specifications sheet
games
I started by thinking of different board games that I have either played recently or as a child. The game that I remembered most from my childhood is Connect 4, this game is for 2 players and the purpose of the game is that you have to get 4 in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Even though this game seems to just be an easy, quick game to occupy your mind for a few minutes, it is actually full of strategies and logic which means that your knowledge and brain capacity grows subconsciously as you carry on playing it.
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Another game that I used to play a lot in my childhood was Guess Who which is where you pick a card that has a picture of a person on it and your opponent has to try to find out who you have on your card by asking yes or no questions. This game involved logic as you had to try to come up with the best questions that would limit it down the fastest, for example: the first question that people tend to ask when playing this game is if your character is a female/male, you also have to be extremely inquisitive.
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In the lesson, we got to play some games to get inspired as to what we want our game to be like. I played three games during the lesson, these were Top Trumps: Famous Artists, City Square Off and Ex Libris. The first game was Top Trumps which was very interesting to play and very fact based, there was also a simple picture and information about artists but because the facts and figures vary so much it is very fun and can be quite competitive.
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The next game that I played was City Square Off which is where you have 1 city feature in the middle of the board and you put different shape tiles on the board in the slots and whoever fills it up the most without going outside the boundary wins, I found this game quite fun to play however it has nothing to do with photography and I can't think of a way that it could be linked towards photography.
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Another game that I played was Ex Libris which is a card game and on each card there is information about a writer and the beginning of the sentence of the first and last sentence in a book of the writers so you have to write the rest of the sentence, after everyone has written the end of the sentence they all get put in a pile and someone else reads them out, the players then have to guess which one was the actual ending to the book and the winner is the person that fooled the most people with their sentence. I personally did not enjoy playing this game very much and I also did not think that there was a way that I could change it into a game that related directly to photography.
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Pinterest board
Whilst in my research stage, we were given a sheet which shows the normal objectives that are included in a game. The objectives are listed below:
- Parameterized play- consisting of rules by which a group of players agree to abide for the duration of the game.
- A goal, sometimes expressed as a series of sub-goals that collectively lead to a meta-goal.
- Obstacles that create challenges to achieving the goal.
- Resources, initially provided to players at random or symmetrically, but later more often as rewards for overcoming obstacles.
- Consequences, which come in the form of either rewards (sometimes as resources) or penalties (sometimes obstacles).
- Information: both known and unknown
PHOTOGRAPHY GAME IDEAS:
- What type of game are you planning to make?
- What aspect of photography would you like your game to explore?
- What research do you plan to do?
- What material/resources do you need?
my game ideas:
- The game starts with 30 cards, each card has written on the front: the name of a photographer, some information about them and a quote, on the back there is a photograph that the photographer could be well known for.
- Different genres of photography on all of the different cards: fashion, celebrity and band, commercial, fine art, sports, lifestyle, landscapes, portraits, wildlife, architecture, travel, etc.
- different (possibly well known) photographers
- fashion photographers that are well known but you don't know much about them
I decided that none of these ideas would work as they were not developed enough and don't really have the requirements that I wanted for the game like a goal to meet which means that you've won and obstacles in the way.
my finaL IDEA
There will be a board to work around, every other place on the board is either a fact or a question. There will be around 50 fact cards and around 40 question cards, you roll the dice to find out how far along the board you have to get to and the first person to get to the end wins.
This final idea involves parametrized play which means there are instructions of how to play that you have to abide by, there is also a goal at the end which is winning the game, obstacles which creates challenges to achieving the goal, consequences if you land on certain squares and information that is revealed to you throughout the process of the game.
This final idea involves parametrized play which means there are instructions of how to play that you have to abide by, there is also a goal at the end which is winning the game, obstacles which creates challenges to achieving the goal, consequences if you land on certain squares and information that is revealed to you throughout the process of the game.
dice
After much experimentation of different dices, I decided that in the end a normal six sided cuboid would be the best dice as it only needs to have numbers on to see where you have to move your counter to next.
I decided that I would only have one dice as otherwise the game could get to the point of being too complicated. |
Gallery
I went to a few small art galleries in Whitstable which had some photographs throughout them, I went to "The Fish Slab Gallery", "Whitstable Museum and Gallery", "The Horsebridge art & community centre", and some small individual artists work in beach huts at Whitstable harbour. I unfortunately couldn't take any pictures of the photographs on show, however from looking at these images I came up with the idea that some of the questions should be based on a famous/well known photograph and you have to guess where it is/ when it was taken. The best photographers work that I saw was Steve Melrose who is a fine art photographer.
cards
Below are the cards that I made for the questions, as you can see the answers are on the back of the cards which is why they are upside down as I folded them in half and stuck them together.
facts
The facts that I found are listed below, it was extremely difficult to discover over 50 facts but I knew that I needed quite a lot so that the game didn't get too repetitive or boring.
- The first successful photograph was made in 1827
- The first colour photograph was made in 1861 by James Clark Maxwell
- The first pinhole camera was made between 1000-1600
- The first digital camera was created in December 1975
- The first self portrait was made in 1839 by Robert Cornelius
- The first camera was sold by Kodak in 1888
- On average last year, adult brits say they were drunk in 76% of the photos they were tagged in in social media
- We take as many photos in two minutes as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s
- People didn’t smile in photographs as the exposure took minutes and it is uncomfortable to smile for that long
- Photographers say “say cheese” simply to get you to smile
- The longest photographic negative is 129 feet long by Esteban Pastorino Diaz
- A university study showed that the left side of people’s faces are perceived as more aesthetically pleasing than the right
- To photograph children when there was only long exposure cameras, mothers had to sit all covered and disguised as a chair holding their babies
- The total number of photos on Facebook is 10,000 times greater than the total number of photographs in the US Library of Congress
- Kodak released Brownie (camera) inn 1900 at the cost of $1, photography became widespread
- By 1930 more than a billion photographs were taken per year
- By 1960, 55% of photographs taken were of babies
- By 1960, nearly 3 billion photographs were taken per year
- By the 1970s, about 10 billion photographs were clicked per year
- By the 1980s, about 25 billion photographs were taken per year
- By the 1990s, about 57 billion photographs were clicked per year
- By 2000, about 86 billion photos were taken per year
- Now over 350 billion photos are taken per year
- Mankind have taken over 3.8 trillion photographs to date
- The most expensive camera to sell was the 1923 Leica o-Series camera which sold for $2.8 million
- The world record for the most amount of antique cameras collected is 4,425
- More than 240 billion photos have been uploaded onto Facebook
- As of August 2013, 350 million photographs were uploaded on Facebook everyday
- The first aerial photograph was by a balloonist from a hot air balloon
- The founder of Kodak committed suicide as he had lumbar spinal stenosis, his note read “ My work is done, why wait?”
- There are over 284 million photos with the hashtag selfie on Instagram
- 70% of Instagram users check it at least once a day
- The oldest known photo with a person in shot shows a man in Paris getting his shoes shined
- In 2012, 37% of the images in the US were captured using camera phones
- The biggest SLR lens weighs 256kg and has a focal length of 1700mm
- The largest photographs in the world are made by stitching smaller images together
- In 1990, Kodak used cuddly collectible toys to promote their brand to try to get kids into photography
- During a solar eclipse, tree leaves have been seen to act as pinhole lenses, casting crescent-shaped images of the eclipsed sun on the ground
- A photo of a Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture is said to be one of the saddest pictures in the world
PROTOTYPE
My prototype was very simple, it consisted of questions and answer cards, a dice, instructions and a board. I asked Georgina if she would test out my game with me and give me some harsh feedback so I knew where I should improve.
To begin with, I knew that I needed to rewrite the instructions so that they were more aesthetically pleasing but also more understandable.
I had two separate piles of cards, one was the questions and the others was the answers. It became clear to me straight away that having two separate piles would not work and was not the best option. I also found out that around half of the questions were actually too hard as they were not based on the knowledge that we have grown throughout the year of photography. This is when I decided that I was going add another pile of cards to the game, the "fact cards" this is mainly because I thought that some of the answers to the questions were very interesting and I didn't want them to go to waste!
FEEDBACK
Once I made my first copy of my final game, we got feedback from our peers to see if there are any improvements that I can make. The feedback for my game is shown below.
The first bit of feedback that I received was quite quite positive, it showed that the instructions were very clear which is something that I was very worried about as I wasn't sure if I had made the instructions very clear. They also said that during their experience of playing the game that the facts were very interesting and that they have learnt about photography whilst playing the game as the questions were challenging which means that you are more likely to remember the answers. They also commented on some improvements that could be made on my game, the first improvement would be if there was a consequence of a correct or incorrect answer and they also said that it could be refined further by having some cards with photographs on them and that the board should also have some photos on it too. They have also said that there could be more spaces on the board for the cards which I have also taken on board.
The second piece of feedback that I received was that the rules are very clear and simple, the game is fun to play as it has a range of easy to hard questions and that there are lots of different facts and questions about photography which are interesting and you learn a lot from it. The only improvements that were suggested were that there were no consequences to answering the questions incorrectly and that it should be refined by having more photos on the board or a different design.
The second piece of feedback that I received was that the rules are very clear and simple, the game is fun to play as it has a range of easy to hard questions and that there are lots of different facts and questions about photography which are interesting and you learn a lot from it. The only improvements that were suggested were that there were no consequences to answering the questions incorrectly and that it should be refined by having more photos on the board or a different design.
IMPROVEMENTS MADE
There were some minor adjustments made to the game after I received feedback, this was that it needed to have a consequence when you get a question wrong on the game. I done this by creating an additional set of rules shown below:
my finished game
evaluation
I found creating my own photography game very difficult. I struggled with the concept of coming up with a game that related to photography that fulfilled the requirements of a game that was also an original idea which was fun to play. To develop my ideas, I played various games. Some related to photography and some not to get more of an idea about what types of games existed and could inspire me. One of the first games I played was "The Art Game" which is completely based on Top Trumps. You can have as many players as you like ( I started with 4 including myself), each of us had 7 cards each. One person started and we had to see if we could beat their score, if we beat everyone's then we got all the cards. When playing this I thoroughly enjoyed the concept as I played Top Trumps as a child. However I was worried that if my game took the form of top Trumps it would not be very original but also the photographic/ educational aspect of it would be lost. I also played other games, one of which was an English Literature game called “Ex Libris” where you get the beginning half of the sentence or beginning half of the end sentence and you and four or more players have to write the rest of the sentence; the person who read out the sentences has to read out all of the endings plus the real story line and you have to try to decide which one is real. I found this game really difficult but intriguing. However it was not something that I wanted to pursue as my game. I also played “City Square Off” which is a game that is very hands on. It involves having one city feature in the middle of the board and then you and your opponent have to put different shape tiles on the grid/ board which is very much so in the style of tetris and whoever manages to put the most on their grid without going out of the boundary wins. As well as the wide range of games that I investigated, I also read a few books. One of which was Hans Ulrich Obrist “do it” the compendium. It is a very interesting book which is full of quotes, instructions and intriguing sentences. An example of this is "smile at the stranger" and "Whatever you do, do something else". When I read this book, it made me want to tie some quotes into my game somehow. I also visited some art galleries in Whitstable which did include photos. I visited "The Fish Slab Gallery", "Whitstable Museum and Gallery", "The Horsebridge art & community centre", and looked at some artists/photographers work in beach huts at Whitstable harbour. I feel like this visit really inspired me with my game idea as it is made the photography aspect of the game come back to life as I have been concentrating so much on the theory of the game that I was unintentionally ignoring the photography side of it. I also looked at the Tallis Pinterest board about photography games and found some very interesting concepts and ideas for my game, for example a board game or a card game seemed to be the two items that stuck out to me. I feel like my research was quite thorough in some areas as I did plenty of research as I didn't know what I wanted my game to be like, however I would have preferred to do more research on artists' games and more research in bigger galleries. If I had to redo this stage of the project again, I would research as many games as I did but I would also look more into artists' games and how they could be related to photography but also I would have gone to multiple galleries and exhibitions in London as they have more artists’ work on display that I can learn from.
After plenty of research and thinking, I came up with multiple ideas for my game. Most of my ideas were all based on the same topic but were expanded in a number of different ways. My first idea was that I had 30 cards, each has written on the front: the name of a photographer, some information about them and a quote then on the back there is a photograph that the photographer is well known for. I decided not to go with this idea as I thought that there wasn't enough substance or thought that had gone into it, I couldn't think of how someone could win without going down the route of Top Trumps which I didn't want to do. The next idea that I had was that there would be different genres of photography on all of the different cards, for example: fashion, celebrity and band, commercial, fine art, sports, lifestyle, landscapes, portraits, wildlife, architecture and travel; for each of these topics I was going to name famous photographers and one of their images so you have to match the image to the genre however this didn't really seem that fun and you wouldn't learn anything from it so I decided that this wasn't a very good idea either. My next idea was about fashion photographers as some of them are very well known however you don't know much about them. I decided this idea wouldn't work as I couldn't think of how to develop it further so that it would meet the requirements I had set for the game like a goal to meet (a finish) or any obstacles. My final idea was a board game where you roll a dice and land on a square and then answer the question. Once I’d thought of this idea, I made a prototype which was very simple and just in black and white with very simple instructions so that it could easily be played and so that Georgina (who I got to play my game) understood how it was meant to work. Georgina helped me improve my game by her feedback which was that the game didn’t work very smoothly as the questions were too challenging to be answered by Georgina which is when I came up with the idea of creating fact cards. After plenty of adjustments made after my prototypes my last idea was a game board where every other place on the board is either a fact or a question. There are about 50 facts and 30 questions, you have to roll the dice to find out how many places to move. The objective is to be the first person to the finish. My final idea is extremely involved with parameterized play which means there are instructions of how to play that you have to abide by, a goal at the end which means that you’ve won the game, obstacles which create challenges to achieving the goal and consequences if you get the answer wrong.
I made a prototype of my work which helped me reflect on what I had done so far but also get an insight into what it would be like to play that game in a real life situation. This helped me find the faults with the game and how to improve it further. It was also at this stage that I was experimenting with multiple dice and how I could involve them into my game, however after plenty of experimentation I realised that it was an unrealistic expectation and that I wouldn't be able to use them or being able to transport the without getting damaged. We also played the games of our peers and gave and received feedback for our own games, I am very content with my feedback and took the constructive criticism on board and made some adjustments to my game that I am very happy that I made as the improvements really made a difference to the end result of my game. I feel like the idea process is where I made the slowest progress in my game as it was the most difficult but after I had my final idea everything started to come together.
To conclude, I am very happy with the final game. I am also pleased that I made a prototype as it made me improve my game further and made it at least double as good as the first model. I am also thankful for the constructive feedback that I received so that I could improve my work even further by adding in another element so that there was a setback if you answered the question incorrectly. The meaning of the game was that not only would you learn something from the game but that you also have fun whilst playing it with your friends. The reason why I chose a board game was because I personally find it quite upsetting that as you grow older you tend to lose contact with your "inner child" and stop playing board games anymore. Our generation relies too much on technology and forget about the fun that you can have without using it and also being able to learn from it at the same time. The thing that took me the longest about making the game was choosing a name. The name of the game is extremely important. If a game has a rubbish name you are less likely to want to play it and it also give the player the misconception that it is going to be a boring game to play. I wanted it to be fun and catchy which is when I came up with Photo Fact or Question as it sounds pleasing when said quickly and sums the game up in one line. My game is related solely to photography as that is the topic of the game. It is impossible to play Photo Fact or Question without coming across anything photographic. My project is definitely personal to me as it seems to show my personality and taste. The small cards are piled neatly and are black and white which is very simplistic and minimal which is what I like. However some colour is introduced in the board game as if and to keep in mind that not everyone that plays the game has the same opinions as me and also the fact that it needed to be slightly eye catching so that people were attracted to the colour and wanted to play it so I made it varying shades of blue. It also shows my personality through some of the quirky, random facts as I find them really interesting. I also learnt a lot in the process of making the game. I managed to find out over 50 interesting facts about photography and I also learnt about how I really enjoy taking on board any constructive criticism as I am always trying to improve my work so that it is the best it can be.
After plenty of research and thinking, I came up with multiple ideas for my game. Most of my ideas were all based on the same topic but were expanded in a number of different ways. My first idea was that I had 30 cards, each has written on the front: the name of a photographer, some information about them and a quote then on the back there is a photograph that the photographer is well known for. I decided not to go with this idea as I thought that there wasn't enough substance or thought that had gone into it, I couldn't think of how someone could win without going down the route of Top Trumps which I didn't want to do. The next idea that I had was that there would be different genres of photography on all of the different cards, for example: fashion, celebrity and band, commercial, fine art, sports, lifestyle, landscapes, portraits, wildlife, architecture and travel; for each of these topics I was going to name famous photographers and one of their images so you have to match the image to the genre however this didn't really seem that fun and you wouldn't learn anything from it so I decided that this wasn't a very good idea either. My next idea was about fashion photographers as some of them are very well known however you don't know much about them. I decided this idea wouldn't work as I couldn't think of how to develop it further so that it would meet the requirements I had set for the game like a goal to meet (a finish) or any obstacles. My final idea was a board game where you roll a dice and land on a square and then answer the question. Once I’d thought of this idea, I made a prototype which was very simple and just in black and white with very simple instructions so that it could easily be played and so that Georgina (who I got to play my game) understood how it was meant to work. Georgina helped me improve my game by her feedback which was that the game didn’t work very smoothly as the questions were too challenging to be answered by Georgina which is when I came up with the idea of creating fact cards. After plenty of adjustments made after my prototypes my last idea was a game board where every other place on the board is either a fact or a question. There are about 50 facts and 30 questions, you have to roll the dice to find out how many places to move. The objective is to be the first person to the finish. My final idea is extremely involved with parameterized play which means there are instructions of how to play that you have to abide by, a goal at the end which means that you’ve won the game, obstacles which create challenges to achieving the goal and consequences if you get the answer wrong.
I made a prototype of my work which helped me reflect on what I had done so far but also get an insight into what it would be like to play that game in a real life situation. This helped me find the faults with the game and how to improve it further. It was also at this stage that I was experimenting with multiple dice and how I could involve them into my game, however after plenty of experimentation I realised that it was an unrealistic expectation and that I wouldn't be able to use them or being able to transport the without getting damaged. We also played the games of our peers and gave and received feedback for our own games, I am very content with my feedback and took the constructive criticism on board and made some adjustments to my game that I am very happy that I made as the improvements really made a difference to the end result of my game. I feel like the idea process is where I made the slowest progress in my game as it was the most difficult but after I had my final idea everything started to come together.
To conclude, I am very happy with the final game. I am also pleased that I made a prototype as it made me improve my game further and made it at least double as good as the first model. I am also thankful for the constructive feedback that I received so that I could improve my work even further by adding in another element so that there was a setback if you answered the question incorrectly. The meaning of the game was that not only would you learn something from the game but that you also have fun whilst playing it with your friends. The reason why I chose a board game was because I personally find it quite upsetting that as you grow older you tend to lose contact with your "inner child" and stop playing board games anymore. Our generation relies too much on technology and forget about the fun that you can have without using it and also being able to learn from it at the same time. The thing that took me the longest about making the game was choosing a name. The name of the game is extremely important. If a game has a rubbish name you are less likely to want to play it and it also give the player the misconception that it is going to be a boring game to play. I wanted it to be fun and catchy which is when I came up with Photo Fact or Question as it sounds pleasing when said quickly and sums the game up in one line. My game is related solely to photography as that is the topic of the game. It is impossible to play Photo Fact or Question without coming across anything photographic. My project is definitely personal to me as it seems to show my personality and taste. The small cards are piled neatly and are black and white which is very simplistic and minimal which is what I like. However some colour is introduced in the board game as if and to keep in mind that not everyone that plays the game has the same opinions as me and also the fact that it needed to be slightly eye catching so that people were attracted to the colour and wanted to play it so I made it varying shades of blue. It also shows my personality through some of the quirky, random facts as I find them really interesting. I also learnt a lot in the process of making the game. I managed to find out over 50 interesting facts about photography and I also learnt about how I really enjoy taking on board any constructive criticism as I am always trying to improve my work so that it is the best it can be.