of the Remodeling and Remixing task, we were asked to remix either one of the games we made for class or someone else and change it to be either completely chance based or entirely skilled based. Since we were required to change Tic Tac Toe to be chance based I decided that if I were to remix a game I wanted to make it entirely skill based (I mean I do love a good skill challenging game). I choose my group’s Territorial Acquisition game since I liked it the most and had the most fun playing it as a chance game so I thought why not see how it does as a skill based game.

I did this by first identifying the chance based elements in our current game and then changed them or just completely removed them in order to turn Ant Hill into a game of skills. First I will quickly list and explain the chance mechanics then I will explain how I changed them or removed them and what I added to make Ant Hill a skill based game. 

Luck Based Mechanics:

• Roll dice to determine who starts the game
• Draws random cards from pile (general and Resource)
• No telling what card you get, meaning you could get the same cards repeatedly
•  Rolling to capture a part of the flower (the resource)
• each section of the flower had a different dice roll associated with it, You need to roll the corresponding dice roll in order to capture that territory
•  Rolling to determine whether an attack is successful

Changes to Mechanics (from Luck to Skill):

•  To remove this luck mechanic I changed it so that who goes first is decided mutually by the current players (while this is not a skill based mechanic it does get rid of some of the chance in Ant Hill)
• I completely removed cards from the game (no matter the game cards always add chance to the game since you never know what cards you are going to get) 
• I didn't want to remove mechanic of bonuses (the cards gave you bonuses and sort of power ups) so instead after removing the cards I added Skills based on the general cards
• The Skills are as followed:
• Attack - Allows you to attack another players ant chain twice as hard, you do twice the damage (you have 5 attacks)
• Defend - Allows you to double your defense against another players attack (you have 6 defends)
• Utility - Allows you to add an extra ant to play for your current turn (you have 4 Utilities)
•  Players start with 15 consumable skills at the beginning of the game, once used skills are used they cannot be used again unless they have been replenished by an occupied resource
• The resource cards were completely removed as they didn't work well with this mechanic
•  Since the point of the game was to capture the resources (the flowers) I needed to leave the mechanic of capturing resources however I completely removed the dice from it and changed the way you capture them
• Since the different tiles on the board are color coded I decided to implement that in how you capture both territory and the resources
• Each different colored tile has a corresponding number of ants that a player must have either out on the field or in a certain area in order to acquire them, as well as a corresponding number of unused skills needed.
• The requirements for capturing tiles is as follows:
• Brown (dirt) tiles - Players do not have a required number of ants or skills need to capture these tiles. Players can place up to 3 ants at once on these tiles.
• Green (leaf) tiles-Players must have at least 5 ants on the dirt tiles and 4 out of 15 unused skills in order to begin acquiring these tiles. Players can place up to 3 ants at once on these tiles.
• Purple (petal) tiles- Players must have at least 6 ants on the leaf tiles (or control all leaf tiles in the event there are less than 6 leaf tiles at a resource) and 8 out of 15 unused skills in order to begin acquiring these tiles. Players can place up to 2 ants at once on these tiles.
• Yellow (nectar) tiles- Players must have all petal tiles acquired and at least 12 out of 15 unused skills in order to acquire the center of the resource.
• Players can only acquire 1 color type tile each turn, meaning that if a player begins acquiring dirt tiles they cannot acquire leaf tiles in the same turn.
• Acquiring the Yellow (nectar) tiles replenishes all used skills as soon as it is captured. While in your control a yellow (nectar) tiles replenishes your used skills every 2 turns.
• I completely removed the aspect of rolling to determine if an attack is successful.
• Now all attacks are successful if the defending player only has a ant chain of a width of 1 ant, defending players can use their defend skill to strengthen their defense which would make the attack unsuccessful only if the attack strength of that turn is weaker than the defense strength
• players can increase their attack's strength to break thicker chains of ants by utilizing  their attack skills, attacks can be increased in strength if the attacking chain has a width of 2 or more 
• A players attack and defense strength depends on what skills they have used and how thick their ant chain is

 Play Testing:

To test these changes I played a quick game with my brother, who never played the original version, so I could see what he thought about the game mechanics without having him be biased. Unfortunately we didn't record our play test of this because our cameraman started freaking out and swearing (My dad started freaking out and swearing while he was recording the play test of the modified Tic Tac Toe [I had to end the video to remove the swearing] and he refused to record our play test of the remixed Ant Hill). In a way I'm glad we didn't record the play test because the video would have been unusable since while playing my brother and I were yelling at each other, swearing and threatening each other when the other broke our ant chain.

 My brother found the game mechanics interesting and enjoyable, since the remixed mechanics force players to think about every move and how to use their skills, since they must be used carefully. After playing with the remixed rules we played another game with the original rules and while he enjoyed the original rules he much preferred the skill based version (he is really into skill based games which is probably why he was a little biased towards the skills version).

MY THOUGHTS:

Personally as one of the game's creators I like both versions since different aspects of both make the game fun in different ways and I'm glad I choose to remix Ant Hill although doing this assignment was the most stressful thing in the world (not because the assignment itself was difficult to do but because I've been having serious issues with my computer this past week and a bit and I keep losing my assignments; this one, my computer graphics one and my concept art for our game. This is the third time I've had to rewrite this particular blog and it better be the last time I lost my work otherwise I think I might actually break my computer out of sheer frustration).

Modification Tic Tac Toe

So this week in Game Design we were issued a remix and remodel challenge, which we immediately accepted. To complete the first part of the remolding and remixing challenge (the second part is found Here) we needed to take the game of Tic Tac Toe, which is a game of pure skill, and change it to be more of a chance based game and then choose a previously made game. This is to be achieved by adding one or more chance-based mechanics, now this can be as simple as adding a dice roll to the game (but that wouldn’t be to fun now will it). Now before I explain how I changed the rules of Tic Tac Toe let me quickly explain the game and its rules for anyone who has never played.

Now Tic Tac Toe is a paper and pencil game in which players take turns placing X’s and O’s along a 3×3 grid. The goal of the game is to place 3 markers (either X or O) in consecutive order, either in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row. An example of the game is seen below:

 

The rules of Tic Tac Toe are as followed:

• X always goes first
• Players must place X’s and O’s alternately on the board until one player has a row of 3 or the board is filled.
• If a player is able to draw 3 of the same markers, that player wins.
• If all squares are filled and neither player has 3 markers in a row, it is a draw.

For those who have never played Tic Tac Toe you can play it online Here.Now there are many different Strategies to play and win Tic Tac Toe, here is a guide with pictures showing how to never lose at this game (Now if you are playing against an experienced player you may have some trouble with them):

• Guide on How to Win Tic Tac Toe

Tic Tac Toe Strategy

My Modifications: 

Now when looking at Tic Tac Toe and playing a few rounds online and against some friends (depending on who I played it against the results were very mixed, I won some, I lost some and we tied some.) I began thinking of ways to change the game. Now the first thing I decided was to change some of the pre-existing rules by both increasing the board size to be a 6×6 grid rather than a 3×3 one. After increasing the size I decided that instead of having to match 3 in the row player will have to match 4 in a row, however matching 5 and 6 in a row is entirely possible to achieve but not necessary to win the game.

Now with the increased board I added a number range along the board on its Y and X axis ranging from 1 to 6, I utilized in my 1^st modification where players must roll 2 dice, the dice must be rolled one after another to determine where you play your marker(either an X or an O). The first dice corresponds to your X value while the second dice corresponds with your Y value. Now if the tile you rolled already has a marker on it you will lose your current turn, meaning you cannot place a marker on the board during the current round.

The next modification I made to Tic Tac Toe was to add a mechanic that determines who is what marker, X or Y, each turn, I did this by making each player call a side on a coin and flip the coin. The player who wins the coin toss is allowed to choose which marker they wish to play as in that round, the players are encouraged to choose the current winning marker and attempt to win the game, however they are free to choose the losing marker if they feel like it.

 Next I added another mechanic to the game, which will change the order of who starts each round, meaning at the beginning of every round in a game of Tic Tac Toe, after deciding who is what marker, players must determine which marker goes first in every round, rather than having the same person go first every time. I implemented this mechanic by making players play a quick game of Rock Paper Scissors to determine go goes first in every round, players can set the limit to the number of rounds of Rock Paper Scissors that must be won and played.

A video of my playtest of my modified can be found below (Note: This was played with my brother who has just learned the modified game rules and I had him give me feedback after the game):

Play Testing:

Commentary on The Modifications:

Some Changes That Came After The Play Test:

• Two other winning patterns
• Players can either make a square out of 4 consecutive acquired spots
• Players can make an L shape out of 4 consecutive acquired spots

An Idea for Further Changes to Tic Tac Toe:

•  Adding more than 2 players, which would require a different set of rules

In case You Were Interested

Here are some links for more info on Tic Tac Toe.

• Tic Tac Toe - Game Rules

•  Tic Tac Toe Wiki