[game_edu] Looking for articles, books or other stuff based on porting board games to videogames

[Simon Et. Rozner]

Definitely agree with you guys. It is definitely a very valuable book. I
started using it in my classroom as well.
The exercises are the most valuable part of it and definitely go two ways.

Simon
___________
Lecturer
DigiPen Singapore

Philip Tan wrote:

> I, too, would like to shamelessly plug "Challenges for Game

> Designers". If you've never seen it before, each chapter ends with

> specific design activities, and actually doing them can be extremely

> illuminating and make the points far easier to remember than just

> reading the book cover-to-cover.

> ----

> Philip Tan

> Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

>

>

> On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:54 PM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com

> <mailto:ai864 at yahoo.com>> wrote:

>

>     Hi Carlos (and anyone else who might be interested),

>

>     If you were talking about making a board-game version of a video

>     game (digital to physical), I should shamelessly plug "Challenges

>     for Game Designers" which has a chapter devoted to that topic.

>

>     If you're going the other way, making an online version of a

>     physical board game, I don't know offhand of any articles but I do

>     know a few basic concepts:

>

>     Basically, the design of the game mechanics is already done, but

>     that doesn't mean you can fire your game designers :). Rather, it

>     means your game design tasks must focus on UI.

>

>     What makes a good digital UI for a physical board game? In

>     general, it mostly involves simplifying the game interface with

>     the goal of making gameplay faster and more streamlined. Examples:

>     * Automation of non-decision-based tasks (e.g. setup, cleanup, upkeep)

>     * Simplification of physically complex tasks to single button-presses

>     * Where applicable, AI opponents to allow single-player play of a

>     multiplayer game.

>

>     In my classes, I like to use case studies. My two favorite examples:

>

>     1) "Hey, That's My Fish!" is a very simple tile-based tabletop

>     game for 2 to 4 players. In short, each player places several

>     penguins each on their own hex tiles. On your turn, you select one

>     penguin to move in any direction, any number of spaces... but it

>     can't jump over another penguin or an empty space. After moving,

>     you take the hex you started on off the board and place it in your

>     score pile. If a penguin is isolated on its own tile, it is

>     removed from the board and you score that tile. Game ends when all

>     penguins are removed. The strategy involves trying to isolate

>     other players' penguins on small islands while trying to trap your

>     own penguins on large areas.

>

>     The beginning of the game requires a bit of setup, as you have to

>     shuffle 60 hex tiles and lay them out in a roughly-square

>     configuration, rearranging them as needed to prevent too many

>     clusters of high-scoring tiles. At the end of the game players

>     must count their points (each hex is anywhere from 1 to 3 points).

>     The actual play of the game takes maybe 5 minutes, and frankly the

>     setup and scoring takes as long as the play.

>

>     Now, take a look at the game on www.brettspielwelt.de

>     <http://www.brettspielwelt.de> (there is a treasure trove of other

>     board games there, and all free). Indeed, tile setup is automated,

>     instantly making the game better. It also counts points for tiles

>     automatically, so scoring at the end of the game is instant. At

>     first, it would appear the online version is now superior to the

>     tabletop version.

>

>     But then, as they say, the designer grasps defeat from the jaws of

>     victory. In end game situations where individual penguins are all

>     isolated on their own multi-tile islands (which happens in most

>     plays), in the tabletop game, players just manually collect all of

>     those tiles. However, in the online version, it offers no

>     "pathfinding" for islands and therefore forces players to manually

>     click and move until all penguins are on single-tile islands. In

>     other words, after the game is already effectively over, the

>     players still need to spend 2 or 3 minutes just clicking and

>     moving, over and over, to manually let the computer figure out

>     that the game is over. Oops!

>

>

>     2) Compare several computer versions of the classic board game

>     RISK. My favorite version, though you'll probably have to find an

>     emulator these days to play it, was the version for the old Apple

>     Macintosh. In the settings, you could tell it to keep rolling on

>     an attack until you succeed or fail, and you could also place all

>     of your armies in a single location by Shift+Click. Between those

>     two things and AI opponents (with 3 difficulty levels) that take

>     their turns instantly, you could finish a complete game in about

>     two minutes... and while you may not have the satisfaction of

>     trouncing other people across a table, you make up for it by

>     having a game that takes minutes instead of hours, making it a

>     great coffee-break time waster.

>

>     Now, compare to a more recent version of RISK, on PC or console.

>     Many of these have much nicer graphics, but do not offer the

>     shortcuts that allow for play that the old Mac version did. These

>     games still may take shorter than the original board game... maybe

>     10 to 30 minutes per play... but they still feel slow to me

>     because I know there's extraneous things like cut scenes of armies

>     attacking or showing the virtual dice rolling, which make

>     everything take longer. Console versions in particular lack

>     point-and-click functionality, forcing you to wait for a cursor to

>     move around the map using analog sticks.

>

>

>     Note that some mechanics translate better to digital versions than

>     others. In particular, games where players act asynchronously tend

>     to work better than those where play is simultaneous. Negotiation

>     and trading mechanics tend to feel slow online compared to

>     tabletop play; compare trading resources in person with Settlers

>     of Catan, versus the XBLA version (and mind you, the XBLA version

>     in particular did a stellar job at streamlining this aspect of

>     play... but even still, nothing is as fast as just asking "anyone

>     got grain for sheep?", having someone respond "no, but I've got

>     brick", then saying "sold" and swapping cards). Games like Brawl

>     or Pit that have everyone acting all at once are so difficult that

>     it would make a pretty extreme challenge as a port. Magic: the

>     Gathering is also challenging, not only because of the overly

>     complex mechanics and card interactions, but because of all of the

>     phases during play where players can interrupt one another to take

>     an action in response to another players' action; note that with

>     MTG Online they go to great lengths to streamline this, allowing

>     players to turn off their response prompts to certain types of

>     events and having a Chess-like clock to prevent players from

>     stalling the game too much.

>

>

>     Hope this helps!

>

>     - Ian

>

>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------

>     *From:* Carlos Contreras Peinado <erwaitin at gmail.com

>     <mailto:erwaitin at gmail.com>>

>     *To:* game_edu at igda.org <mailto:game_edu at igda.org>

>     *Sent:* Thu, April 15, 2010 6:57:20 PM

>     *Subject:* [game_edu] Looking for articles, books or other stuff

>     based on porting board games to videogames

>

>     Hello,

>

>     I'm trying to learn about porting board games to videogames from a

>     game design perspective. Anyone knows about good books, articles

>     or any other stuff about this? Thank you!

>

>

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