Face off! Our game concept (thanks to Peiting for coming up with the initial concept!)

Players
2- 4 people can play.

Description of game
The game consists of a board, counters, a deck of facial feature cards, and a face base.

How to play
Each player draws a card each from every category of features (no choosing is allowed). Place the cards clearly on the face base offered, where everyone can constantly refer. Shuffle the facial feature cards together and form them into a deck facing downwards.

The players throw a die to decide who starts first. All players’ counters start from the first square on the board.

The first player throws the die and move the number of spaces accordingly. If he/she lands on a square that reads ‘draw a card’, he/she takes a card from the deck. If he/she lands on ‘miss a turn’ or ‘take a card from another player’, follow accordingly.

A player can choose to forgo a turn in exchange for a chance to return three of his/her own cards to the deck in exchange for drawing a card from the deck. The player draws the card first before shuffling the 3 cards back into the deck.

Treat the board squares as continuous. i.e. when a player moves to the last square, continue to the first square.

A player wins when he/she accumulates a combination of facial feature cards that matches that of any other player’s face (as constructed at the start of the game).

36 board squares in all
Blank- 7
Draw a card- 12
Miss a turn- 4
Draw a card from any player- 6
Draw 2 cards- 2
Return a card to the deck- 5 (ignore if the person already has no cards on hand)



In the deck of 48 cards,
NOSE cards- 2 different kinds with 8 cards each

MOUTH cards- 3 different kinds----one kind with 8 cards, the other remaining 2 kinds with 3 cards each

EYES cards- 3 different kinds with 6 cards each

Dilemmas (please feel free to add on)
The players would have to decide between moving forward for a chance (to draw a card, etc) or to sacrifice 3 unwanted cards to draw a card. If so, he/she would also have the dilemma of sacrificing “wanted” cards when faced with .

Is Calvinball a game?

http://www.solitaryway.com/calvin/cb_rules.htm

So here we have... a game where the only rule is... you can make your own rules anytime in the game. You can introduce certain elements into the game at any one point in time.... wait a min sounds very familar... seems like I had experienced this somewhere before...


Ah yes, in the compuuter and video games I play of course! They are known as cheat codes! Find a level too tough? Enter god mode, allweapons on code. Wanna modify gameplay experience? Enter big head mode, low gravity modifier code! So taking this perspective and put it into calvinball, you find that it is still essentially considered a 'game'. Let's frame calvinball into the definition as said in the lecture:

A game is a voluntary interactive activity, in which one or more players follow rules that contrain their behavior, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable outcome.

Every game needs to have this magic circle, an area where the play is being conducted. In calvinball the magic circle is defined on the fly by the player. At this pt it seems unfair and without boundaries. But why not treat this magic circle as 'virtually expandable'? Calvinball still exist within a frame (an editable frame I would say, but a frame nevertheless) that is specially demarcated by the players themselves. The players would still need to create meanings out from the zones they play in.

The contridicting part lies in the the game not having the distinct boundary. I would see it as players can lay 'mindfields' in any way possible. Analogy would be suddenly turning a water area into ice. If looking at a computer game, you realise it is but part of a strategy to win. Making the boundaries or the area to be at your advantage.... I guess calvinball's still valid as a game at this point... let's move on.

Calvinball is definitely interactive and need players to be involved. So the main questions lies in the rules making - how can this be called a game where rules are decided and bended as and when possible? For example... playing sissors, paper stone.. and suddenly the player changed the rule and uses 'gun' to take out paper and scissors! When I was young, the 'gun' sign actually represented scissors paper and stone combined! The opponent will definitely be upset about it and would find this cheating.

Yet... calvinball is different in a sense that players.. before playing the actual game, would have the expectancy that rules are going to be changed on the spot... that is part of the rules for this game!

The only official, non breakable rule of this game would be the donning of the mask. This is the jersey or uniform of the game. By wearing the mask, players in a sense will need to come into agreement with the terms that this is a highly disorganised game but you have the full power to control over things.

Personally, think this game can turn out to be either very fun, or simply unplayable. It's very dependent on the players whether the experience would be good. It's like inputting cheat codes in games... certain codes would probably help you out and you would get the fun out of killing monsters while being invinsible. But in multi player games this would be highly undesired and players would call you a hacker. Yet if the rules and codes are agreed upon by the players... the game would prove to be fun for all.

So my answer... yes, calvinball's a game, but only when players come to terms with the rules made on the fly... otherwise it's just a mess!

What makes a "good" game?

The fun factor is obviously the most important element in the game. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, it's not a game.. it's a chore. But what is fun to some is entirely nonsense to others.

The phrase "what's so fun about 22 people chasing after one ball?" is often heard by uninterested passers-by who happen to see a football match. Same thing goes for people who see computer/video games as just moving sprites, text and numbers. It is the meaning that the gamers apply to the game. I myself used to questioned about this popular computer game back in my secondary school days: Championship Manager. To me it was really about moving numbers and texts. But many of my peers were actively engaged in it and talking non-stop about it before and after class. To them, those moving numbers and texts have meaning to them, those numbers and texts satisfy their emotional need to be "a good virtual manager" in football.

That's where I started appreciating my RPGs. To my peers, they are just exchange of numbers when my hit points go up and down. But to me, it is life and death of my character.

A good game thus has been designed to give you this simulated environement to satisfy your need.

What is a game?

The word 'game' can be used in almost every activity that you engage in. It's all in how creative can you get. This post attempts to prove that one can turn anything and everything into a game and ultimately my definition of a game would be this : An interactive activity which satisfies a particular emotional need in a particular point of time, and the need can be satisfied either singularly or with multiple entities (be it with humans or AI).

"A typical day of hardcore gamer Bob."
To Bob, life is a big playing field. He enjoys challenges, enjoys fun. And every moment of his life he demands fun and competition. So he would tell his family to be engaged in the "wake-up game". Where every morning, the family would compete in who would wake up the earliest without an aid of the alarm clock. Bob's wife, Barbara, would then go on to compete with him in the game of "office racing", to see who would reach the office using only public transport.

At work, Bob would engage in various games with his collegues, be it card games, online games, or even competing to type the fastest and most error free document, Bob would actively engage himself in games.

After work, Bob, ever the avid cook, would compete with his wife in the fastest egg frying game. And as the night goes by they would enjoy a game on the xbox or on computer.

And so Bob lived happily ever after in his game of life....

To me, this may perhaps be an exciting way to live. Every activity that you do has a certain goal and purpose. But every activity is binded with a set of rules to follow. So what exactly is a game? A mere pleasurable activity? A competitive engagement? Seriously the definitions are vague, but yet when a person is engaging in a game, you know that activity is a game activity and nothing else. Which leads me to think:

Gaming is essentially a human-only activity.
I'm not sure if animals are capable of playing games. Would animals engage in fishing for leisure purposes?

Gaming has links to rituals
To perform a ritual (which essentially is also a human-only activity), rules are adhere to so as the ritual would be complete. Games are binded by all kinds of rules so as people would get the maximum enjoyment out from it. Yet it is seen often that sometimes rules are bent to make the game enjoyable.

A game satisfies an emotional need
This is perhaps the most important factor. Bored? Play an online game. Feeling a need to vent out frustration? Play some mindless shooting games. And this emotional need is so varied that different games would suit different emotional needs.