I would like to make a board game based on cars and racing.  The idea of the game is to race against your friends and reach the end of the board first.  Throughout the game you are faced with different obstacles that you must dodge.  If these obstacles are not dodged they can either slow you down (like getting stuck behind a bus or cyclist), cause damage to your car, or get pulled over by the cops which will cause you to lose an appropriate amount of turns.   The setting is a busy city that has pedestrians, cars, buses, cyclists, cops, and more.  This game will come with 4 different cars, because of copyright issues the cars will be generic looking supercars.  What makes this game fun, is that it pins you against your friends to see who is the fastest and because that it is a car game it appeals to all the gear heads out there.  The game is skill based along with being chance based as well allowing many different ages to be able to play.  When designing this game there will definitely challenges that we may face.  It will be difficult to be able to design the board itself.  Since the setting is the city, it will be difficult to design a good looking city onto a two dimensional surface.  With all the buildings and other cars and people, it is difficult to draw these on just a two dimensional board.  Another challenge would be incorporating the skill aspect of driving into the game.  Since it is just a board game and not a video game like almost all car games it will be difficult to give the players the ability to crash themselves.  Another challenge we would face is the design of the car pieces.   It will be hard for us to make professional looking cars without just using a replica toy such as hot wheels.  Although we would be faced with these challenges, I think it is possible that we would be able to figure them out and produce a great board game.

I have owned and played a lot of games for different gaming platforms.  There has been many hours logged per night on a single game before.  What I have found out to be my top 10 most played games are (in no particular order); Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Far Cry 3, FIFA 15, Halo 3, Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, South Park: Stick of Truth, Luigi’s Mansion, and Fallout New Vegas.           Being able to play on multiple different platforms allows me to play a wider variety of games.

Games like Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Luigi’s Mansion, Far Cry 3, Fallout New Vegas, Minecraft, and South Park: Stick of Truth are all pretty similar.  These games were all fun because of their story and adventure play style.  In all of these games they have a long story line where you can collect new items and upgrade your character.  This all makes them fun to me because of the adventure and variety style that these games offer.

On the other hand, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 15, Halo 3, and Garry’s Mod are all fun because they are more social games.  Most of the time I am playing these games I am playing against or with my friends.  I believe these games are fun for people because they give you the opportunity to compete with your friends to win.  These games are more for social interactions than the other adventure games I play.

After reviewing my top ten most played games of all time I have discovered that although I love to play adventure games with deep story’s, I also love to play competitive games with my friends.  I believe that I am a fairly normal type of gamer.  The average gamer to me is one that can appreciate story lines, but also just like to play with their friends.

I have owned and played a lot of games for different gaming platforms.  There has been many hours logged per night on a single game before.  What I have found out to be my top 10 most played games are (in no particular order); Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Far Cry 3, FIFA 15, Halo 3, Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, South Park: Stick of Truth, Luigi’s Mansion, and Fallout New Vegas.           Being able to play on multiple different platforms allows me to play a wider variety of games.

Games like Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Luigi’s Mansion, Far Cry 3, Fallout New Vegas, Minecraft, and South Park: Stick of Truth are all pretty similar.  These games were all fun because of their story and adventure play style.  In all of these games they have a long story line where you can collect new items and upgrade your character.  This all makes them fun to me because of the adventure and variety style that these games offer.

On the other hand, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 15, Halo 3, and Garry’s Mod are all fun because they are more social games.  Most of the time I am playing these games I am playing against or with my friends.  I believe these games are fun for people because they give you the opportunity to compete with your friends to win.  These games are more for social interactions than the other adventure games I play.

After reviewing my top ten most played games of all time I have discovered that although I love to play adventure games with deep story’s, I also love to play competitive games with my friends.  I believe that I am a fairly normal type of gamer.  The average gamer to me is one that can appreciate story lines, but also just like to play with their friends.

There are a lot of children’s games made every year.  One of the biggest children’s games, designed for girls around the age of 10, are the Barbie games.  Growing up in my generation, the Barbie games were the most popular between girls.  There were never many games designed for girls besides Barbie.  In my idea for a new Barbie game, you play as Barbie’s best friend as you try and put together the perfect outfit for Barbie’s date.

The Barbie Company started as a kid’s show in 1955 made for young girls.  Barbie have become such a big company that they have still been making tv series as recent as 2015.  Then in 1959 they started to make fashion dolls.  Although the original 1959 Barbie sold for $3.00, in 2004 a mint boxed 1959 Barbie sold for $3,522.50 on EBay.  Proving that the Barbie brand has a vast collectability and consumer market.  There have been multiple other games made about Barbie.  Ranging from trips to the mall and riding horses.  The Barbie video games have sold a total of 15 million copies of their games since 1984.  Because of how Barbie is portrayed by the makers there is a lot of controversy over why she is not a good role model for children.  People argue that she portrays that looks are more important than intelligence and personality.  However, others argue that the game is designed to appeal to females since there are not a lot of companies making video games for girls.  I think the Barbie games thrived because of the lack of video games focused on girls at the age.

In this new game you play as Barbie’s best friend named Midge, Barbie’s lifelong best friend, and your job is to collect all of Barbie’s clothes for her first date with Ken.  To collect the clothes you have to collect enough of the same card to unlock that article of clothing.  Since it is meant for younger ages, the game is heavily in favor of chanced based mechanics.

The great thing about games is that it allows you to meet so many different people at one time.  I have played soccer since I was five years old and it has allowed me to make friendships that I will have for the rest of my life.  Along with making so many of my friends, soccer has allowed me to meet people from literally all over the world.  I have made so many special memories through soccer that I will have for the rest of my life.

Playing soccer as gave me the opportunity to make so many friendships.  Through the idea of playing alongside other people and having to understand how they play and act is amazing for growing friendships.  Since there are at least 11 players on each team, playing all over the state and country allows me to meet so many more people than I ever good without soccer.  The mechanics of this game are so well made that it has made it the most popular sport in the world.  Because of this the fan base is huge.  Going to different soccer games whether amateur or professional, so many different people will be there.  This allows you to meet other people with the same interests that you do.

Although I have made so many positive experiences with soccer, I have also had some very negative ones.  I have met some very nasty people with no respect for the game or his opponents.  For some reason it is always easy to find some kid that everyone hates, sometimes even his teammates.   It’s unlucky that some people have to act like that, but the risk/reward of making so many memories is worth it.

Lastly, soccer has allowed me to meet so many people from around the world.  I have been on multiple tournaments where there are other teams from different countries.  This one tournament I was in in Maryland, the one team was from South Africa, and this other college camp I was in Ohio, this one kid was from France.  Even in college, we had a player last year that was from turkey.  Meeting this people and learning about their culture is one of the most rewarding things of soccer.

               There are many different types of games that require certain strategies in order for the players to win.  In this next game design challenge I would like to try to incorporate chance based mechanics and player interactions.  Many games are able to demonstrate both of these tools within the same game.  The game that, to me, shows both of these tools really well is Mario Party. 

            I would like to incorporate chance based mechanics into this week’s game design challenge.  With our challenge to get the Back Street Boys back together to put in a rules to allow for some kind of chance based mechanic would be a good way to make our game like a children’s game.  Considering the fan base of the Back Street Boys, including adults reminiscing about their younger days when they were still a band and the children (not to young) can relate to their simple catchy music.  Now with Mario Party, they use a simple dice block design where the player jumps into the rapidly changing dice number to see how many spaces they are allowed to move.  I would like to use this dice system of chance based mechanics in our game to try and even out the different player skill levels.  Chance based mechanics are good in these kinds of games so the adults can’t always over power the younger players, but because of this type of game the adults will still be interested enough to play and not get bored of such a simple kids game.

            The other tool I want to use is player interaction.  Within Mario Party the player is able to choose what path they want to take.  The map of Mario Party has different path ways around the map and the point of the game is to collect stars which are randomly generated around the map.  At certain places on the map the game asks you which path you want to take, this is where the player interaction comes into play, the player then chooses which path is the fastest way to the star determining whether or not they are able to win.   I would like to also implicate this tool into the game in order to try and keep the adults a little more interested in the game.  I believe that player interaction is a very good tool for most if not all games to have.  This tool is very good at catching the player’s attention and getting them to connect with their character by giving them more of a sense of control over their characters fate in the game.

            These two tools work very well together, because they balance each other out.  While chance based mechanics are good at keeping the game fair for all ages, player interaction is good at incorporating player skill into the game.  So for a children’s game these two tools work, in my mind, perfectly well together.  I feel that they will balance each other out by even though the adults are smarter and will make better decisions with the player interaction, the children will be possibly able to catch up by the randomness of chance based mechanics.

Every game has good and bad endogenous value attached to its game play. Endogenous value is when an object or action in the game has value to the player, whether the value is good or bad.  Some games reward their players better than others.  Normally you are able to tell if a game uses endogenous value correctly by how good the game is.  The good games are usually the ones that assign rewarding values to their players.

A game that I believe uses endogenous value correctly is the Borderlands series.  Borderlands is an adventure role-playing video game where you play as a vault hunter.  In the beginning of the game you are helped by multiple other characters that teach you how to play and explain to you the quests and rewards.  Eventually you meet Tannis who tells you that the vault you are to be hunting only opens once every 200 years.  Then most of the game you are sent on story missions that help you acquire different parts of the vault key.  Eventually Tannis is captured by Commander Steele who you follow to the vault, only to learn than the only thing inside the vault is a massive tentacle monster that you battle to rescue Tannis, and the game ends.

I picked Borderlands, because besides the main story you are able to go on separate side quests that reward you with money, experience points, guns, or other important items.  These side quests are actually very important to you being able to beat the story missions, because of what they can reward you with.   The developers of Borderlands seem to have used endogenous value really well in this game.  Besides the good endogenous value in the game, they also incorporate bad endogenous value, but in a good way.  If you die at any point in the game, they will take certain amounts of money away from you.  Money is very important to characters because you can use money to buy health, guns, ammo, shields, and more.  This gives you an incentive not to just run straight into battle and not care if you die or not.  It requires you to sometimes be more strategic with your actions.

Game designers do not always incorporate a good risk to reward ratio into their endogenous value.  Bad use of endogenous value is when there is a quest that the character can go on and complete, but the reward of that quest is not worth the hassle of going out of your way to complete it.  I believe a game that, although is arguably one of the best first person shooters ever, does not use endogenous value correctly is Call of Duty 4.

Although the campaign of Call of Duty 4 is very fun, the side quest to collect the enemy intel and the campaign its self does not have good or bad enough endogenous value.  To collect all thirty of the enemy intel items, which appear as laptops, you must go out of your way in the campaign and take up time to explore and look in a bunch of random little rooms to find them.  If you are able to find all of them and wasted enough time to do so, you are not rewarded with a lot.  You are rewarded with two achievements for the Xbox that do not give you any experience or anything that would help you with the game its self.  Since these achievements only give you points toward your Xbox 360 gamer tag score and do not help you beat the game or give you anything to help you beat the game, I believe this quest is a good example of bad usage of endogenous value.

Now if you die during the campaign all that happens is you are sent back to the last save point.  Which I believe is not enough bad endogenous value to stop players from going into the game and just trying to Rambo every level.  Besides having to back track a little to the last checkpoint, dying does not take anything important away from you like Borderlands does with the money.  The game should try and force you to be more strategic with your fighting tactics like you would in real life war where you are only given one life, compared to Call of Duty 4 where you are given an infinite number of lives to try and complete the level.  I believe that to fix this problem there should only be a certain number of lives given to the player each level forcing them to be more strategic.  If they choose to still play like Rambo and lose all of their lives they are sent not to the last checkpoint, but to the beginning of the level.  However, if you complete the level with lives left, you should be rewarded with extra experience points, weapons, or any kind of reward multiplied by the number of lives you have left.

A harmonious game is one that has all four key elements of a good game.  These four elements are story, mechanics, aesthetics, and technology.  When these components all work together they can create an amazing game.  One of these games that demonstrates all four of these elements really well is Skyrim.  Skyrim is an adventure role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios.  Released on November 11, 2011, Skyrim is the fifth installment of The Elder Scrolls game series.

First off, the story of Skyrim is very detailed.  The game opens with your execution which gets cut short due to an unexpected attack from a dragon.  While the chaos of the dragon attack is underway, you are able to escape into the woods and eventually to the nearby town of Riverwood.  While at Riverwood the player is asked to ask for help from the Jarl of Whiterun, another city in the realm of Skyrim, before you leave you are asked to retrieve the Dragonstone, which shows the location of ancient dragon burial sites.  Once you reach Whiterun you are told about another nearby dragon.  Once you find the dragon and slay it with the assistance of the Whiterun guards, you unexpectedly absorb the soul of the dragon reveling you as a Dragonborn.   A Dragonborn is a human born with the powers and soul of a dragon.  Each dragon soul you absorb you learn a new power.  Next you find yourself visiting the Greybeards, who train you in the way of a true Dragonborn and finally reveal to you your true quest.  The main quest of Skyrim is to stop the return of the dragons, led by Alduin, the Nordic God of Destruction and Worl-Eater.  The way to stop the return of all dragons is to defeat Alduin.  Besides the main quest, there are 493 side quests to complete as well.  Even if you were to complete all 493 side quests there are smaller quests that are randomly generated by the game making actually impossible to completely beat the game.

Secondly is the mechanics of the game.  The mechanics are pretty simple, but at the same time that’s what makes it so good.  There are different rules set in place that can make you an enemy to your allies, for example the game will not allow you to kill one of your allies or steal from them (and get caught) without facing the consequences of death or jail.  Once a quest is completed you will be awarded with experience, weapons, or some type of award.  The boundaries of the game are set by the terrain, whether that be mountains or the ocean.

The third and fourth elements that Skyrim exceeds in are its aesthetics and technology.  These two elements work really well with each other.  The game by its self is very beautifully made.  Skyrim is powered by Bethesda’s new Creation Engine.  This engine was developed in order to meet the design objectives for Skyrim, because of this engine Skyrim looks and feels smooth.  Without this new engine Skyrim would probably not have been released when it did, because of the design goals the team was not going to release it with its technology at the time.  Instead of waiting for the next generation of technology the team decided to create a whole new engine.

In conclusion, Skyrim is one for the history books.  It will go down as one of the great role-playing games of all time, because of how well all of its elements work together to create the harmonious game that it is.  When a game has its story, mechanics, aesthetics, and technology all work together so well it will be a great game.