So today is Dday, and we've put our game up for the lower years to play; not as smooth as I had imagined. The main cause of the problem was lack of play testing after major changes had been made. This resulted in a pretty bumpy experience for both our team, and the players. We weren't able to project our game easy enough for people to simply just 'Pick up and Play' so to speak. The game is based on teamplay and tactics, meaning a lot of people new to the game, and new to the rules wouldn't have been able to create strategy whilst still taking in the rules for the first time. The first problem of the play test was appeal. Our game was situated towards the back of the room, and our game has always revolved more around the concept and strategy of the game as an oppose to the look of our board. We we're relatively happy with the board for it's purpose, with more time we would have produced a more visually striking board, but with the smallest group in the class and such a small project, time kinda crept up on us. As people flooded in to play the games, people naturally started to crowed around the games situated at the front, heading mainly towards the boards with a more 3D plain. I've never considered the other teams board design to be better than our own until today, purely because it worked. They had all the attention without having to move; people just turned up to play without knowing about their battle system, without knowing of their move systems. I kinda got so lost in the idea of a balanced game, with interesting mechanics, I forgot that we live in a world where cosmetics are key. Regardless of who's game was better thought about, or more finely tuned in terms of skill, and gameplay. Whether they intended for it to happen or not, they won on marketing.
The second factor that put people off was the level of information each person had to consume before they even thought about playing the game. This had never crossed my mind before because I've been working around this game for the past 3 weeks, and the rules are second nature to me, after all I made them. The problem was that people had to pick up 3 weeks worth of idea generation for a game we unknowingly tailored for a specific audience, and then remember it all throughout the game to play the best they could. In a nutshell, the wasn't remotely noob friendly. On a brighter note, we were fortunate to get a group of players that were patient enough to sit through the rules of the game, and eventually got the game going the way we intented. From a spectators perspective, the players seemed to be enjoying their game, but on top of that, it was enjoyable for me to watch people play. They laughed, joked and generally had a good time, giving us brilliant feedback, not only positive, but contructive too. They noted that the rules had taken too long to read before starting, and that there were a few skills that needed tweaking, all things I had made a note of whilst the game was in progress. I'm still confident that the rules and game play is amongst the stronger half of the class, however the game has a pretty double edged learning curve. What I mean by this is; players found the learning curve too high, but once you got into it, the skill level of the game was appropriate, where people can play their own specs, the way they want, in a tactical team based board game. If the project were to continue, I would take the game forward, and remove some of the initial complication and confusion caused by the rules, whilst still trying to keep the complexity of the game
The main cure to games weakness is time, but then the question becomes "Did we not have enough time? Or did we simply not work fast enough?".
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