Week 7 (Oct. 7) - Game Essay

The video game I selected for this week's activity is Flappy Bird. I chose a gaming essay from Unwinnable, to help with my discussion. The author of the essay is a man named Brendan Keogh, who has written a very large amount of essays on various video games. The essay is from 2014. Unwinnable is respected and they have a lot of neat content for gaming. In my opinion, they are a less known outlet and they will continue to grow bigger. They have a lot of interesting reads on music and movies, not just gaming. 

The essay kind of covers a lot about the game, but it does discuss the objective and goal. The essay speaks about Flappy Bird being a game of "self-constraint." Which makes the game extremely difficult. There is not a large amount of room to operate in the game, between all the green pipes in the way. You have to pick the right time to tap, tap the perfect amount of times, etc. I think that's where the skill element comes in for the design of Flappy Bird. To get far, you have to have a feel for the game and a good sense of touch. I believe the designer of the game thought of that element first, when he was creating it. It's a very important element of the game but it's not really what I focused on for my paper prototype.

A few sentences later, the author of the piece speaks on the surprise/randomness element that is in the video game. The green pipes are obstacles that you have to avoid and they are just thrown in at random. You pass a set of green pipes at the bottom of your screen, but the next set could end up being very high up on the screen and you have to rapidly tap to flap. This element is what I thought of, when designing my paper prototype. During class, a lot of suggestions and ideas were given to me by my fellow classmates. One good idea was said and I thought it was great. I created the original layout for the game, made of paper, and you still try to avoid the green pipes as the objective. Instead of actually flapping to move, you roll a dice and choose if you want to start off by dropping or going upward. After you decide that, then you're revealed the set of pipes and depending what you chose, it could be challenging or easier to make it. I added the use of dice as that element of randomness in the game. 

https://unwinnable.com/2014/02/11/flappy-bird/