Royal Game of Ur iterations

Iterating ‘The Royal game of Ur’

Having done research on the topic of ancient games, the attention was finally brought to the topic of this essay, ‘The Royal game of Ur’.

After completing further research on this particular game, it was evident that our task would be to iterate the rules and objectives. The idea of this essay is for me to formally contextualize and explain the iterations I made during the playing process.

The majority of my iterations were heavily influenced by readings that I have done to give me a better understanding of game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics (Hunicke, 2004).

Leonard Wooley, was the first to discover the game whilst exploring the Royal cemetery of Ur, located in Mesopotamia. Due to scientist being able to date the tombs back to 2,600 BC, the game can therefore be identified as the oldest known board game to be discovered.

From the very beginning the game was found in the exact state it would have been if it were just about to be played. 7 pieces sitting either side of the board, of opposite colour, were accompanied by potential die objects. With coloured tips alternating from corner to corner, these were seen as the games randomiser which is why they could be so closely categorised as dice.

Supporting this idea that the game was purposely left in a ready-to-play state, is the discovery by W.F.Albright who found another board and set of pieces in the same layout.

Without clarification of the rules as far, it was down to the discovery of two tablets stating very partial similarities of the two sets of rules scribed upon each tablet. Credited for this discovery was Finkel (Finkel in ‘Finkel’ (2008) p.11-32) who studied both tablets and tried to generalise a basic set of rules.

The way to win the game is to move your own pieces onto, along, and off the board. This, however, is made more difficult from the competition element. The opposing player’s goal is to do the same, as well as hindering your progress by landing their pieces on spaces that are occupied by one of yours. When this happens, the piece that was taken is removed from the board and must be brought back onto the board on another of that players turn. Essentially it is a race to the end, the end being when all your pieces have made it along the board unscathed and then back off the board.

A random element is introduced by the use of dice. As always these are used as a random way to determine your move. In this case the die affects the quantity of spaces you are able to move each go.

The board provides its own advantages by containing special spaces (often decorated with a rosette) at certain intervals along the way. These spaces, if landed on, give the player the possibility to roll again. Another advantage is that pieces on these spaces are immune from being taken by opponents.

Along with the rules of the game, the design of the board is also up for debate. For example some believe the player begins and ends on the same space on the board, following a circuit motion (H.J.R. Murray)

From the opposite view, it seems players may have been assigned sides and are restricted to remain on these sides. This is the opinion of Robert. C. Bell who says players enter one end of the board and exit the other. With each end opening out different ways, this leaves the competition for players in the centre aisle.

Due to the different variations of the game style, I am led to believe that it is not the first time this game has been iterated. By the looks of it, over time there have been non-official changes, which depending on who is asked, may or may not improve the game play.

Iterating the game was made easy by the way I found many different problems with the game play. When participating myself, I found numerous mechanics that I thought hindered the idea of a game, ‘fun’.

One being the ability for a player to land on a space occupied by a rosette, then allowing them to have another roll, would just bring another piece onto the board. Rather than moving the first piece further ahead, players would much rather leave the piece there, meaning the opposition wouldn’t get the advantage of the space. If I am the same as other players, then I would do the same and wait for another roll to give me the ability to move that piece to another rosette.

The previous point also affects my next, this being the time that it takes to complete one play through. Although it varies, it is often the case that it takes much too long for it to remain fun. For too long I was spent on the same spaces due to the possibility of throwing the dice and getting nothing. This and either rolling a low number or the opponent is blocking my only possible move, made the game time incredibly long. Add these with the ability for players remove each other pieces by landing on them, and the game can become tedious and dull after a while. For example I found myself wanting to make iterations regarding the game speed before I had even finished my first play through.

MDA frameworks (Hunicke, 2004). To begin with I look at what I want the player to feel when playing the game, this is the aesthetics. The next part is to look at how this is done by using the board, which comes under dynamics. After all that it comes down to the mechanics, where I have to be able to know what to change to make all of it possible.

My first iteration was aimed directly towards the aesthetics where a player needs to feel some emotional connectivity towards the game. As it stand I don’t feel the game does enough of this, I have added the element of more risk. By slightly changing the layout of the board I manage to create more risk for the player, this can lead to excitement, anxiousness, satisfaction and overall fun. I have done this by making two separate paths around a ‘dead zone’. If the player decides to take the shorter route and go through the ‘dead zone’ they are taking a larger risk than going around the long way. However, the risk of going the shorter way is that if you don’t roll a large enough number to move your piece all the way through the ‘dead zone’ then that piece is removed from the board and back to the beginning.

This iteration also improves the other problem I found whilst playing. There is not a lot of choice for the player and options are limited. When spaces ahead are occupied it can resolve it you not being able to move at all. Therefore adding these extra routes give the playing more choice, do they go through the middle or do I go the long way around the outside. This can make the player feel more involved with what’s actually happening as having the die make a lot of the game elements random. Getting the balance of skill and luck needs to be right as adding too much skill can also take the fun out of the game for some players, narrowing the audience range (Braithwaite & Schreiber, 2008).

After testing these iterations by getting people to have another go at the game, I received positive feedback from players about how my iterations improved how the players feel when playing. A lot of what was said was referring to the way they liked the new ‘death zone’ spaces to add more risk and that players really had to think about whether it was worth the risk.

More positive feedback came from the idea that players had more control over there pieces. This made them feel more like they had more of an idea of what they were going to do next. Mainly whether they were going to take more risks or not.

My second iteration is designed to reduce the overall game time. I made it so that when you take an opponents piece by landing on them, you automatically get another go. I did this so that it keeps people moving along rather than sitting in the same space, thus increasing the pace of the game (Venturelli, 2009). Because of this iteration I found that as soon as one player was ahead, they tend to storm off into the lead which can end up being unfair. Which is an example of a positive feedback system.

My third iteration is of a very similar idea. Once a player has got a piece to the end and off the board, they are automatically allowed another go to bring another piece onto the board. This acts as a reward system for players who want to get to the end.

I found the other two iterations where just as successful as the first. I received plenty of positive feedback about the way they speed up the game time which meant the game remained fun for longer periods of time. The only negative things that were mentioned was the fact that people started to get bored when they realised that if they lose the first piece, they are often already 2 pieces behind their opponent. This would have to be something I would have to look at for iteration in future. The other thing was the way that even though I managed to speed up the game time, I didn’t manage to speed up how long people took to make decisions on moves, or how long players could sit on one space. Again these are other possibilities for iteration.

Another thing I heard from people who played my reformed version of the game was that if I wanted to introduce more choice in to the moves people make, I should include more of my first iteration. For example I should put more branches off of the main path. This would also enhance the element of risk even more.

In conclusion, MDA frameworks. Overall I was set a task of making iterations to a quite incomplete idea of a game, I feel I have successfully taken it a step further to becoming fun. 

Remediation

When the representation of one media is used in another media, it what we call Remediation. A good example of this would be when a game is represented within a film.

These are sections from the reading that I have picked out 

Immediacy:

Media that aspire to a condition of transparency.

The aim is to make the viewer 'forget' that they are watching a movie, for example, and be drawn in to the experience.

-Immersive virtual reality. 

-Photo realistic images.

Hypermediacy:

Artifacts that are aware of and wish to display their own constructed nature. 

They call attention to their own constructed nature all the time. 

-WWW

-Video Games Huds

'Photorealism' an example of 'immediacy', is not the preserve of the medium of 'photography' 

Similarly 'Hypermediacy' is not the aesthetic preserve of the world wide web, its conventions have been picked up by, for example, television rolling news. 

Why does remediation take place? 

-It may take time for a new medium to develop unique forms of content.

-Similarly it is not so surprising that successful conventions end up being traded between different media. 

-Television programme makers took the successful format of 'variety' programmes from radio. 

Remediation between Films and Video Games:

Bittanti (2003) looks at the history of video gaming in film and claims that there is a convergence taking place. He also believes that there are now a body of films that remediate, comment on, quote and adapt video games. 

From this reading I feel I have gained a better understanding of the combination between films and video games. I am able to see the influence each media has on each other and how they are able to use each other to enhance the experience for the audience. 

Narrative in games

From the very beginning people have been telling stories, using aspects of narrative to communicate. So it is not surprising to find that a majority of games are narrative driven. A story/narrative within a game helps the player become more immersed within the game.

Story: 
-All the elements which end up being depicted
-This is not all the events that happen,  much in a story might be implied ad never explicitly stated.

Plot: 
-The chain of causation - which dictates that these events are somehow linked and are therefore to be depicted in relation to each other.
-This is often linear causation but it does not have to be.

Narrative: 
The order in which events are revealed. This is certainly not the same as the order in which any real world events may take place.

Jenkins argues that narratives are included within games, however, often they are displayed as cut-scenes rather than being integrated into the game play itself. There are games that do not need any sort of narrative at all, for example 'Snake'

Often games play on the genres to create story lines that players expect. This makes the game not so much dependant on the story but still gives the player some background information and attempts to make the player feel for the character.

'Facade' is an example of a game that is entirely based on narrative/story. The player controls a character that is introduced into a flat occupied by two other characters. What happens from there on is up to the player, this means the player can change the outcome of the story in so many different ways. Obviously these sort of games appeal to different people, some find the boring, but some find them more interesting and love the idea of so much control.

Gender in Games

As part of our task, we were given a reading to take notes from. This reading was 'Segregation in Male-Dominated Industry: Women working in the computer games industry'.

From this reading we were able to notice the amount a game is influenced by the gender of the designers. Also how it is possible for a game to be aimed at both genders, yet the designers consist of just one gender.  The other part of our task was to take a look at a list of games compiled by our lecturer, and see whether we were able to determine the target audience just from the title, along with why we thought this.
Another task was for us to take our group game and see if we could change our target audience to the opposite, without changing any core mechanics. I found this quite easy as it was possible for me to easily change the aesthetics of my game.

This article made me think more about the influences different genders can have on the development of a game. It has opened my eyes more to how important it can be to have a mixed gender development team when creating a game, as although not intentional, it still shows within the final product.

Games Britannia: Parts 2 & 3

During one of Eddie's lesson we managed to finish the BBC4 series of 'Games Brittania'. This post is to follow on from my first, referring to Part 1.

 The same as Part one, Part 2 is presented by Benjamin Wooley. Part two focuses on how this game was influenced by America to promote the 'American dream' and how it was made as an instrument of moral and political instruction.
Wooley went on to explain the success of 'Monopoly', the best selling board game ever made. Exploring the background of Monopoly, Wooley revealed the game was invented in America but was influenced by the English board game 'The game of landlords'.

Again, Part 3 is presented by Benjamin Wooley. However this episode takes a different approach as it looks at the evolution of gaming from board games to video games. One of the largest contributions to the evolution was the release and success of the Playstation 1. Wooley then goes on to look at the development of the games themselves, for example how it became possible for players to make decisions within a game and how the players began to have an effect on the path of the story, for example Grand Theft Auto.

Overall the series has provided me with a better insight into the background of the most popular board games ever made. Other information about the evolution or board games to video games I already knew, but it was still interesting to watch all of compiled together.

'La Decima Vittima'

During one of Eddie's lessons we watched a film called 'La decima vittima'. The idea of this film comes close to others I have seen before. Whilst watching this I often found a close relation to the film 'Battle Royale', this is due to the plot being based around a selection of players having to fight for survival for one reason or another. In th ecase of 'La decima vittima' players are fighting for money, $1million to be precise. Along with money, winners would become seen as a national hero, playing a large part for character driven by their egos. The reason for the hunt is to prevent war within humanity by tempting violent people to partake, removing the temptation to become violent in public.

 I really enjoyed watching the film and seeing how the story panned out. I also found parts humorous due to the exaggeration of events. This film is a good example of how people cannot resist the temptation of playing a game, even if it risks putting themselves in danger or harming others. 

Players who suit MUDS

We were set the task of reading Richard Bartle's article called 'Players who suit MUDS'. First of all I suppose I better explain what a 'MUD' is, it stands for Multi-User Domain/Dungeon, depending on the source.

Richard Bartle goes on to describe his research of the different player types. There are four main types of player that he refers to and describes in detail. These are Achievers, Explorers, Socialisers and Killers.

-Achievers: like to set themselves game-related goals and then start working on reaching them.
-Explorers: like to find out as much as they can about the game world and mechanics through exploration.
-Socialisers: like to use the games communicative facilities to communicate with other players to progress.
-Killers: like to use too from within the game to destroy things, causing distress to other players.

Players tend not to stick to one player type and they often drift between them to find one they prefer, this is there experience of playing the game.

Changing the balance:
If the number of each player type changes and becomes unbalanced, it is very likely it will have a negative affect on the game. for example, if the number of socialisers is decreased, it may mean the number of explorers and achievers will also decrease because  they will not be able to get as much information to help them reach new areas or new goals. On the other hand, the number of killers is likely to increase due to socialisers being easy prey.

Overall after reading this article I can see that some of his ideas are a bit out dated, but overall Richard Bartle covers some really good points about the different players types. The most interesting part for me is the balance of player types and how changing the number of a certain type can have a huge affect on the all the others.