Global Intervention – Conception
4 mins
Initial Ideas
Boards games are a restrained version of their electronic counterpart which as designers make them of great interest and useful source to study and practice our game design on. The designs have to be translatable, easily comprehended and be visually shown and worked out by a person in a fast and engaging way. As you can probably tell the list of requirements are very similar to their electronic cousins but have their own barriers. An example of this is having to be easily comprehended by the player to allow the game to play properly which isn’t needed by a game developed on a device as the device is in charge of making it so the rules are obeyed.
We started by listing all the possible games that we wanted to make based around current issues which exist around the world. This was a process that involved more quantity than quality. We listed serval dozen types of games within our group. This provided a great starting point and gave us a pool to pick and choose from. We then began trying to develop a few possible gameplay ideas for the ones which felt had some credit (meaning we probably cut the list down to two thirds the size it was originally at). We then began to vote upon these and decide which would be cut and which would be taken further. All of us would vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the games and if it had more ‘yes’ votes than ‘no’ we would take it to the next stage. This left us with the final three.
Number One
This game was set around players playing as either people crossing the border or protecting a border. The idea would be that the players would attempt to make as much money as they could over a set amount of turns. The more illegal the items were, the more money you would make if you were successful but if you were caught it would cause more issues for that player. This could work in theory but we struggled to come up with what the core gameplay would involve and how it could be balanced. I felt this was a possibility but not the best of the ideas we had.
Number Two
The next game was entirely different and was aimed and targeting the thought of integrity and greed; and what effect it has on wealth in the sphere of journalism. The game premise did intrigue us and did have a lot of scope for gameplay and showed great promise. However, it was hard to develop a meaningful and useful way of players interacting with each other in a manner which wasn’t just about competing with one another.
Number Three
Last of the three that made it to this stage was a game set around the stage of world espionage. This idea was originally our second favourite (behind the journalism) but eventuality won over as this theme allowed for an easier interaction between the players in both senses of competing and helping one another.
Concepting
We had ideas from the earlier stage of development on what we wanted but not how to get there. Before even sorting out how the systems worked fully we started to add features such as a technology tree, multiple outcomes from events and zones adapting throughout play to affect how it played. These seemed great ideas at the time.
Developing the systems took a lot of thinking and development to get the game in a state where we could even try something. We had lots of features which we thought were essential for the game to work such as the technology tree. This turned out not to be the case and we axed quite a lot of them as there was already enough substance there for us to develop a full and complex game. The game has a lot less possible options for the players than it did before this stage but the systems we kept provided more depth and complexity. Hopefully we can exploit these and bring them into the line light of the gameplay. We are starting to get the game into a state where we can apply an iterative approach to development which will increase the speed of progress and highlight issues we may have overlooked.
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