Dev log 6

Developing this new game presents various challenges because I have never done something like this. One of these challenges is clearly laying out the rules for the game and making them worthwhile to read. I know I don't want to read the rules when I play games, so my game will either have to be so simple you don't need the rules or make the rules interesting enough to read. The preamble rules structure Ernest talks about seems the most interesting since it tells a story. This helps transport the player into the game and makes it more personal. Another thing with rules is that they can be confusing. For me personally, if I don't understand the rules then I'm just not interested. When playing a card game if it's not poker I don't want to be critically thinking. I think creating simple rules for a travel game like the one we are developing could be one of the easiest genres to create rules for. When creating the game itself we are going to work as a group to make the rules and even brainstorm the game. Macklin and Sharp talk about brainstorming in chapter nine and one of their key points they list is "combining ideas." This is exactly what we are tasked with in the coming weeks when we create our travel game. Without this collaboration, I don't think we will create as good a game. In the last group that I was in we decided to mod Botashi and it was a complete team effort taking that large-scale physical game and adapting it to cards. When developing this week's game I think we are going to prototype with the "physical game" method that Macklin and Sharp talk about in chapter 10. I think playing the game out is the best way to find flaws and strengths. This is because you are actually playing the game and experiencing what it means to be involved with it. If you were to just lay it out and never physically play it then how could we know if our game works or not.