'Games Britannia: Monopolies and Mergers PT 2' - my thoughts

Benjamin Woolley is back in his second series of 'Games Britannia'.

This time, Woolley talks about the social and political impacts board games have made in Britain, specifically with the more known and played games such as 'Monopoly', 'Cluedo' and 'Scrabble'. These games were the most popular in Britain and remain so today.

This episode of the series was good, but not as good as the last epsiode 'Dicing with Destiny'. This was because on 'Dicing with Destiny' there were so many new and different games that I've never heard of before being played after so long. However, on 'Monopolies and Mergers' the main focus is around board games we know very well, but also on their predecessors.

I think the most intriguing (and somewhat amusing) part of the video was when Woolley went to play in a competition of Monopoly where the prize is to go to Las Vegas to play in the Monopoly competition there. I did find this amusing how a board game which can be played by anyone has turned into a big event. The best part was Woolley even managed to win on one of the tables against some members who were taking part in the competition.

I think Monopoly is more down to being lucky with your rolls and landing on the right squares more than the skill of buying the right properties/housing your properties which Woolley showed in the Monopoly tournament, after all, during his game it would have taken just one roll onto an opponents square to make you lose the game.

'Games Britannia: Dicing with Destiny PT 1' - My thoughts

Games Britannia (presented by Benjamin Woolley) is a documentary on very old board games which date back to as old as the 1st century of Britain. He shows that the board games they made during their times were very important to most people, either due to their fun nature, their significance in religion, or the way some games can be gambled on to make lots of money.

It's quite surprising watching this program and see how people in the Medieval era to the Victorian era would gamble so much that laws were actually passed to ban die as they believed they were evil and gambling was evil. Yet despite this law passing people would still play these games either in secrecy or by using an alternate type of die such as a spinner (which was acceptable, yet its mechanic is the same as a die).

Another surprise was the amount of games that had some religious meaning behind the game, usually embedded into the game on the squares themselves. An example being the original game before snakes and ladders, where the players were looking to try and find enlightenment whilst travelling around the board in the religion Hinduism. From this I can see that most people had a very strong faith towards their religion in the past to not only pray for religion, but also play for religion.

Unfortunately I am unable to provide a link to the program.

Ancient board games - Ur games

For the past few weeks I've been playing some very old board games. I've never heard of any of these games before and I was really interested in learning how to play them. Here are my thoughts on my favourite one:

Royal Game of Ur

Also known as The Game of 20 Squares, the object of the game is to get your pieces around the board and get to the finishing point. Sounds really simple right? That is until you take a look at the board: 

Now if you were like me and have never seen this game before then you would be confused with what you have to do, where to go, and what the squares on the board mean. Hopefully this next picture will clear two of those questions up:

                                                              

So the game is for 2 players, the mechanic of this game is a race to the end and you just follow that route to the end. Again, nothing's ever simple. In fact, there have been different theories to how you travel around the board and where you finish. In my game however, I played it as it is shown above. It would seem at first that the game is purely based on luck on what you roll, but there are elements of skill as well, for example, you can choose any of your counters to move which could be to either progress to the end, to land on a certain tile or to send your opponents counter to the start.

I did find the game quite tense to play, especially when travelling down the middle heading towards the finish with one of my counters. This is because on most squares if your opponent lands their counter on yours then your counter is sent back to the start which can be frustrating (but equally fun doing it to your opponent). The game can also be stressful when you have more counters on the board than your opponent, however this can actually be an advantage for you. Not only does having more counters allow you more options to choose which one to move (and make your opponent go back to the start) you can also block your opponents moves.

The only problem I have with this game is that the symbols on the squares have different meanings and rules to them which are hard to remember. The easiest to remember as it is the most rewarding is the star/flower sign  which, when landed on, gives the player another go. I think it's best if you play a game either online or against someone who has played before to learn what each symbol means as it helps you remember what each one means and their significance.

If you want to play this game, I found a version of it on Itunes for the iphone or ipad, and it's FREE!: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/forgotten-game-of-ur-free/id887848773?mt=8 So why not give it a go for yourself?

paidia, ludus, alea, ilinx, agon and mimicry - Their meanings

Caillois terms are really interesting. He teaches us about the complexity of games in his book 'Man, Play and games (1961)'. He does this by introducing new terminology to the four different forms of play and even two types of play. The title of this post are the terms he uses, but what do they mean?:

Paidia - Means 'play', whether being 'play for pleasure' or 'free play'. This could mean that the player can do what they like without limits. An example of this is 'The Sims' as the player is allowed to create their own character and make them do anything they want them to do.

Ludus - Also means 'play', however more 'rule-bound play' where the player is constrained by the rules towards a goal. Most games are like this, Mario Kart can be an example of this as the player must try to be in first place to win or else they will lose.

The two terms above are like each other's opposite as their meanings are the opposite to one another. The next four terms though are more to describe the gameplay of each game:

Alea - stands for chance or randomness. Games the require dice such as Snakes and Ladders use chance a lot as you are aiming to try getting a certain number or the highest number possible. Poker can also be a game of chance as you are going by your cards given as well as what is laid on the deck of the table.

Ilinx - stands for movement. I'm guessing this could be related to using different peripherals for your game such as the Oculus Rift to control your player character's head movement, the Virtuix Omni to control the player character's movement and alike.

Agon - Stands for competition. Playing online can bring out the biggest of competitions in gaming. However, one of the biggest agon games known has to be chess as two players compete against each other to checkmate the opposing player's king.

Mimicry - mimicry stands for simulation or role play. Most simulation games such as Train Simulator and Construction Simulator try to mimic the job role of driving a train or working on a construction site.

Battleships - Let's change a rule!

Good old Battleships! I use to play this game a lot when I was younger, I wasn't bad at it either. Anyways, I was thinking about the rules of Battleships and thought to myself: 'What would happen if I added a new rule to the game?'

I thought of two rules in the end, and played them both separately:

-First rule that I thought of was more of a change in the mechanics of Battleships, changing the amount of guesses players had during their turn. The way I did this was by introducing a 6-sided die. You rolled the die when it was your turn and the number you roll is the amount of guesses you have for that turn. This was a fun and random mechanic as players now rely on both guessing the correct squares and on their luck for rolling a high number. When I played with this new mechanic I started to enjoy Battleships more than last time as before the pacing of the game can be very slow and a little frustrating, especially if you keep missing.

-The second rule I thought of was a time limit for each go. This was to prevent players from stalling or taking too long to choose a square. This also put more pressure on each player as if they pass the time limit they miss their go. The time limit I chose was 10 seconds which although fastened the pace a little was still too slow for me, so then I chose 5 seconds. This may be too fast for some players and would make them guess more randomly than systematically so I guess the time limit would have to be agreed by both players for it to work properly.

Bibliography - EXTENDED

Coyne, R. (2003). Mindless repetition: Learning from computer games. Design Studies, 24(3), pp.199-212.

Finkel, I, L. (1990). “On the Rules for the Royal Game of Ur”. in FINKEL. I, L. (1990) Ancient Board Games in Perspective - Papers from the 1990 British Museum colloquium, with additional contributions. The British Museum Press. pp 16-32.

Friedman, A. (2014). The Role of Visual Design in Game Design. Games and Culture.

Garfield, R (2008) Chapter 2: "Magic: The Gathering" in Tinsman, B. (2008) The Game inventor's guidebook. Garden City, NY: Morgan James Publishing.

Gillespie, T Inside Electronic Game Design. 1996. Library Journal, 121(8), pp. 124.

Guilfoyle, E. (2007) Half-life 2 mods for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Kuss, Daria J. (2013). Psychology research and behaviour management. Internet gaming addiction: current perspectives. Volume 6 (1), 125-137.

Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.

Hello World! - Interview Questions

Hello and welcome to my Blog!

I was asked a few interview type questions on my course and would like to share my answers on my first post.
So here are my answers to the following questions:- 

What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading, or what is the title of the last fiction book you read?

The problem with this and the next question is that I haven't read a book in a long time, I read comics online such as 'Goblins' and 'TwoKinds', but I've never really been engrossed in a book for a long time.

What is the title of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading, or what is the title of the last non-fiction book you read?

As said in the first question, I don't usually read books, but I do remember reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for my English exam. It was an interesting read, albeit a little boring in areas, but the whole court case made me curious to keep on reading about it until the end and even watch the movie based on it.

What is the last live performance you attended?

I went to see a live performance in Norfolk of Jon Richardson from the program '8 Out of 10 Cats'. I was invited to go see his comedy roadshow performance with my brother and his girlfriend and her sister. I had to say I have never laughed so much before! Even the top comedy films could not produce the same amount of laughter and tears I shed in that theatre that night.
If I could, I would definitely go and watch another of his comedy shows, I really enjoyed that night except when we missed out on going to McDonalds on the way home which was a bummer.

What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema/online/DVD?

If I was asked this question two weeks ago, I would probably have no idea since it's been a long time since I watched a film, however over the past two weeks in my accommodation with my flatmates we have almost watched a movie a day, ranging from comedy to horror.

The most recent one we watched was called 'The Stepfather'. The film was in the horror genre, but to me this film wasn't so scary in ways like 'Paranormal Activity' or 'Friday the 13th' but more so scary when you stop to think that there's a chance that this could happen (or that could just be me, but still this psychological horror makes it more scary than it was).

How often do you read the newspaper?

I don't often sit down and read a newspaper, usually I get my news online or from hearsay from others. Sometimes I do sit down and flick through 'The Sun' or 'The Mirror' paper to see the top stories, however it's usually someone elses paper that I'm reading from rather than me going to get one myself. If I was to read a newspaper and was really interested in a particular one then I would read it online instead as it is easier and wouldn't cost you.

Which art gallery/museum/exhibition did you last visit?

I last visited the Colchester castle museum with my mum and nan. Reason being is that my nan has never been there and was feeling down due to recent family events. But anyways, we toured all around the castle and looked at every display, we even wore some of the clothing that was there which was fun! (Sadly I was the only one that did it but still). Shame that I didn't take any pictures while I was there though, but since it is not so far I guess I can go back there when I want.

How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

This was an interesting question, I have 2 completely different answers judged by being at my accommodation for university and my other answer is at home, therefore I'll give 2 answers:

- At home I use to play about 6-8 hours a day, usually because I had nothing else to do. I use to go out sometimes and do activities like swimming and be with friends but the majority of my time (usually in the evening) was spent playing games on a computer, starting from 3pm sometimes. The games I normally played were on the PC and on consoles which could rack up a total of 50 hours a week on games.

-At my university accommodation I spend around 1-3 hours a day which is a BIG drop from being at home. The thing is is that I am actually playing mobile games and not PC games anymore (until Alien: Isolation comes out which I'm soooo hyped for!) Therefore I've only managed to reach as much as 7 hours a week playing games since being here and being on my Computer Games Design course (weird I bet).

How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?

If in terms of board games and such it is usually a Christmas or special event time when the old board games come out. However I have been playing some games at university (even if some were 'drinking games' but I'm guessing they still count too) and even including games such as Twister which was great fun with a group of friends. So depending on the time of year my hours a week vary for non-video games from no hours to maybe 5 hours a week.

And that's it!

Those are the answers to those interview questions, hope they were enjoyable to read for some, I hope in the future to carry on posting in my blog (and maybe put more things such as pictures to show).