blog assignment 9a

      One of the weaknesses that our our game/presentation had was that once you got to the safe haven, we didn't talk about what would happen next.  In our meetings, we threw around a few ideas about how the first few "safe havens" that you located turned out to be just rumors because it turned out that they were not fortified enough from the outside forces (i.e zombies, mercenaries who no longer care, or even an internal uprising that caused the safe haven to become unstable).  With this in mind, when the player got to the end of the game and found a safe haven that really worked, it wood be under attack by zombies.   So our climax/boss fight of the game would have been you showing up in mid siege and you you join the resistance to prevent the breach by the zombies so that this safe haven doesn't turn out like the other ones that were destroyed.  Like I said, the ideas were mentioned but they never made it into the presentation and that cost us some points.

For this next point, I would really like to talk about a strength that I felt our game had.  I'm sure I could find another weakness but Id rather go deeper into my motivation to make this game have a lot of choices for the player to explore.  We mentioned that our game had many ways for the player to customize your character, such as skills, looks, types of weapons the carried and how they interacted with NPCs and their environment.  This was really important to me because when I play video games, this is what I look for a lot. Many great games do not have this, and I own a good number of them.  But when ever I name of games that i consider to be my favorite, its games that give the player this option.  Not only does it allow for the player to feel like they have a lot of control over the game, but it allows for replay and experimentation to be very enjoyable.  

In my opinion, the rules of the game are the most difficult to discuss.  I think this because the rules are what bind the game.  In my game design class, we learned that a great game is one that keeps the player deeply engaged for as long as possible without things that appear that remind the player that it is only a game.  Since rules are what limit the player from going certain places and restrict the player from doing exactly what they want, they often break that deep engagement and remind the player that their is a controller in their hands.  Good games will have their game worlds and characters governed by rules that do not fell restrictive.  Game play, choices, environments, etc. should all mask the rules so that the player is tricked into thinking that the game is much bigger than it is (because lets be honest, games must have restrictions so that the project can be completed with reasonable resources).