‘Big RIP’

What is a Big RIP story though?

This blog post is the recording of my contribution to the BCM300 group project. Here are The other epic memer lads posts Josh and Ben.

For this project my main focus areas are that of the game experience/theme, narrative and story world for our game.

As a group we decided the game would focus mainly on ingame interactions to create the story and have emergent Big RIP moments. These moments are the main catalyst of experience of the theme and narrative that is emergent each time the game is played. Like this video essay explains it doesn’t matter how good your story/idea is if you can engage the players in an interesting game. So that made these Big RIP moments very core to the story of our game. A Big RIP moment is basically any point in time throughout the game where saying BIG RIP would be appropriate/humorous. These include but are not limited to:

  • Your gravestone (card tower) falling down/being knocked over
  • Someone stealing your gravestone
  • Being penalised for being to far in front of your opponents
  • Having the biggest gravestone at the time of death but having the smallest once final karma cards play out
  • Trying to sabotage someone but you end up sabotaging yourself  
  • Fumbling a large lead or giving someone a greater lead but unsuccessfully sabotaging them 

This concept of player added content to the game comes from the idea of co-creation which is “in what manner, and to what extent, is it possible to entice players to add their own content”. (Eladhari, 2018) We really wanted each player to be able to bring their own background and meaning to the game.

To successfully pull this type of game off we really needed to know how and what interwoven game mechanics where to produce this story.

After some reading both me and Josh realised the truth in the fact that “Interwoven mechanics are mechanics that if removed change how the game is played significantly” – Scott Rogers on board game design lab

While the exact experience will be different from game to game the overall story and ways the game have to be consistent throughout every playthrough. We wanted the experience to be focused on making as many of these Big RIP moments each game as possible. This in physicality is shown on Josh’s blog where you can see all the game elements prototyped. 

The biggest piece of narrative material for this game is the round counter which is a representation of the inevitable move towards death which is a 10 round counter. This counter serves the functional purpose of counting the rounds so you don’t have to mentaly try and keep track of the round number. It also drives the inevitability that ‘death’ or in our case the end of the active rounds of the games is inevitable and coming. The only thing you can do after the counter is complete is watch as the karma cards play out and your empire crumbles or lasts the test of time after your death which you no longer have any control over.

Josh then met with an experienced game developer who gave feedback that we could harness the elements of our game which highlight death as an inevitable thing and how we can use this theme and further develop our game before the presentation. He provided both feedback that all three of us will be using but ill let  Josh’s blog tell you about that in detail as he got the feedback for us.

For the presentation i will: 

Create and present for 5 minutes on the story, narrative and theme elements of the game and how we incorporated feedback and research into these decisions to reach our final product.

Also I most likely will be presenting the entire presentation from my computer so we hopefully minimise any technical problems during the presentation.

Academic journal source not linked:

Eladhari, M. P. (2018) The story pile – Representing story in the board game mind shadows. Springer Verlag (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_30.


Throw Down

My idea of a Judo inspired card game

So I have an idea of creating a tabletop card game based on Judo a sport I have participated in since 2005 (this is me). So please come on this journey with me as I try to explain the idea I have in my head.

I wanted to choose something simple enough that I could practically make a useable set of cards and potentially actually fully complete as a functional properly done game. This meant given my skill I had to choose a game mechanic I was relatively familiar with so I chose to go with an exploding kittens mechanic style game. If your unfamiliar here is an explanation.

Exploding Kittens Game : Target

So why do I think this is a good idea?

Firstly the style of game here is a party-style game to be played with a few friends, while also existing in the niche market of that you probably won’t buy a game based on judo unless you have done Judo or another similar combat sport (martial arts, boxing, etc.).

Why this style?

The choice of style is something most young adults are now familiar with, due to the success of games such as exploding kittens and unstable unicorns. This will make the game understandable and playable even if you don’t understand why some of the cards are called what they are. they will have explanations on each card which players can read to work out their gameplay functionality intuitively throughout their playthrough. which Gamification in Education (Taspinar et al, 2016) talks about as one of the ways players acquire knowledge from games.

Other benefits of this theme & style?

A game like this could also potentially be picked up by the International Judo Federation. They are always trying to increase the general knowledge of Judo and the spectator friendliness of the sport. They do this by rule and referring changes, which is stated in and shown through their constant adjustment of the rules not just for competitive or safety reasons.

What about game mechanics? 

I plan the replace what would have been an exploding kitten card to be a ‘Time to throwdown’ indicating that you are up next unless you have an ‘Opponent withdraws due to injury’ (defuse) card -or something to that effect I am still working on card games. You will be up next with the next person to draw a throwdown card without an opponent withdraws card.

The two players will then duel using the cards in their hand they have been collecting as the game progresses (or from the top of another deck) to see who wins the throwdown and who is knocked out of the game. These dueling cards will be different throws, submissions, Hold-downs and their counters/escapes.

What about a feedback loop?

Within two weeks I plan on having a functional copy of this game printed with cards just being the card name and a description of what they do. This will be done in a  spreadsheet then printed and cut out. 

To achieve this I plan on creating gripping/movement cards that affect the turn order of play and fighting cards based on attacking techniques to be used in your duels to eliminate other players and keep yourself in the game. 

once this rough copy is done I will initially play this game with my family at home to see if my parents can understand the rules without ever having played exploding kittens as a starting point to determine the level of intuitiveness the game has after that is completed I play to play with friends either digitally if required or physically if possible. This will help with determining the viability of this game as a party game for friends of those with combat sports backgrounds.

Academic References:

Moon, C. and Bartholomew, S. R. (2018) ‘teaching manufacturing through board game creation’, Children’s Technology & Engineering, 22(3), pp. 18–21. Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=128284293&site=eds-live (Accessed: 17 April 2020).

Taspinar, B., Schmidt, W. and Schuhbauer, H. (2016) ‘Gamification in Education: A Board Game Approach to Knowledge Acquisition’, Procedia Computer Science, 99, pp. 101–116. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2016.09.104.

Minchin, P. (ed.) (2018) ‘In praise of tabletop games : Part 1’, Access, 32(1). Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsaed&AN=rmitplus221150&site=eds-live (Accessed: 17 April 2020).

Zoos, fun and games or Health nightmare?

Petting Zoos, something we have all probably experienced and participated as children. Are they as harmless and fun as they seemed like as a child? or are they causing sickness to spread more freely between people and animals alike? 

Petting Zoos are inherently high physical contact areas between animals and humans. Due to the current circumstances with everyone self-isolating to avoid as much physical contact through direct touch or mutually contacted items. This means the understanding of the spread of diseases through contact is at an all-time high. However, this brings us back to extra contact areas that increase the risk of disease spread between humans and potential diseases from animals that humans are ill-equipped to deal with. 

Does the current situation with COVID-19 a disease originating in animals that we are clearly ill-equipped to effectively combat without shutting most of the country down bring into question the risk level of high contact animal areas. Have the risks of petting zoos been understated or underestimated in an attempt to profit by zoos or have they thoroughly looked into the potential risks to individuals and society in general?

The situation with Orcas in captivity and close proximity to people in the past was a known high-risk activity that was deemed acceptable by Sea world management and yet has proved fatal on multiple occasions. Despite this, they continued to profit from having Orcas in captivity for years which was in their financial interest but definitely not in the interest of those that passed away due to orca aggression which was blamed on human error rather than the aggressive nature of a predatory animal.

In the same situation, the orcas were told to outlive those in the wild where they actually live up to 4 times as long in the sea as compared to their enclosures at sea world. This highlights the willingness of those profiting from zoos/animal parks to change facts to make them look more favorable to the public.

Back to Petting zoos though diseases normally only spread through food poison (undercooked food) have been shown to spread to people from petting zoos such as Escherichia coli O157 which was given to a young kid from going to a petting zoo. They even have a name for this; they are known as zoonotic infections/diseases. These are things that spread to people from animals which I had no idea was common enough to have its own category of diseases associated with spreading from animals to humans.

So then what is the question to be researched here, I think a broad interesting question would be, What is the impact of Zoos on Public Health. But that is quite an ambitious task to look into all of that information in the time I have researching for BCM312. So the first thing to look at is specifically Petting Zoos. This allows me to directly look at the spread of disease through this extra contact activity. Next to focus in on is the spread of disease from animals to humans and not looking at human to human spread with the animals as a common point of contact as this type of disease spread is not unique to petting zoos. So this leaves us with petting zoos and the animal to human disease spread to consider. So a fitting question seems to be; 

What is the impact Petting Zoos have on the number of Zoonotic diseases/infections?

This becomes a more achievable research object with seemingly enough academic research and secondary data available to be analyzed to discover more about the issue of Zoonotic diseases/infections & petting zoos. This is especially important as I do not have the skills or time to acquire primary data in this area for the purpose of this research project. Initial readings into this area suggest that 10-20 percent of some diseases may solely be spread through petting zoos and have even been the origin of some bowel and kidney infections and diseases.

References

A. E. Heuvelink, C. van Heerwaarden, J. T. M. Zwartkruisnahuis, R. van Oosterom, K. Edink, Y. T. H. P. van Duynhoven & E. de Boer 2002, ‘Escherichia coli O157 Infection Associated with a Petting Zoo’, Epidemiology and Infection, vol. 129, no. 2, p. 295, viewed 13 April 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3864957&site=eds-live>.

Schlager, S, Lepuschitz, S, Ruppitsch, W, Ableitner, O, Pietzka, A, Neubauer, S, Stöger, A, Lassnig, H, Mikula, C, Springer, B & Allerberger, F 2018, ‘Petting zoos as sources of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infections’, International Journal of Medical Microbiology, vol. 308, no. 7, p. 927, viewed 13 April 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edo&AN=131902884&site=eds-live>.

Evers, E. G. et al. (2014) ‘A Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment for Campylobacter in Petting Zoos’, Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 34(9), pp. 1618–1638. Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=98898801&site=eds-live (Accessed: 13 April 2020).

Shnaiderman-Torban, A( 1 ), Steinman, A( 1 ), Meidan, G( 1 ), Paitan, Y( 2,3 ), Ahmad, WA( 4 ) & Navon-Venezia, S( 5 ) n.d., ‘Petting zoo animals as an emerging reservoir of extended-spectrum β-lactamase and AmpC-producing enterobacteriaceae’, Frontiers in Microbiology, vol. 10, no. OCT, viewed 13 April 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselc&AN=edselc.2-52.0-85074709252&site=eds-live>.

Castles – Building my very own castle in a new board game

In my 21 years of life I have played a fair variety of tabletop games both mass market and niche.  All sorts of styles from Monopoly to Risk, Catan to secret hitler.

I have always liked games where there is at least some some need to predict and consider other players behaviour. In games like Risk there is a very direct competition against each other to conquer the world. But in games like Catan this is a less direct and is more an economic battle to victory.

Recently we decided as a family we should try some new board games as we had been just going through our 3 or 4 favourite board games cyclically. So on the recommendation from a family friend we got Castles of Mad King Ludwig a game with a lot more complicated rules than 90% of our current tabletop game collection.

So my first time playing Castles of Mad King Ludwig (Castles), was fun but that’s not what we are here to discuss.

This is the common scoring and piece purchasing centrepiece of the game used by all players
Here is an example castle, each player builds their own, seeing it should help you understand the rest of my ramblings.

Firstly there are a lot of very specific rules, order and structure to the way you have turns in the game but after a bit if reading it made enough sense and we got that right. But one thing we didn’t d right is the room completion bonus rewards:

These rewards are in fact as it turns out not for when you build a room (when you first acquire the room) in your castle, but in fact for when you close off every opening into a room you then receive the bonus.

In our first playthrough of Castles we took the completion reward as soon as we added a room into our castle, this made the Living, Food and every second downstairs room highly desirable and probably overpowered rooms. Unbalancing the game cause myself to have over twice the victory points of the other two players. While i did very much enjoy the game it was clear we had done something wrong. This was as a eurogame does not rely as much on the luck of the cards drawn as this game had.

This imbalance clearly highlighted the importance and difficulty of balancing eurogames to be satisfying, winnable and not relying on luck to win. Another play through demonstrated the intend balance of the game and lead to a much closer competition.

In the new playthrough the master builder (person who chooses the price of the rooms, it rotates like a dealer in poker) had a much more impactful role. The master builders ability actually impacted the round if played well no matter what room cards were randomly added to the rotation.

This experience showed me the importance of user interface design for board games as misunderstanding of a single mechanic drastically changed how the game plays. On reflection maybe it was clear but for one reason or another it wasn’t clear enough in the game design for us and that is a problem.

Peer Review (Pitch 2 Comments BCM302)

Ben Floyd

Beta

Hi Ben,

Good development and progress on your pitch, I also appreciated the name drop in the latest episode. It’s good to see you have been experimenting with a few different ways of presenting your podcast. your second podcast was definitely better framed from video consumption. In regards to wind sounds in your last video i would recommend borrowing an external mic/audio recorder from the university to help increase audio quality. (you can borrow mics that are very directional ‘shotgun mics’ or ones with covers to reduce wind noises)

I would recommend continuing to slice up the podcasts into smaller segments and either use them as teasers for a new podcast or to try and bring in new listeners and direct them back to your full podcast in-between full podcast releases.

I again encourage you to see what other audio/podcast platforms you can easily add your existing content too.

I like the change up in the titles to try an intrigue and draw new audiences based on the content discussed in your podcasts. Also don’t be afraid of shameless self plugging to help up those viewing numbers as your podcast content is definitely relevant to the majority of your existing social groups/contacts. I also encourage the searching and finding of people will to be interviewed from different demographics/life stages.

 

Emma Pazarkoski

Beta

Hi Emma,

It’s good to see your progress and development of your original idea. I think it is good that you are trying to branch out and get different subjects for your photography. It is good to see you actioning some of the plans you had in your pitch and adapting you way you do other things such as your stories to show some of your videography work. As you have another personal instagram account I would recommend tagging yourself in your photography instagram account to try and harness some of that existing audience.

I encourage the creation of this as a tool you can take from uni with you as a portfolio of your photography work. I will suggest that as you don’t want to change  what/who you are photographing to fit the current ‘instagram aesthetic’ that you might think about choosing 3 (or a multiple of 3) of the same type of image so you can have grouped rows of similar photos to show the multiple ways/skills you have in a single type of photography. An example of where you have done this is the first 3 images on your photography instagram.(the 3 up close portraits).

BCM 302 Project Beta – Try Try again

Try Try again

 

YOUTUBE LINK

Project B update:

I have been to some of the classes they teach robotics and one of their all in FRC team meetings. Looks like good potential to make advertising videos aimed at the facebook mum target and then some instagram content aimed at  kids in the age of the FRC team to help promote and develop extra involvement in the FRC team and the classes they teach to help self fund themselves. Although i am awaiting a reply and as soon as i return from uni games will further enquire how we can progress this DA.

 

Seven Plays

https://www.twitch.tv/sevenplayz

So for my other project I am working on streaming and sharing just me playing games like I normally would but with a webcam directed at my keyboard and mouse like you saw in the pitch video. I have had quite the fail lots before actually getting any content released. Initially streaming with the PC i use to game just didn’t work so i got a capture card but then i needed a USB 3 card and to find its drivers. Once that was all working and i had the webcam plugged in and Elgato streaming program setup was looking good. But when i went to stream i was sending about 1 frame every 30 seconds to twitch which is not a stream. Spent time trouble shooting and worked out it was our internet provider giving us only 4 mbps up instead of 40 causing the problems.

I have finally got it working and started messaging some designer on fiver to help work on my graphics for me, i now have content to start adding to other locations but will be away from the next week in Queensland for uni games so my streaming and content creation should homely kick into gear after that break and i can use the break to set up other streaming accounts like mixer and finalise graphics to restream.io to many locations as soon as i return.

Peer Review (Pitch 1 Comments BCM302)

Ben Floyd

Pitch

Hi Ben,

I like the concept of a podcast based on overcoming personal relatable struggles in life.  I think this should integrate well with the current mix of content on your youtube channel. I also really think the shorter form factor ‘highlights’ from you podcast will work quite well on youtube.

Current podcast stats tell us 52% of podcasts are listened to on apple podcasts 19% on Spotify, 4.6% stitcher and the remaining 21% on other platforms including youtube.(link) This makes me want to recommend you looking into uploading your full form podcast in audio only form to some of these other podcast platforms to increase the reach of your content. I think this will help a lot of your potential audiences listen to your podcast as most times people encounter podcasts they want to have the running in the background which can be difficult on youtube without youtube Red.

I think That you can harness this content in a few more ways then you have suggested by posting small snippets of your podcast on twitter potentially of where the guest or yourself talks about the issue they are about to explain how they overcame. This should act as a bit of lure to come listen to your podcast as people like to have answers to questions they have heard/been asked.

Overall i really like your idea and with good placement and promotion I think you can go far with it. I would also challenge you to try and harness your snapchat to potentially add to your listeners in a non standard way.

 

Emma Pazarkoski

Pitch

Hi Emma,

Instagram something almost everyone has and has more and more people hopping on the bandwagon every day. It’s good to see you already have some established content on your page as a starting point for your DA. Your clear purpose of both presenting work and creating something beautiful because the works individually are. I also encourage the stepping out of your comfort zone to ask people if they don’t mind you taking a photo to help you diversify some of your content and gather content more consistent.

It seems like your portrait shots get the most interactions on your instagram page currently and i think it would be worth seeing if this has anything to do with the use of tagging people, hashtags or timing.

A couple things I would recommend on instagram to make your posts harder for people browsing to just scroll past is always the use of square or portrait images to maximise the screen space your post will take up in someone’s instagram. Also I would recommend only putting one or 2 hashtags in the description of your images and putting up to 30 on the image as a comment so your post still appears with those hashtags but people don’t have to scroll past the hashtags.

 

BCM302 Project Pitch

Projects overview:

Project B:

help increase quality of video production for youtube + facebook, through the use of premier. this will aid an increase in professional feel.

More professional feel through consistent branding and style on all platforms, go to their meetings and some classes they run to help improve their skills record content and produce content for them.

With this experience i hope to increase my skills in branding and targeting.

 

Seven:

I will twitch stream using a camera pointed at my keyboard and mouse as a ‘facecam’ replacement on the stream to differentiate my content from everyone else. This should especially differentiate my content as I only have 7 fingers in total. I will take highlight games and upload them to a youtube channel and highlight plays and put them on instagram.

I hope this will also help me towards my future in advertising by brand creation and targeting specific people that may be interested.

 

youtu.be/dxMeAkOFKwg

BCM212 – reflection

The process of thinking up a question, checking there is a purpose and audience for the answer to the question, developing a set of questions to gather information about the topic without unconscious bias the communicating and receiving answers to the question has showed me a few new things. Both things I learned and things that should be done differently to how I did them.

Firstly i learned about the amount of unconscious bias that goes into questions and the way peoples answers can be greatly shifted to align what the question is suggesting by subconsciously dissuading answers that go against the question. Eg: in what way does x mean y ? this question leaves no real way for someone to explain that in-fact they don’t think x means y and makes it very hard for this opinion to be analysed, you are not really asking a question you are finding out why people agree with you.

Secondly I learned that you need to be willing for your preconceived ideas to be totally wrong about the topic you are investigating and that the final conclusion/question raised by the research you do may not fit into a category you initially thought. Eg: you think you will find out yes this is good or no it is bad but really in fact you find out that for certain groups of people they greatly benefit but others it is a detriment to them, so your answer is both yes and no and not a definitive conclusion you thought you would achieve about your topic.

Lastly the main thing I think I would do differently if I were to do this project again is be willing to included all the questions that seem in any way connected to the research topic that we may not have found a direct link to our question. Such as the gender question we added which allowed us to rule out that this idea was just appealing to a single gender group which really is not in any way a question helping us solve the question at hand but helps control external variables.

In summary this was an interesting experience which help me learn more about subconscious bias in questions, looking outside the expected answers and that the influencing factor might not be something you think relates at all but in the end does matter.

EctoTalk -BCM214 DA

Link

EctoTalk is the idea pitched by the group I was in called Musk’s Memers. This idea heavily indexed into the ideas of the shared economy and globalisation. The goal of EctoTalk was to help to facilitate the continual homogenisation of cultures. It is an innovative use of Augmented Reality (AR) technology that doesn’t just try to expand or integrate smart phone technology further into everyday life. Instead EctoTalk uses AR technology with Augmented Sound Recognition (ASR) to create a new way of communication.

I think this is a very innovative way to look at AR technology which is predicted to be the next big thing in the technology space. This new way of using AR technology like EctoTalk can provide large amounts of social utility. This social utility comes from multi language speakers and limited hearing users. Those that are speaking between languages can use EctoTalk as the intermediary instead of the need for a translator as is provides live subtitles to the user in their own language and can speak back the users words into the language that they are being spoken to in. For deaf and hard of hearing people who use EctoTalk it helps them be more spatially aware of what around them and interact with people using EctoTalk as their voice and read the live subtitles of what is being said to them. This creates opportunity for integration of these people into situations they would otherwise be unable to contribute in without someone who can sign or the use of writing.

 

I believe this innovation will also help integrate with the digital economy. EctoTalk will do this by innovating the way in which AR technology is used and harnessed. It provides a new way to look at how AR technology can be used to do more than just be a new fancy smart watch type accessory for your smart phone. This type of innovation helps prompt others to find new innovative way to use and improve this technology. This in turn will also help the shared economy with better designs for everyone.

 

EctoTalk you could say is is partially derivative of a google translate. Except this is nothing new under the sun , which many people have said (originally King Solomon of Israel, Ecclesiastes 1:9)  and is now just an expression which shows how we just iterate ideas and improve efficiency of ideas with innovation not really create anything new. EctoTalk does this both improving the efficiency and ease of use of this type of technology and innovating how it can be used.

I created this style of DA advertisement for the EctoTalk following the industry standard short style ads thats tease then reveal and quick fire some tech specs of the product of to gain interest. This suits EctoTalk because it is an innovative new tech product. This video provides some hint as to EctoTalks potential but generally serves to show off the products design more than be an informative PSA about EctoTalk.