Week 3

Our game was “Throw Stuff”. Although I liked the idea of the ring toss game, I thought it was a little difficult to understand and that it had a lot of moments where it was just not pulling ahead the way we wanted it to. Unless you’re really good at aiming, it’s pretty much up to chance. Sure you have to have skill, but for some reason it was really hard to get those hoops on the cones. I think that the game is good, it just needs a lot of work before it can become something that’s actually fun to play. It felt that there was a lot of moments where there was a lull in the game… nobody is making shots, it gets kind of boring after a couple of rounds. One thing I will say that we achieved (without even meaning to) was the use of both competitive and cooperative play. Much like any sport, there were teams that promoted cooperative play within themselves, but competitive play outside of themselves. It also was a great example of symmetrical competition between the teams, everyone was given the same items to go ahead and play the game. There weren’t any specific tools or anything that set the teams apart from eachother. The only thing that would really differ between the games in this sense is the amount of skill each player has. I can definitely say that I don’t have a lot of good aim- I played darts at a friend's house the other day and was completely terrible. It shines through in this game. When we had trial games in class, I noticed that some people were just much better than others. In a sense its like playing a video game and your player is on level 1 when theirs is on level 4 or 5. Something that had me a bit stumped when I was going through the readings is that there was no real theme or storytelling in the game - something that I’m really used to in the games I play. What’s the theme of ring toss? Pretty much nothing. However, there is decision making and feedback. No matter what is going on in the game, you’re constantly making a decision. What cone should I aim for? Who should go get the rings when we’re running low? What will happen when you send someone out to get rings? The game pauses because nobody wants to hit the person with rings. Overall, I think the game needs a lot of work, like I’ve said about 30 times. I think with more tweaking and stuff, it might be a viable tailgate game! That’s kind of what it reminds me of. Like a mixture between cornhole and beerpong, but not as fun. No offense to my game!