game design memo

From Reality is broken by Jane McGonigal, I got many ideas of game design for gamers. In other words, how game should be to give them benefit in playing games including card games, board games, and video games. Most examples used in the book are video games. First of all, she mentions that games have goals, rules, feedback systems, and voluntary participation. It is obvious that they should be included to make players motivated for playing games. She focuses on connection with others in several chapters. While reading these ideas, I thought connection and cooperation is one of the important factors when designing games, and this will be effective for Epic. Whatever we create for it, freshmen need connection with others. It is the first step to participate voluntary in the activity.

Next, I focused on failure (she mentions “fun failure”). Failure is usually annoying players, but it is needed. It leads players to improvement. If everything were going well, they would feel less achievement. This is mentioned in “What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy” by James Paul Gee as well. When players face a particular problem, they know what they should do to solve it. They succeed everything in the first place, which means they learn nothing. In the real life, we take some classes like math, science, and social studies. They have many vocabularies that we do not use in everyday life. Even if we knew the definition by using dictionary, it does not mean we understand them. He uses an example of manuals. Before playing video games, we just understand words. However, failure and trouble they confront while playing bring players deep understanding, not just literacy or surface understanding.

After getting these ideas from reading and thinking what incoming freshmen want to know as they can adapt them to new life in university, I though activity style game could be so good for them. I came to Chico last summer, and had no idea where was good places like grocery stores or restaurants, even buildings in campus. Although this is discussed in class, they walk around and quest based on a story, whatever it could be treasure hunting like hiding small pieces of something or cards with numbers, and they complete a big thing by collecting them, or they answer a question given for reveal a story. These ideas absolutely require group task, cooperation, and voluntary participation. Game sometimes needs failure, so some pieces or cards do not have power to directly solve problems, but they have a certain meaning. I do not still have specific ideas for it, this might be effective to let players learn something useful in the real life.