Week 03 - Folk Games Reflection

This past week my group spent a lot of time discussing the possible ways of making our game not only playable but enjoyable too. Tuesday showed us we still had a lot of work to do and we practically rewrote our game's rules and goals to be ready for Thursday. We eventually came up with the idea of creating a mix of Cops and Robbers and Night at the Museum (Statues or Night guard based on how you call the game), Thus instead of it being a game of every man for themselves, it became a game of cooperation of the robbers against the cop or cops (depending on how many players were in the game). Overall looking at the the Six Elements I would say the two most relevant things to this game was the goals of each team, the rules, and the play space. Originally the goal was to collect as many objects you can in a certain amount of time. This was vague and difficult to hammer down with rules and still make it enjoyable. Changing the goals to the cop(s) trying to catch all the robbers and the robbers getting all the objects into their group's hoop, changed everything drastically. The goal made the game more cooperation than solo. Before the game was played on Thursday, after we explained the rules and goals, we saw all of the robbers get into a huddle and create a plan on how to get all the items without getting caught. The goal for the cop made it so the cop was interested and focused on catching the robbers. The goals changed the entire game. For the rules, they become more relevant based in the feedback that we were given, specifically giving the cop "rounds" and "tasks" they must complete as they tried to catch people. Our original rules had made winning on the robbers side (while doable) a lot more challenging on their part compared to the cop's. When creating new rules, we would need to make sure both sides or all players are equally challenged. Lastly, the play space. While typically these two different games could be played in the area we gave ourselves, it would have been greatly improved if there was a larger area. With peripheral vision, it was easy for the cop to catch people moving in such a small space. It came to a point where the cop had to actively turn to face nothing to give the robbers time to move and try to grab things. A bigger play space would have given the robbers more room to move and less chance of being caught by the cop. Looking at revisions, this game needs a much larger playing space and equally challenging rules for all parties/players involved.