Project 1: Design a Board Game

It's been a while...
I need to play major catch up here. I have neglected my blog for a week and it shows! Luckily though I have actually been doing work. We have come a very long and productive way sine I last updated on here. We had a new crit and told to give a presentation on our board game (so far) to the rest of the group. Other than that we were told our game was definitely improved compared to the crit in the 1st week which is fantastic, it really filled our team with confidence and pride. What I will write is a quick, bullet pointed summary of key elements we have covered in the past week so that you can read and see what we have been up too.

• Finalised everyones positions regarding what they are doing with the board game. 
• Finalised the art style so the artists of the group are all producing quality & coherent art work stylized for the board game. 
• Many test plays, a few of which I have recorded on behalf of the group. (They will be uploaded onto the final research file as I couldn't upload them onto YouTube to use on here). 
• Decided on a board "style, the board is now nearly complete. We just need to put it onto solid material. 
• Sorted out the key research areas for the digital research file we are going to submit with the board game at the end.

Our presentation went really well, although we didn't have a fancy PowerPoint presentation, we did have images of our work so far and a fairly established game to present which I am guessing was the whole idea! The only major criticism we received was that the theme behind the board game, "Cowboys & Indians", could be perceived as racist. This is obviously not what we were trying to communicate, the thought never really crossed our minds, however we obviously don't want this to be the case or represent how the game is perceived. Luckily the game itself is called "Totems 'n' Towers" so it doesn't even mention the word "Indians" (the racist term in question). The only issues we will have is the section in the booklet that comes with the game, we want it to have a "background story", just a brief written piece to give the game clarity. This is where we might use the term "Indians". Also, the player pieces are called "Cowboys" or "Indians" and the player chooses which they want to play as, again, this could cause issues. We are currently researching into how bad this term is and if its politically correct etc. I will keep you posted.

The most recent thing to happen to our board game is the test play it was given by another group in the year. All they were given were the rules and told to play; just like you would if you bought a board game from a shop. It was a test on how well we communicated the rules of the game, whether the game itself worked/was fun/had potential. It was really effective because we could see where our game needed more work and where we excelled, I also recorded feedback from the players to see what they thought of the game. Like I mentioned earlier, I am having issues uploading these videos to YouTube & blogger so I may just leave them for you to watch when you receive the final research file.

Some early concept work... 
I am not one of the artists for the game; I am co chief researcher/team leader. I haven't been doing loads of concept art for the game so I can't post loads of visual work (unfortunately) although I do plan to do some more now that we have our whole game concept down and everyone is off doing their own thing to contribute towards it. I am working with Robin in the group; she is also co chief researcher, to put together the document full of all the research and general information concerning the game.

I tried to post these pieces up last week but blogger was testing my patients with regards to formatting and image movements so I had to give up, however now I am back on and ready to post them up. So, low and behold, some early (and I really do mean early) personal concepts for the board game. They aren't really specifically tied down to any real theme and I plan to do more now if I get the time which I will post on here.
 

 

Conclusion...  

This was really early concept art, from the end of week 1/beginning of week 2 so it's not very polished. It was purely personal so that I could feel a part of the artwork even if it was only going to be used on my blog. I plan to do more however my main focus now is to work on the heavy research for the group. Robin and I plan to put together a research file for submission that clearly shows what we have been looking at, how & why etc. As for the rest of the group, well they all have specific sections they are working on to pull the board game together. We all feel happy and confident we will pull of a successful board game!