Week 4- From Folk to Sports

This week we finished playing the folk games we made last week. The last game we played, Four Square Joker, was the game my group helped playtest. It was interesting to see what changes were made to the product after the feedback we gave. The rule that the joker had to bounce their ball along the middle line was a suggestion made by our group to minimize chaos. Going into the folkgame assignment I was little stressed about how it would turn out. when reflecting upon it I realized that what you start with isn’t as important as iterating on it and seeing what works.

In The reading, Macklin and Sharp mentioned that categorizing videogames into Genres can “limit the potential of what game designers can try to create for players”. I can kind understand this after my experience making the folkgame. I was so caught up in the details about what is the game supposed to be and what kind of boxes I needed to tick off to turn in the assignment. This made the task seem a bit overwhelming at first even though it was supposed to be a short fun game. I can also see the extreme fixation of genres as a possible detriment to the player experience as well. Players may not get to experience a game they may otherwise have liked, just because they usually stick to a certain genre. Players could also go into a game with a negative mindset because the genre Is different, tinting their perception. A couple years back, I would buy games just because it said it was multiplayer and would ultimately find myself unsatisfied in my experience with the game.

In the Bennet Foddy’s video, he talks about differences between sports and videogames. I agree with him on that sports succeed because they can be spectated and experienced by the Crowd. As a kid one of my favorite things to do was watch my friends play their DS or Gameboy. At the time I didn’t have my own, but I had just as much fun cheering them on during a battle, working together to solve a puzzle, or simply laughing when they missed a jump. I think that videogames have started breaking into that social aspect with the rise of streamers and lets players. I do think the biggest obstacle is the stigma against videogames. Bennet Foddy addressed this a little bit at the end during questions, but people games as childish and waste of time. Seeing videogames as just a “game” is fine, but ultimately sports are also a “game” meant for fun.