Week 07 -

"One of the first things we do when learning a new field is to become familiar with the tools of the trade." (Macklin and Sharp, ch 2). These words ring true when looking into all types of games, but especially social deduction games. Talking and playing social deduction games along with the week's readings have made me grateful we are not creating and playing our own social deduction games as they are incredibly complicated to get working. Macklin and Sharp talk about Talcott Parsons' Action Theory, which is best described as how people react and interact with things (Macklin and Sharp, ch 4). The chapter explains the structure of the theory: how and why people react in the way they do when given the option to deal with a situation in a game. Reading over the theory and its structure made me think of how a social deduction game can work: open enough to let players interact with each other without the restraint of rules while still having rules to guide the players to an end of the game. Thinking about this goal and the design values mentioned in class and explained in more detail in the chapter, I would create a game centered around a rumor. I will explain this game through design values as it may help to better explain and understand it. The theme of the game would be a place rampant with rumors: high school. The experience which would be incredibly similar to point of view would have the players trying to figure out what the rumour is and who started it. The challenge comes in with the fact that everyone is telling a story (whether it is the same story with different details or different stories in general) and must ask each other questions and piece together who is spreading false rumors around the school and stop them. Objects given to the players would be cards telling them their roles and what the story they are telling is. For added difficulty, everyone could have separate goals too besides just figuring out who is the one spreading and starting the rumor. As repeatedly stated, the goal of the game is for the players to discover and stop the rumor from spreading where the rumor spreader will try to get the rumor to reach a point that it is cannot be controlled (possibly measured by different rounds, ex: by the fifth round if the rumor is not stopped, it is uncontrollable and the rumor spreader wins.)his game could be played virtually anywhere as long as there is a flat surface and you have the pieces. Emotions that could come out of this game is frustration but laughter too, depending on how absurd the story everyone is telling is.