Disjunction

Game by Erin McCarty, with start code from Jim McCann .

Goal

Really I used a simple game design to think about 3 different topics in games: repetition/cadence, misdirection, and influence of game culture on modern gamers. The game itself does not throughly explain any of these topics, but it was what I was thinking about while coding it.

Method

The idea came to first from thinking about repetition in sound art. If you play the game, there is definitely alot of failure/repetition depending on how you learn what the rules are. Then I wanted to do something about moving objects in a room and the player having to notice. Of the rooms that are repeated in games (like Croft Manor or a GTA apartment) they do not change. To me this is very stale and if the room could in some way help the player, if the player noticed changes, that would be really interesting.

First I tried to get all the kinks out of all the necessary functions of the game. Switching between levels, storage, movement. All of this was done in one messed up version. Then I took that and split it into Player 1 and Player 2. Then I added in the network code and messages.

Novelty

Unfortunately, not very novel. It's pretty much an unforgiving game of Memory with Pong shoved in between. I should have spent more time on game design and less time on thinking/writing.

Results

The game is pretty boring. No joke. I would've like the visuals to be more pleasing, and for the second player to watch the first player. Ideally as well, the game would loop forever, with player one changing between remembering and choosing. It would have been nice to have not hard coded in the hostname and port but with times constraints that wasn't possible.

PS: Player 2 is kind of like the server (in that it accepts Player 1). You need Player1's variable hostname to equal Player2's hostname

Three Random Topics.

Repetition and Cadence.

In my highschool creative writing professor used to always say "Cadence good, Repetition bad".
In games there can be three types of cadence or repetition: visual, audial, and structural. These are not mutually exclusive and it is possible that the structural repetition will cause visual or audial repition. Though I feel it is appropriate to split this category into three sub-categories, I find it difficult to discuss visual or audial repetition. Structural repetition is what is most common noticed in games, most often for worse. When I think of structural repetition my mind goes to one game in particular: Odin Sphere. To me this game had so much potential and good reviews I was completely turned when I realized "hand drawn animation" was really just a fancy sprite set (that lagged) and that it was ultimately a game you played through 5 or 6 times in order to beat. What I mean by that is that there were 4 characters that you play through almost identical maps, and though they're strengths are different, it's still just hack and slash. The entire structure of the game is based on repetition of these levels, without enough variety of gameplay to make it entertaining. Structural cadence however I would view as something like Croft Manor in Tomb Raider or the safe houses to save in Grand Theft Auto. Even the kill monster, watch the monster statue explode in Shadow of the Colossus. These unintrusive structural elements allow for varied gameplay with an overall rhythm.

Misdirection

Misdirection would be the purposeful misleading of a player. There are two different types of misdirection: linear and spatial. I say linear for lack of a better world, but in my game the misdirection is linear. I show you one room, give you a distracting activitiy, and then show you the room and ask you questions about it. This sort of confusion is combatted in most RPGs where it happens with a Quest List. It is difficult and pretty unfun to try to memorize the state of a game, so the game does it for you. But I think it would be interesting to have a game that rewards players who are able to remember different aspects of the game state.

Spatial is not when you're remember things about the game state through time, but you're able to take in alot of information at one particular time. I tried to split the screen up into where the the user spends the most attention on. I believe the first layer (highest attention) is the HUD, second layer enemies, and third layer background. This is understandable, as humans can really only focus visual attention on one thing at a time (notice 50 million Youtube videos with a cards trick and changing background. No one notices the changing background). The games that use this sort of tactic are horror games, but they use it against the player. Generally these games are dark, which makes it even more difficult to discern the surroundings. If you throw in an enemy, the player will probably be able to handle the situation with ease. If you throw in a ghost or spirit quickly across the screen you will likely startle and steal the attention of the player. This is misdirection leading away from the point of interest -- the enemy. I honestly can't think of anything other than horror games which use this type of misdirection.

Gaming Vocabulary

Finally, I would just like to bring up the point that I can stick a pong game in front of almost anyone and they will know what to do. I believe this is an advantage and a disadvantage for games. The advantage is I really can assume the player knows a certain degree, which allow for less emphasis on tutorials and a larger possible for a diverse playing experience (if gamers have seen many games, its seems that they would be more likely to come up with solutions unrelated to the particular genre of the game they're playing). This can backfire in assuming too much, or breaking the cohesiveness of the game. An example of this was the "T" puzzle in God of War. There were a bunch of different blocks that form a T, that I believe opened a door. As a gamer, I've seen this sorts of puzzles before and it wasn't that difficult to figure out, but I couldn't help but wonder whether playing a tetris puzzle in a hack and slash power game is really cohesive? It was a different challenge that broke up the pace, but I surprised it wasn't a puzzle that fit in with the game's quick action theme.