Life As A Gamer

Posted byAlex BannoPosted inBCM3OOTags:,

What is a Game?

The dictionary definition of a game is an amusement or a pastime . However a game can be much more than that. The more games we play, the more our definition begins to broaden. Some may argue that a game is made up of both systems and stories and others such as Johan Huzinga have argued that playing games is a meaningful activity that is unconcerned with materiality.

Games can be made up of varying factors of time, space, materials and behaviour (Moore & Hall, 2021). In this blog, I would like to give a detailed account of my gameplay experience, so we can better grasp our own interpretations of gameplay. To begin with, I am going to explain game genres, themes, settings and mechanics so we can better understand my game play experience. 

Genres & Industries:

Games can be subcategorised into genres such as Mass Market and Hobby Games.

Mass Market Games often involve the activity of playing a board game and can be found in large retailers stores like Kmart and Target (Moore, C 2020). Mass market games fall into three categories: family, party and licensed.

Hobby / Niche games are specialty games that feature a unique style, strategy and theme to the traditional mass market game. Within the Hobby game market, there are 5 key genres: Wargames, Role-playing games, Eurogames, Ameritrash and Collectible card games  (Moore, C 2020). 

Theme & Setting:

Games can entail many different themes & settings. Some common themes include:

  • War & Conquest
  • Civilisation & Colonisation
  • Sports
  • And Murder Mystery

(Game Themes, 2018)

My favourite theme would have to be murder mystery, as I often played cluedo when I was younger and loved the thrill of collecting clues and being competitive with friends and family.

The list of game themes and settings goes on and on. However it is important to familiarise ourselves with some of these themes, as we will explore the theme and settings within my personal game playing experience later on in this blog.

Key Game Mechanics:

After putting together a game’s themes and settings, we discover the game’s mechanics too! Game mechanics involve the ways players interact with one another and the components of the game (Farley S. U/A).

Basic game mechanics include: turns, actions, assymetry, bidding, cards, capture, dice, drafting and movement. 

Here I will explain a few of these terms:

  • Turns is a basic concept of game mechanics, in which each player is awarded a ‘turn’ and with this turn an action may occur.
  • Actions are what a player can do during their turn. Actions can include attacking other players or drawing and using cards.
  • Cards are the physical component to a game which can add actions or events for an element of surprise.
  • Dice are the objects that help to randomise the events of the game.

(Farley S. U/A)

Once we understand these mechanics to a game, we can more deeply understand our personal gameplay experiences.

My Personal Gameplay Experience:

Now that we understand these components to a game, we can better discuss my gameplay experience.

Over the first few weeks of BCM300, I played more games than I had played in my lifetime. Some of these games included: Rhino Hero, Love letter, Ice Cool 2 and photosynthesis.

The game that stood out the most to me was Love Letter. Although It was quite simple, I felt it was just right for me. The game was designed by Seiji Kanai and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, Kanai Factory and several others.

For those of you who don’t know, Love Letter is a 2 – 4 player game, based on risk and luck. The aim of the game is to get your Love Letter to the princess, while stopping competitors from doing so. The deck has 16 cards, each player is handed 1 card to start with and then 1 card is removed from the game. At first I was confused as to why we were removing a card from the deck, but when I asked one of my peers they told me it just makes it harder to guess what card the other player may have, which in hindsight made sense and was pretty clever.

During each player’s turn, they draw a card and play another card. By playing cards, the aim is to expose who your opponents are, and by doing so, knock them out of the game.

My group’s process of learning the game involved reading the instructions out to each other, we then decided to just play a tester round where we explained the rules and learnt as we went. This was the best process for me to learn Love Letter, as I’m a visual learner.

My effective response to the game was excitement and mischief. I loved the renaissance feel of the game. The cards and packaging which were illustrated by Kali Fitzgerald and others, were beautifully detailed and suited to the theme of the game. As Love Letter caused such mischief, I noticed that my group were all becoming very secretive with each other. We had our poker faces on and became very competitive. I thought this was great because everyone was taking the game seriously and having some fun.

I would classify Love Letter as a mass market game, as it duplicated a traditional game structure and could be found in many large retailer stores such as target.

Love letters theme and setting was based upon a renaissance period and had a very patriarchal element to it. The characters included members of a renaissance society such as a princess, handmaid, countess, prince and king. Each character on the card held different strengths and capabilities, which could be associated with their status in society.

Love Letter involved many simple game mechanics such as turns and actions. Each player was given a turn as we would go around the circle and with each players turn, they would have to place down a card which would hold a particular action. These action mechanics resulted in deduction, player elimination and a score-and-reset game.

Overall my gameplay experience with Love Letter was an entertaining experience. Not just from the rules of the game itself, but the experience it was able to create with a group of strangers. We were all able to come together and create a meaningful experience, whilst getting to know each other.

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