Devlog 2

This devlog was from week two of the semester, so it’s a little hard to really write out my thoughts/ideas from so long ago. I do remember a lot of the games we played and worked on though. I remember playing the numbers game in class and also learning about folk games. My group and I came up with a fun game called Evac and a lot of our classmates enjoyed playing it. I’m almost certain, it took us a couple of days and a lot of discussion to come up with the game. Chapter 1 of the book written by Macklin and Sharp says, “In fact, you might say that a game doesn’t take form until it is played.” And he gives a great example by bringing up the game hopscotch. Hopscotch is just a bunch of lines on the ground but when players interact with them, then it actually becomes a game. When we were creating our game, we had a similar experience. We knew we wanted our game to involve bean bags and nothing else. We didn’t want our game to include a lot of materials. But our game just looked like a circle of people standing with bean bags in the middle of the room, until we actually started playing. Then the game kind of came together. 

Also found in chapter 1, “Designing a game that creates a particular kind of play experience is much easier said than done. This requires us to approach games as designers rather than as players.” This quote is very true and it’s something I did not learn until later in the semester. I remember when creating Evac, during week 2, I was approaching the game as a player and not a designer. We did not know much about game design early on in the semester and didn't think to look at our game with the perspective of a designer. I feel like if I had made that transition, our game would have come out more creative and fun. We did not play test the game much because we weren't thinking like game designers. 

After reading “A Playful Path” by Bernard De Koven, something stood out a lot. He says “To play well, you have to fully play” (pg. 37). The whole page explains that playing a game means you have to be fully invested. It does not matter if you are bored or other people may be watching you. The first few weeks of the semester, I was not playing fully. I was present but I was not really playing the games with seriousness. It’s something that I worked on over the semester. If I would have learned that sooner, the folk game we were designing at the time could have turned out better.