Videoconference Game week 2

Video conference content

Bangguo and yanis haven’t arrived in London yet, so we can only choose video conference and telephone voice to talk with zhu. We shared the types of games we were interested in. We are all interested in the game of “werewolf killing”, so we will take this kind of game as a reference. Then we analyzed the creative environment of this project. We can only finish the whole game process in video conference, so we can use the elements: the player’s movements, expressions, language, some simple props owned by everyone, and some functions of teams: we can chat privately, some emoji, vote and raise our hands.

Discussion about social games

We discussed three representative social games.

“Clue”

We learned about this table game, which was born in 1949, through internet search. “clue” is recognized as the first murder mystery board game. At the beginning of the game, a related card will be randomly selected from each of the three card stacks. This combination of three cards is the “truth” of this murder.  Players will each receive the remaining cards and win by beating around the bush to get the final hidden truth. However, the detective element of this board game seems far-fetched. Secondly, in this game, players can’t “cheat”, and should answer truthfully after being asked. That is to say, the players’ subjective initiative hardly affects the game progress, and the common goals and the same identities of the players lead to the whole game being rigid and lacking in interactivity.

“Mafia”

The rules of the game are simple. The goal of civilians is to find out the hidden “Mafia”, that is, black card players. The Mafia, on the other hand, tries to confuse their identities and kill the poor one by one. “Mafia” is an unusual game at present. It has extremely simple rules, which can make newcomers understand the game in just a few minutes, and the antagonism caused by different identities makes players have higher enthusiasm. Players in the game can not get much information directly, but in order to win, they need to get more pieces of information from other players, whether true or false. This mechanism gives free play to players. Therefore, the feedback received by players during the game is totally unpredictable. This greatly increases the playability of the game. Frequent language communication is also more in line with the purpose of social deductive games: to communicate with people and have fun

“BANG! “

This game combines social deductive games with traditional card games, which weakens the elements of players’ reasoning and pays more attention to the use of resources in their hands. In the middle of the game, their identities have been revealed. The factors that determine the outcome of the game have become more extensive, and many “random factors” have been added. After all, this is a card-drawing game, with a lot of luck. “BANG!” It is also the prototype of the table game “Three Kingdoms Kill”, which is very popular in China.

Analysis

1. The core of social games lies in the relationship between players. Players’ goals may be: 1. Leisure time; 2. Meeting with new friends (breaking ice); 3. “Dueling” with other players to stimulate hormones to produce pleasure and a sense of accomplishment of victory.
2. The mechanism of the game needs to be very easy to understand. Party games should allow more players to participate quickly. So we agreed that the rules of the game should not be too complicated. Spending too much time on understanding the rules does not meet the needs of party games.
3. The feedback received by players comes from actions made by other players. If we want to judge the identity of a player or what he wants to say. It all comes from the observation of other players. Because props can’t be used in video games through social software, all the information of players comes from your screen. This relationship is very simple and direct.

The voice, action, expression and language between players are the only information. This information can influence each other. For example, player A makes a contemptuous expression. At this time, player b observed a’s expression and made an inference accordingly. At the same time, B also produces expressions or physiological natural reactions. Then a or other players can get a message. These timely and diverse information is the fun of social games. Because they are not unitary or predictable.

Experience “among us” together

This is a very simple spy game. Ordinary players should complete the assigned tasks, while villains should secretly kill ordinary players. Everyone can use the machine to point out that others are villains and intervene in the thoughts of other players. Game makers have a very good design: villains can create emergencies to force all players to move in one direction. This factor prevents players from deliberately gathering together to avoid villains, which leads to the failure of the game.

My assumption

“Creed”

This is about our group “Who’s the spy? “A variant of the scheme. In the process of playing “Among us”, we found the disadvantages of spy games in the past. When there is a big gap between players’ game level, the game will fall into “one-sided” situation prematurely. For example, in “Among us”, when there are no more than 5 players, we usually have only one villain. This makes it very difficult for the villain to kill the player. Because other players can choose to hold a group and follow everyone. Whether we can make more random changes in the game and reduce the elements that can be manipulated artificially. For example, the player’s identity will change during the game. In order to force the player’s position to change.

1. There are more than 5 players on the scene, by random means (random matching by licensing or system …)Identify a credo holder
2. The card content obtained by the credo holder is different from that obtained by the general player
3. Belief holders have a certain number of opportunities to choose a player as their own believer (1/5, 2/6, 2/7, 3/8, 3/9, 4/10…)
4. At first, everyone should perform an action to describe the contents of their cards. After the action, in the referendum stage, everyone voted to expel the “creed holders” they thought
5. If the credo holder is still alive, he can make another player become his believer before a certain round begins. Believers need to protect the creeds. (Credo holders are free to choose which round to perform this skill)
6. When there are no ordinary players on the spot, the credo holders and believers win.
7. If only the credo holder and an ordinary player are left, the credo wins. If the credo holder is expelled, the remaining non-believers will win.

Key points of the game:

There are variables in the game, and some players’ positions are changed.

1. Believers and believers are not sure of each other’s identity, so they test their judgment ability on the spot. If you point to the average player, you may reveal your identity as a believer. Therefore, it is crucial to choose whether to frame other players or sacrifice yourself to protect the credo holder.
2. Ordinary players will doubt whether their original allies have become believers.

This is the idea I made this week. The basic gameplay designed by our team is in the blog of Bangguo.

https://samuellisgamedevlog.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Now we will test these games.