Exercises

3.6: Rules Restricting Actions:

Twister- Twister has a few rules that restrict actions. For example, once a color is called out and you have a body part on that color already, you cannot choose to ignore this and you must try to move your hand or foot to another color that is vacant. Furthermore, there can only be one foot or hand on a color at any given time. Going off of this, a player must move a body part to the new color called out and cannot opt to ignore this request. Lastly, players have to start from opposite sides of the mat and cannot begin from wherever they choose.

Pictionary- Firstly, Pictionary has a time constraint on the person drawing and how much time they have before they need to draw. Indeed, they have to decide how they will proceed drawing within 5 seconds and cannot exceed this time limit. Secondly, in terms of the drawing process, the picturist has a minute to draw whatever they can while their drawing cannot include numbers or words. Lastly, each team has a minute to simultaneously start guessing what the drawing is of and cannot exceed this limit. The next round then follows a picturist from the winning team who gets a chance to draw. The losing team cannot draw again.

Scrabble- Here, each player must draw 7 cards each to begin, no more and no less. Other notable constraints include that all words must be two or more letters long, while they are played either vertically or horizontally and never diagonally. Players also can only play off of words that already exist on the board and the letters placed by players must form complete words. This means that players cannot simply make up new words or place letters randomly just to get rid of letters.

Operation- This game features a very notable physical constraint which is integral to the game: players must use tiny tweezers in order to pull out small parts from an imaginary patient and the holes in his body. The catch is that players are not allowed to touch the metal sides of the holes with the part they are pulling out. Alongside this, if a part does touch the metal sides then the player must lose their turn and cannot continue to attempt to pull the part out.

Pong- Pong’s general and most obvious constraint lies in that each player can only move vertically on the X axis of their respective side. Players are not permitted to move forward or backward or even diagonally.

3.7: Rules for Blackjack

Blackjack Rules- Each player must attempt to get as close to the number 21 as possible with the two cards they hold in their hand without going over 21. Aces can be valued either at 1 or 11 points depending on each player’s decision while face cards are valued at 10 and all other cards are valued at their respective numbers. 

Forgotten Rules- 1. 60 to 75 of the last cards in the deck are actually not used to prevent card counting. 2. One card that each player receives is face up while the other is face down. 3. If the dealer and another player both have naturals, the bet of that player is a stand-off (a tie), and the player takes back his chips, with naturals being holding an Ace or any other card that adds up to 10, automatically equaling to 21. 

Although the concept of Blackjack is very simple, the play itself is quite confusing at first and requires practice and repetitive play to memorize and play correctly. As such, there are many rules I have forgotten or did not even know about in the first place. This served to make the game not feel right, as if plenty of things were missing or that it was too easy.

Note: At times the exercises present in the Games Workshop book can be quite frustrating as they simply assume that the reader has good knowledge of the games mentioned in them. Personally I know a vague overview of how Blackjack works but I haven't actually played it prior to this exercise. The same can be said of Scrabble, a game I haven't played in so long that the rules were lost to me.

3.8: Utility and Scarcity

Call of Duty- As Call of Duty is a first person shooter type game, its primary resources follow the blueprint of many other FPS games. Indeed, these include ammunition, different weapon types, secondary weapon types, throwables such as knives or grenades as well as health items such as first aid kits.

Usefulness- COD’s resources are useful in the game in that they allow players to reload their weapons and fire them again when they run out of bullets, heal themselves and prevent death using health potions, and finally to switch between better weapons or more appropriate ones given the scenario. Without these resources, players would not be able to fight other players and they would die once they lose all their health without hope of recovery.

Scarcity- As with any FPS game, the resources in COD are scarce in that they are placed throughout the game’s map and levels. Indeed, players do not suddenly start playing with unlimited ammunition and health items; players must explore the level map to uncover the items they need as these will usually be hidden out of plain sight. Furthermore, the game forces players to fight and kill their enemies, who drop ammunition and weapons that players can pick up to restock.

Scrabble- Scrabble’s resources include the game letter tiles, movement on the board, tile racks and the board itself.

Usefulness- Scrabble’s resources are useful in the way that resources in many basic board/tabletop games are to the game system: without them the game simply cannot be played. Indeed, without letter cards it would be impossible to even start playing Scrabble, for example.

Scarcity- In terms of scarcity, Scrabble only allows players to have 7 letter cards in their hands, meaning they are unable to properly pick the letter they want at any given time due to the limit placed on how many cards they can have at a given time as well as which letters they currently have due to the randomness. Lastly, players can only move their letters horizontally or vertically, meaning the resource of movement is limited to only these directions.

3.9: Resource Types

Call of Duty’s Resources: 

• Borderlands
• Bioshock
• Wolfenstein
• Fallout 
• Resident Evil
• Red Dead Redemption
• Singularity
• Dead Space
• Mass Effect

Scrabbles Resources:

• Monopoly
• Clue
• Plague Inc (the boardgame)
• Carcassonne

3.10: Conflict

Tetris-  Conflict, although not apparent on the surface level, in Tetris is formed from the dilemma of where to add in your next falling block to the overall combination. Indeed, as blocks keep coming down in different combinations and shapes, the player has to fight with the dilemma of where to add in the next block correctly so as to prevail later on when the next blocks come down. Tetris can be seen to also feature an element of obstacle type conflict in the fact that the player has to consider the obstacle of the slots formed by the blocks in order to place the next blocks coming down.

Frogger- In Frogger, conflict is simply formed through obstacles. Indeed, the player needs to traverse a busy road and then a flowing river and avoid the cars and falling in the river water. Frogger features the most basic use of obstacles in games in that hitting an obstacle along the way or missing to move onto another platform and falling into the obstacle of the river will lead to losing the game.

Bomberman- Bomberman features a combination of opponent, obstacle and dilemma based conflicts. The opponent conflicts stem from the patrolling enemies which the player needs to avoid in order to survive. The obstacle and dilemma conflicts arise from the playing field itself which features a maze of obstacles that the player needs to traverse while considering where the best route or path is to avoid the patrolling enemies or to find ways to trap and destroy them using the bomb mechanic that the player has.

Minesweeper- Minesweeper is similar to bomberman in that it uses a combination of obstacle and dilemma conflicts to hinder the player from winning. In Minesweeper the player is presented with a tile map of gray tiles which have nothing on them. Underneath these are either safe zones or mines which will lead to the player losing the game. As such the player needs to think about which tiles to press and where the mine obstacles could be hidden.

Solitaire- Solitaire features largely a dilemma conflict as it is primarily a card strategy game which requires the player to think about his moves each turn. The player has to build up each card type in a series, such as with all the suites together, in different rows for each type. The player, however, needs to complete a row before moving on to the next one and revealing the face down card there. As such the player needs to think about which card series he can complete from the deck and which would be better to do so in the long run.

3.11: Boundaries

Dungeons and Dragons- The boundaries of Dungeons and Dragons follow a set of rules which the player needs to adhere to in order to play the game properly. Indeed, they first need to choose from a certain list of characters to start off their own original character. Here, the conceptual boundary lies in that a player cannot choose whatever character he can imagine with any traits he can think of; the traits need to be inherent to the character class he chooses such as a Rogue or Warrior and their respective abilities and starting traits. Another conceptual boundary is in the order of the gameplay after creating a character. Indeed, players need to create the character and then choose from various other options such as equipment and backgrounds for their character. After this more boundaries occur in that when a player performs an action, either exploratory, interactive or combat based, a dice roll determines the success or failure of this action. As such, players and their actions in the game are bound to this dice roll and cannot choose to ignore its results. Many boundaries such as this stem from the rule system of D&D: whether it is on the rules of spellcasting or monster stats, players need to follow these rules and stay within their boundaries in order to play the game. Finally, in terms of physical boundaries, player characters and all their actions need to take place inside the game board and game area itself. For instance, a player cannot choose to wander outside the room the game is being played in with his character and set them up somewhere else. In this regard, D&D follows the simple physical boundary rules of any board game.

3.12: Outcome

Zero-Sum Games: FIFA and Mortal Kombat (series)

Non Zero-Sum Games: Sim City and Grand Theft Auto (also Online)

The main difference in each of these types of games lies in that FIFA and Mortal Kombat are player versus player games where only one player can win or lose (unless both draw) where as Sim City and Grand Theft Auto are both games which feature multiple objectives that players can keep playing indefinitely without the outcome of those objectives affecting the play of other players as an end result. 

These crucial differences mean that players will approach playing each of these games very differently. Indeed, FIFA and Mortal Kombat players are competitive type players due to the fact that they have to defeat their opponent by mastering the game’s skill system. On the other hand, Sim City and Grand Theft Auto feature objectives and stories that do not directly pit players against one another. As such players who play these games may tend to be more relaxed and leisurely in their play, simply wishing to play the game and complete a few objectives regardless of what other players are doing in the game.

3.13: Revised Rules and Procedures

Rule Change- Instead of using dice to determine how many spaces players can move their checkers, they can either choose to move a checker one space, and have to move the same checker again by one space next turn, or move their checker two spaces and skip their next turn. For the first option after these two turns, the player can choose another checker if they wish or move it two spaces, meaning they are free to do as they wish.

Gameplay Change- This definitely made the game a lot slower than the original with a little confusion and dilemma on how to predict each player’s next few moves since the checkers can be moved a certain number of positions at a certain number of turns. This also slightly diminished the strategy element of the game as it introduced confusion and some haziness in predicting future plays. However, it does act a more focussed sense of strategy to the game as players need to be more mindful and conscious of their actions.