Fluent Essays

Choose one of your previous weeks group exercises and reflect on one new thing you learned about ideation. How will this inform your future design work?250 wordsCriteria:Demonstrates critical reflection on previous exercises (5)Apprehensible and clear writing (5) group_15_game_feel_slides.pdf group15_game_feel.pdf wk_3__game_feel_worksheet.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Game Feel Group 15 Kevin Chu Alexander Kuang Daniel Ruderman Ahri Zheng Stardew Valley Stardew Valley is a farming simulation game that belongs in the role-playing genre of video games. The game’s main narrative revolves around you as the protagonist who just inherited your grandfather’s old farm. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life in Pelican Town. Players must learn different skills like farming and fishing to live off the land. A huge part of Stardew Valley also revolves around building relationships with NPCs. The game also includes vast caves filled with enemies and precious materials that the player must learn to navigate. With beautiful pixel graphics and nuanced gameplay, the game provides players with an unmatched level of harmonious immersion. Description of Game Feel Stardew Valley provides player with a deep sense of immersion due to the depth of gameplay and beautiful aesthetics. Swink’s principle of harmony is displayed by Stardew Valley’s resource management involving currency, time, and relationships. These 3 aspects of gameplay combine to provide player’s with an interactive simulation of reality where they need to carefully control how they earn and spend money, how they plan their days accordingly to maintain and improve their land, and how they build friendships and romance with other villagers. Due to the game’s pixelated aesthetic, organic motion is not prevalent in the gameplay. However, that is not to say the game doesn’t provide players with intuitive and responsive movement. The game incorporates a 2-dimensional grid system of movement that reacts acutely to player input. If you want to move a certain direction or swing your tool in another direction, the game’s visual aspect provides an instantaneous response to the player’s specific command. Perhaps the best part of the game is it’s replayability where you learn something new every time. The game isn’t necessarily “easy”, but the combination of instructions and intuitive controls allows the player to learn in minutes but only master after hours of gameplay. While certain actions may yield predictable results, the novelty of the game lies in its unpredictability. You can fish for hours on end but each haul may be different. You can also collect geodes to crack them open, but depending on the geode, you have a chance to find extremely rare loot. Though the result of certain inputs may become predictable, every playthrough yields a different experience that keeps the game fresh and interesting. Visual Annotation List of Similar Games Similar Games - Minecraft Terraria Animal Crossing Staxel Farming Simulator Explanation I categorized these games as similar, because they all fall under the genre of simulation games. Similar to how Stardew Valley focuses on building up your inherited farm, Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Terraria all allow you to build up your “home” or island (in the case of Animal Crossing) using resources foraged from the game environment. Players are also able to roleplay in each one of these games, simulating relatively realistic experiences like farming, eating, and currency management just to name a few. Games with Similar Game Feel The game that resembles Stardew Valley’s game feel the most is probably Minecraft. Similar to Stardew Valley’s retro graphics, Minecraft has blocky, low resolution graphics as well that also prevents the game from mimicking organic movement. However, Minecraft’s movement system provides player with instantaneous response. If you press the shift key while walking, the player will instantly start running or if you left click, the player will instantly move their right hand or use any tools being held by the right hand. The controls of the game are very intuitive and results from player input are very predictable. When the players inputs a certain command, they get the response they expect. Minecraft is actually well known for being notoriously simple to understand. Once you play for a few minutes, you start to understand how to control your avatar as well as crafting, an essential aspect of gameplay. However, minecraft actually has a circuitry system that allows you to build some crazy things inside the virtual world. This complex circuitry system actually takes many hours of gameplay to master since beginner players wouldn’t be able to whip up complex contraptions mastered by veteran players. An important part of the game’s mechanics is hunger management, where if your character gets hungry, you slowly lose health until you die. This forces the player to forage for food or create a farm. These elements of construction and health management replicates certain real life behaviors that provide players with a unique physical reality. Takeaways Game feel sounds like a really non-specific, and a not very helpful, description of what it takes to make games appeal to players. However, game feel actually encapsulates a wide array of useful and academic definitions to accurately identify why a game is particularly inviting. What’s especially interesting is the interconnectedness of the various principles are and how one aspect directly compliments one another. In fact the more we each played these games the more the reading began to connect to the tangible game’s we interact with. I’ve never thought too much about the controls in a game being part of an established gamer culture, until I thought back to all the times I’ve seen non-gamers try and play something and attempt to understand a well established control like WASD or joystick controls. Being comfortable with those controls, being able to move around with them, and at the same time using tools in any direction, around my character in Stardew Valley, allowed for the myself, the player, to instantaneously in an appealing motion move and click in a harmonious form as I collected items around the map. - Daniel Ruderman, Alexander Kuang Takeaways (Cont.) Determining the quality of a game has always been relatively subjective depending on who is reviewing the game. However, Swink’s criteria of game feel has provided me with a clearer understanding of what goes into making a universally enjoyable game. By having a better understanding of the standards behind good game design, I’ll be able to implement these practices into my future game design projects. However, I believe this criteria provided by Swink’s can even be implemented towards different digital mediums. I can see myself transitioning standards like responsiveness and harmony to digital products like mobile applications and websites. I thoroughly enjoyed how this design exercise was able to teach me important values applicable to various creative practices. - Kevin Chu Takeaways (Cont.) Stardew Valley is a treasure. As long as you pursue it with your heart, you will live the life you want. It turns out that the treasure of Stardew Valley is a positive heart. My dying heart rose in the noise of the city in the valley of stardew. The city sometimes makes people forget the truth, but you dont have the courage to leave the city. You dont have hundreds of acres of farmland left by grandpa, and you have to huddle in a rented house to worry about the future. You think of Stardew Valley, but you worry about whether it really exists? Its really cool to walk away, but we have no safe way out. So, when your heart is covered with dust, take a long vacation. There is no Stardew Valley in real life, but I heard that people who have the courage to change the status have been there. As a highly interactive subculture, game evaluation really involves all aspects of it - whether it is fun, whether it can continue to attract players to play and so on. But for a special game like Stardew Valley, I want to write something special. Why is the simulation game so popular? We don’t analysis of the game system, the art style and the mechanics, think about what the author wants to express by the game. Game designers want players to have a relaxed and pleasant experience, memory, or a pure and beautiful dream. -Ahri Zheng Kevin Chu Alexander Kuang Daniel Ruderman Ahri Zheng GAMES: Polar Pop Mania, Stardew Valley, Warframe Stage #3: Individual Writeup Alex: - Polar Pop Mania​: I believe this game has a pretty good game feel. It’s very responsive and relatively accurate, which gives me a great feeling of reliability. The game is super easy to pick up, but I don’t think it becomes very deep. The difficulty comes about through the, seemingly, random output of the balls. Also, the line that tracks the shot doesn’t go very far, making it a bit frustrating as the levels get taller. However, I do think everything comes together nicely enough. - Stardew Valley​: Stardew Valley is a game I love and have sunk hundreds of hours into, but I can’t say the game has the greatest game feel. First off, the act of actually doing something that interacts with the grid based system, like planting and watering vegetables, is difficult because the player isn’t restricted to the grid in terms of movement. So, it feels imprecise at times. Also, attacking enemies, like bats, is difficult because their movement path is even less beholden to the grid system, so I don’t really receive an appealing response. And while the game isn’t difficult, inherently, it isn’t the easiest to get into when your mistakes can cost so much in the beginning. - Warframe: ​I haven’t done too deep a dive into this game, but at first glance it seems very responsive, almost to a fault. The actual controlling of the player character is very responsive and sometimes it can make the player look a little herky-jerky. The pace of the game overall is very manic, so I guess the movement of the player matches that. As far as an appealing response, though, it’s not the greatest. Without the context of the game’s actual core gameplay, it doesn’t look very satisfying. I haven’t played too much, but it does seem to get much more difficult, which makes it lean towards the easy-but-deep side, but I can’t say with certainty. I nominate Stardew Valley. Daniel: - - - Polar Pop Mania​: First off, the colors visually ​POP.​ The game is exploding with color and bubbles. In fact weirdly enough I felt almost no negative feedback on the first several levels. If you miss and throw a bubble in the wrong place and then pop​ the bubbles above it and that single bubble falls into the water, what I thought would get me negative points, instead enforced a positive feedback loop of intentionally placing a pile of bubbles in the wrong place and causing them to fall, without wasting too much ​popping​ ammo in the process. And your baby seals are trapped in some of the bubbles so you have to snap, crackle, and ​pop​ them out. The sound effects of the bubbles ​popping​ are quite satisfying and connect visually with them bursting. The aiming is really smooth as you can simply tap the screen where you want to shoot and ​pop​ or you can hold down your finger to aim you shot. Overall, I’d give this game a ⅘. It’s about as much fun as clubbing some baby seals. Stardew Valley​: This game feels way more open since it’s camera is shifted pretty far above the character who sits in the middle of the screen. Moving around is as simple as WASD and clicking to use different tools. This game takes better use of the mouse being used. You can use items in all directions around them. Clicking to chop would or pick at a stone is connected with the visual queue of the object moving, parts falling off of it, as well as it bursting into little pieces. There is also auditory feedback with every object you interact with. The player can allow the games UI to show the hit location when using tools. When this is turned on it’ll be green when they can use their tool on and object and red when they can’t. As the player collects game items and stores them in their inventory they see what new game objects they can create so the game teaches from the beginning to collect new items for the deep pay off of creating new in game items. Warframe​: This game allows the player to swap between different warframes which makes it so it’s difficult for them to lose their novelty as you’re always swapping between them. The game not only has different attack styles players can learn about, but there are mod cards they can add onto their weapons and warframes that add a lot of depth for the player. It’s a third person game so you can see your character, but the animations as you quickly slide around the map make you feel very swift and more physically able. Different mods have damage effects that when shot at enemies affect them differently physically, as well as it being visually shown. Different weapons also have a very enjoyable effect as well, as an example one of them shoots at a slower rate, but the bullets also travel slower and when you figure out the timing on it, it has a very appealing effect when they connect with an enemy. I nominate Warframe. Kevin - Polar Pop Mania​: The biggest selling point of this game to me was how easy it was to pick up. The game utilizes the first few stages to instruct the user on core mechanics of the game that are repeated for the rest of the stages. However, this game quickly ramps up the difficulty to keep things fresh. In the beginning, all you have to do are obvious lineups by matching specific color orbs to the right group. As the levels progress, the orbs are matched up in a more difficult pattern requiring more advanced techniques like wall bouncing or “sewing” the orb through tight spaces. The game feels responsive due to immediate feedback from actions the player chooses to take such as releasing the orb from the seal’s hand. This mobile experience also satisfies the criteria of predictable results where you know what will happen as long as you are able to execute correctly. In terms of aesthetics, this game is visually satisfying as you watch orbs match with other orbs and collectively “pop” together. It also provides the player with a simple narrative of a mother seal saving her baby seals trapped in orbs. This game is quite simple yet effective in terms of fun due to its scaling levels of complexity and development of playstyle. - Stardew Valley​: This highly-rated game provides players with the freedom to explore so many different aspects of gameplay. The amount of activities to do in Stardew Valley is endless, from fishing and farming to fighting monsters and mining minerals. When starting a playthrough, it’s easy to immediately pickup certain core functions like movement and asset management, but the level of depth in this game is amazing. Players can allocate skill points into different branches to receive different in-game benefits. While players can play for hours and quickly pick up tips and tricks, mastering the game requires multiple playthroughs. The appeal of the game lies in simulation, where the player can fabricate a home, relationships, items, etc. and all these elements of gameplay result in a satisfying and harmonious experience. From things like tending to crops to socializing with neighbors, every element of gameplay makes the player feel immersed in a pixelated world. While certain inputs from the player can feel repetitive, like mining or fishing, you never know what may result from that input in regards to loot. Depending on what you’re mining, you can receive different minerals and craft different weapons. This unpredictable loot system provides players with a sense of novelty where things are consistently fresh. The developers also play a great role in pushing out free updates that come with levels and levels of new content. - Warframe: ​Warframe is a free-to-play game that offers jaw-dropping graphics and an unbridled movement system. The emphasis of this game is on combat and exploration so movement is essential to a visceral experience. Players are able to select different avatars, “Warframes”, that come with unique skillsets and operate best with specific weapons. While you can quickly pick up basic controls like movement and attacks, it takes hours of gameplay to truly master combinations of input and maximize one’s damage output. This high skill cap makes the game easy to understand but definitely hard to master and the gameplay is kept fresh through community involvement. Players are constantly discovering new combinations of skills and weapons, resulting in a plethora of alternatives to gameplay. Whether you want to be a ranger that sits in the back shooting electric arrows or you want to be upfront slashing away with your katana, players are able to spend countless hours learning and mastering new and different playstyles. Combining amazing graphics with high-intensity mechanics results in a futuristic, yet visceral experience where players can sink hours and hours of gameplay into. I nominate Stardew Valley Ahri: - - - Polar Pop Mania​: The whole picture of the game is bright in color and cheerful in sound effect. Although it is a plane game, the interface of the whole game gives people a sense of q-cute. Whether its the gate design or the icon design of the main interface, its a vivid and cute little pet image with big eyes, which also accumulates a lot of female user groups. In terms of music, the game is also very happy to fit the interface, which makes the players feel relaxed and fresh. But the whole game is just background music, it will be a little boring after a long time. As for the sound effect, almost every combination has its corresponding sound effect, as well as the cue sound of the sprouting system. Stardew Valley​: The biggest feature of Stardew Valley is freedom. Barone wants to immerse players in Stardew Valley, so its not enough to just manage the farm. Players can even choose not to be a farmer, and after simply operating the farm, they can go fishing, mining and harassing NPC day and night. There is no fixed main line in the game, and all of them must be dug by the players themselves. Players can develop modern agriculture of market economy to every corner of the town, or they can roam for three years without success. The choice of players will determine the direction of the game. There are three years of the main line in the game, three years later to make a summary for the players, and then is the free play mode. - What Barone brings is not a kind of life, but a world. Pelican towns rookie NPC is different from other games, they have very complex interpersonal relationships, they will change their attitude in contact with the players, and will mention the world view of the game. At this time, we know that the background of this game is not the earth we are familiar with, but another world with big wars, which is in sharp contrast to the stability and harmony of Stardew valley. In fact, Stardew Valley is not peaceful. Barone likes to blur the information. Some immoral behaviors of NPC will be implied (such as drug taking and cheating), but he will not tell us the truth. So in many forums, you can see the guesses about the complex relationship of the small town residents. - Warframe:​ Warframe is undoubtedly an excellent third person shooting online game. In PVP, three modes are added: annihilation, team annihilation and capture center. No matter which PVP mode, it has done a very good job in balance. The armor, firearms, melee weapons and skills used in PVP need to be configured separately. Many powerful weapons that can be used in Scenario mode will be disabled, which also ensures the fairness and competitiveness of the game to the greatest extent. I nominate Stardew Valley. GAME FEEL EXERCISE Video intro: ​https://youtu.be/tOn7Fck_STI Related reading: swink-game-feel. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment