Comments on: Feedback – Jane McGonigal on golf

By: TS

TS — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:35:57 +0000

I also like (the very different game of) Film Golf.

By: TS

TS — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:34:52 +0000

Hmmm. Interesting analogy, but worth steaming at it from a developmental direction. What’s the game about? What’s the seed from which it developed? What’s the core action it’s gaming? What’s the most exciting thing about it?

In golf’s case, it’s not about the hole. It’s the action of hitting a ball with clubs primarily, making it go where you want. The hole is the target to focus that action. That also – according to my – ahem – Wiki knowledge – appears to be how it arose historically. Although we can always bunk history and focus on what’s exciting.

I’ve yet to play Playmakers, but here’s my outsider and naive eye – tell me what I’m getting wrong, I’ve not even seen a ruleset… It appears that both the core and the most exciting action is to spy without being spied. The camera is the means and the target and the scoring mechanism.

I also think that the very best games have both emergence and elegance.

The challenge is dynamic and emergent – great – because you’re playing in conflict with other teams with the same (counter)objective.

The targets are a secondary mechanism and possibly an inelegance. Getting watchable footage is a secondary goal for the makers but not necessarily for the players; while I understand why you want it, you want to be careful it doesn’t wreck the gameplay.

The biggest problem appears to be that there are a limited number of meaningful roles in the core action because each team only has one video camera. Naive thinking: what would happen if you gave everybody a digital stills camera?

And now I’m thinking of chess, they are the pawns and the video camera is the queen (and the king). So you score points for pawn x pawn, more points for pawn x queen, and the most points for queen x queen. Points upped for soonest capture.

By: alexfleetwood

alexfleetwood — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:46:31 +0000

I’m not sure that it is working out quite that way, Kevan. I think that the scoring mechanic doesn’t make enough distinction between the two – and knowing, even at the end of the game, whether your strategy for winning was effective (for example, that choosing to pursue other teams at the expense of getting all the targets) was the right one.

It may be that the scoring system is over complicated, and simplifying it will help.

Or it may be that we need to think of something completely different.

By: Kevan

Kevan — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:18:07 +0000

I would have thought that the other teams were your bunkers and unexpected water features. Or, more accurately, the open spaces that they can render dangerous by filming, or by sending out a few threatening scouts. You can’t walk right up to each game object and film it in a vacuum; you have to find a safe route, and keep your eyes open, and decide how to split your time between object-finding and team-hunting.

Is it working out like that in practice?

By: alexfleetwood

alexfleetwood — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:54:33 +0000

I think this is an interesting way to look at the game design of Playmakers. Am writing this late from India so full blog post will follow, but some thoughts it provokes:

1. The Shrine playtest featured a bucket of (holy) water strung to the bottom of the Humongous Filming Device. The teams also had to suspend a holy parasol above the HFD. This served two purposes: it slowed the players down, but it also improved the quality of video that the game generated (to a degree: still not that great to watch). Maybe there are some things we can do to the HFD that would introduce complexity to the game and ALSO create better video?

2. I love golf. I have played it with my Dad and brother since i was young. I know golf gets a bad wrap, but I’ve never played a game that tests your nerve more… Can we introduce that test of nerve, of skill into the game somehow/

3. One thing that springs to mind is, rather than having all cameras on all the time, you have to emulate the golf thing of traversing a space in a limited amount of ’shots’. Shots in this case being film shots, not golf shots. SO you have one target at one end of the game space, and one target at the other. Teams have to film the best sequence of ’shots’ to get from one to the other.

4. FILM GOLF may in fact be a completely different game. But i do like it