Tag: mobile game

The Multi-Faceted Impact of Free Rice 

Free Rice is a game that was created for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The core mechanic is to answer questions by choosing from a list of four words which one most accurately defines a given term. This in itself is an indicator a social impact game as it prioritizes knowledge instead of the “antagonistic, and antisocial themes” that are embodied by many modern games. (Flanagan & Nissenbaum) However there are a few other additional social and political messages that are part of it. One which the game is fairly straightforward about is that for every question answered correctly 20 grains of rice are donated to the WFP. This acts as the game score tracker, as a bowl of rice and counter are present at the bottom of the screen to remind players of how much rice they have caused to be donated. This visual indicator effectively gives players a reminder of the positive impact their playing is having, as well as reminds them there are people out there who are struggling to have enough to eat. This reminder could potentially open up the door for players to find other ways to help those who are hungry, such as donating to or volunteering at a local food bank.

Similar to the potential consequences of players being conscious of food scarcity, Free Rice has another social message that is not overtly obvious. While there is always only one correct answer, some of the incorrect choices have the potential to seem correct depending on the player’s background. For example, one of the questions has “horror” as the word that needs defining. The options players have to choose from for this question are attorney, small horse, motor, and dread. While it seems obvious that dread is the correct answer, it is possible the others could be viewed as horrors as well. To someone living in a society that relies heavily on animal labor, a small horse could be a horror. An individual who has lived their life in an isolated tribe could view a motor as a horror due to it being a threat to their pre-industrial way of life and culture. In the case of myself, I’m biased towards feeling that attorneys are horrors due to coming from a family of lawyers and being in a relationship with one (both of whom are fans of the “lawyers = bad” trope often found in American comedy). 

This more nuanced aspect helps make players more aware of how “surrounding societies and cultures” promote certain values and how that impacts views of what words means. (ibid.) This combined with the other positive impactful features of the game’s mechanics makes Free Rice an enjoyable and thoughtful game.

Free Rice is available for PC and Mobile on its website.

Sources

Flanagan, Mary & Helen Nissenbaum. “A Game Design Methodology to
Incorporate Social Activist Themes” CHI 2007 Proceedings • Politics & Activism. San Jose, 2007. PDF.

Cyborgs & Hackers in Old School Runescape

Old School Runescape (OSRS) is an MMO that fosters the two different types of personalities described by Dovey and Kennedy in Game Cultures: the Cyborg and the Hacker. One of the biggest goals for Old School Runescape players, myself included, is to acquire more in-game wealth. To do this often involves long sprints of grinding for resources. On it’s own this tends to be fairly tedious and take a long time, so often I try to have time in my schedule where I can simultaneously do grinding heavy OSRS tasks and “real world” tasks. This has had the interesting side effect of two parts of my life, gamer and student, becoming symbotic. From the gamer side, by doing AFK tasks in OSRS while I work on an assignment I’m increasing my in-game productivity. Looking at it from a real world perspective, I’m giving my brain a brief respite when I take a few seconds to deposit items from my inventory or click on a newly spawned resource. These small detours from my primary task allow me to work for longer periods of time, as they stave off the feeling of being burnt out. By emeshing my virtual and real world work I’m simultaneously in both of these worlds, which is in line with the fluid identity of the Cyborg. (Dovey & Kennedy 68) This phenomenon is not isolated to just myself, as conversations with other players of OSRS revealed that the practice of AFK resource gathering while doing real world tasks is a relatively common practice. (personal communication)

 While engaging with OSRS from a Cyborg approach allows for an increase in productivity, and by extension earnings, other players choose to go a different route. This is that of the Hacker, where players use outside technologies to advance their productivity and earnings. Unlike Cyborg players, Hacker players use technology that is not part of the game’s original design to circumvent grinding. The most common way to do this is by using bots that automatically gather resources. Some might argue that this is not that different from the AFK routine Cyborgs utilize. The difference lies in how bots remove the necessity of shifting from real world tasks to manage game tasks, thereby making the player’s identity less fluid and more static in the real world. It should also be noted that the designers behind OSRS never intended it to be a game where players can completely disengage from their tasks, as seen in early versions where players had to click a resource almost continuously in order to keep harvesting. (Calvin 44) Someone using bots does not have to worry about periodically checking in to manually empty an inventory or click a respawned resource. Because of this they are changing the technological systems of OSRS in a way that was not part of the original design. (Dovey & Kennedy 67) Another, more nefarious type of Hacker approach is the use of scam promoting bots. These are often seen in popular areas for player to player resource trading, such as outside house portals or the Grand Exchange. These bots will spam messages promising fast cash and valuable items, often embellished by flashing colors and fonts. While some of these are real players who are liquidating their wealth prior to quitting the game, many more are just get rich quick schemes that at best will rip off players and at worst steal their personal information.

It may be surprising to those outside the OSRS community to learn that removal of these Hackers is something many OSRS players are not 100% in favor of. The use of bots has been going on in OSRS for so long that they have become part of the game’s cultural landscape. Whether it’s 2007 or 2022, every time I walk up to the Grand Exchange I’m filled with eager anticipation, excited to see what dazzling display of multi-colored flashing posts promising quick and easy gold I’ll be greeted with this time. The spamming of “EZ 1 MIL” and “FREE LAVA CAPE” are enticing reminders of the riches one can acquire. Visiting the Grand Exchange is a lot like going to the Las Vegas Strip. Most players know not to fall for the flashy ads for coin and loot, but knowing that doesn’t stop them from getting amused by the Hackers’ hustle. It may not be the approach to gathering wealth the game’s creators intended, but it’s one that enough players have acknowledged as a legitimate option that it has become accepted by the community. Just as Hackers and Cyborgs play an integral role in shaping overall game culture, so too have they had a hand in shaping the economic landscape of Gielinor.

Old School Runescape is Available on Steam, Google Play, App Store, and the Old School Runescape Official Website.

Sources

Calvin, Alex. Runescape: The First 20 Years. Dark Horse Books, 2021.

Dovey, Jon, and Kennedy, Helen W. Game Cultures. Open University Press, 2006. PDF file.

Martin, Austin. Personal Conversation. January 2022.

Old School Runescape. Cambridge, England. Jagex, 2013. PC.

The Maps of Among Us: Glitches or Gameplay?

This past week I finally got around to playing the most recent game to blow up in the popular consciousness, Among Us. After playing it for a couple hours with some friends, I could easily understand why it has become so popular. There are many things that make Among Us enjoyable, from the social aspect of players debating who the killer is, to the satisfying minigames the crew must do to perform their tasks. However, what I want to focus on in this post is a feature of Among Us I am less then thrilled with: its map.

This is fine.

To clarify, I have no gripe with the layouts of the three Among Us maps. I found them to be delightfully diverse in terms of layout, tasks, and theme. My beef with the maps is related to what could described as their “glitchy-ness”. For example, when a player is going down a hallway it easy is for them to overlap with the wall border. This can sometimes make it seem like the player is coming out of nowhere or acting in a strange way, leading to misinterpretation from other players. The goal of Among Us is to identify who on the ship is the Imposter, which is commonly done by claiming the person believed to be said Imposter is acting suspicious. To test this, I jumped on a random server and purposely maneuvered in a way where my character glitched with the wall. I was not the Imposter, but several other players claimed I was due to how the glitching occurring between my character and the wall (their reasoning was it looked similar to when the Imposter “vents”, a technique that allows them to teleport around the ship).

A close up of the player character overlapping with the wall. This is not as fine.

Some may argue that situations such as this are not a bad thing. Misinterpretation, false signs, and dubious claims are some of the bread and butter of Among Us, so what’s the harm? While I understand this line of thinking, I don’t feel it makes sense to justify such an obvious glitch by saying it’s a necessary part of gameplay. Granted, sometimes glitches in games can be fun and it’s ok for a community to (more or less embrace) them. In my opinion, where things start getting sticky is when glitches start to mingle too closely with the essential aspects of a game. Consider what would happen if the Among Us team released a patch that adjusted the walls so players could not clip over them. It would remove the dynamic I previously described of falsely interpreting (intentionally or unintentionally) an innocent players movements, taking away gameplay. Glitches can be fine to have in a game, but developers need to be careful they do not become too intertwined with the game’s important intentional aspects.

Sources

Among Us. Redmond, WA: Innersloth, 2018.

All screenshots taken by author.

10 Games & Their Objectives

I have always thought of myself as a gamer with a diverse taste. So when I came across an exercise in Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games that challenged readers to define the types of games they like by objective, it seemed like a chance to test this perception of myself. Before I made a list of the games I like and their objectives, I speculated that there would be some similarities, but the biggest thing that would stand out would the differences between games. The following table shows 10 games I enjoy, a description of their main objectives, and the categories those objectives fall into.

GameMain ObjectiveObjective Type
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimFinish quests, clear dungeons, and explore the open worldCapture, Exploration
MinecraftBuild using resources gathered from exploring the worldConstruction, Exploration
Cards Against HumanityCollect the most black cards by coming up with the funniest card combinationOutwit
The Sims 4Simulate life and create buildingsConstruction
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original AdventuresComplete levels by defeating enemies and solving puzzlesCapture, Solution
Sid Meier’s Civilization VIBecome the most powerful civilization via culture, religion, science, or militaryCapture, Construction
Mahjong MasterClear the board by matching tilesAlignment
Assassin’s Creed IIComplete levels and missions using stealth and combatCapture
TennisWhen the ball is hit to you, hit it back at your opponentForbidden Act
Bar TriviaWork with a team to correctly answer questions about pop cultureOutwit

One of the things that struck me when compiling this list was the difficulty in narrowing down objective type. Many of the games have minor objectives or gameplay elements that could be classified as a sperate objective type. For example, in Minecraft there are monsters players can combat (i.e. capture objective), and in Assassin’s Creed II there are side missions involving chasing targets (i.e. chase objective). I also found it difficult for some of the games to pinpoint what objective category they fall into. With tennis I originally thought it fell into the capture objective, but after reviewing Fullerton’s descriptions of objective types I decided it was more in line with forbidden act. This is because the rules of tennis impose physical limitations that players must follow (e.g. don’t go into the opponents area or go over foul lines, hit the ball towards you opponent, etc.), which I felt made it more akin to the examples Fullerton gives for forbidden act objectives (e.g. Twister, Don’t Break the Ice) and her description of them as “involving stamina or flexibility, and sometimes just plain chance.” (Fullerton 71)

Based on the results of this exercise I feel that although the games I choose are diverse in their objectives, as was expected. However, upon reflecting as to why I gravitate towards these games, I found that it was not because of my desire to play a diverse range of games. Instead, I’m drawn to each of these games because of my desire to be creative, explore, and use my intelligence to solve problems. Even when I play a physical activity based game like tennis, my strategy to beat my opponent is to study their body language and moves to find a weak spot I can exploit. I take a similar approach when playing games that are primarily capture based, like Assassin’s Creed II and Skyrim. Another similarity I noticed was that most of the games have more than one type of main objective, as well as minor objectives of various types. My preference for games that are not unanimous in their objective I think reflects a larger trend in gaming, by both players and game designers, towards more dynamic and diverse gameplay by way of multiple different objectives.

This post is based on Exercise 3.4: Objectives (“List ten of your favorite games and name the objective for each. Do you see any similarities in these games? Try to define the type or types of games that appeal to you.”) from Chapter 3 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton (quote taken from pg. 73).

Sources

Assassin’s Creed II. Montreal: Ubisoft, 2009. Video Game.

Dillon, Josh et al. Cards Against Humanity. Chicago, IL: Cards Against Humanity LLC, 2011. Card Game.

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 3: Working with Formal Game Elements” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda, MD: Bethesda Game Studios, 2011. Video Game.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. San Francisco, CA: LucasArts, 2008. Video Game.

Mahjong Master. GB Games, 2013. Android App.

Minecraft. Stockholm: Mojang Studios, 2011. Video Game.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. New York, NY: 2K Games, 2016. Video Game.

The Sims 4. Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 2014. Video Game.

Games & Their Challenges

The Sims 4 – Challenge: Being a Simulation

As the name implies, the objective of The Sims 4 is to simulate life. However, this can become challenging when I’m not able to do everyday things like drive a car, go to a hotel, or go grocery shopping. These are just some of the features that are present in previous Sims titles but are not in Sims 4. What I find interesting is these challenging features of Sims 4 don’t appear to be intentional, but rather a consequence of poor game design. Since players were not expecting to encounter this type of conflict in Sims 4 due to precedents set by previous games, the challenge was not welcome.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery – Challenge: Time Management

Unlike players of The Sims 4, players of Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery were somewhat aware of the type of challenge the game might contain. Being a mobile game, microtransactions are inevitable. However, upon release players were not happy to learn that most missions were practically impossible unless they purchased energy via microtransactions. The other way to get energy is waiting, and since missions have a time limit this often means they could not be successfully completed. My technique for dealing with this was to set a timer on my phone to notify me when I would have enough energy as well as enough mission time left. The actions performed in the game were not challenging, but I found the added burden of re-organizing my real-life schedule to accommodate the game’s energy system to be challenging and ultimately not worth it.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Challenge: Don’t Get Caught

Multiple times while playing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag I rage quite because I couldn’t get into a fortress undetected, or kept getting caught while tailing an enemy, among other frustrating incidents. However, unlike the previous games discussed, I was OK with this. There are several factors that made the challenges in Black Flag more palatable than those in Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery or The Sims 4. For me, the biggest factors that made the challenges in Black Flag enjoyable were their expected presence, cause, and solution. Black Flag is not a casual game, and I knew going into it that I would be faced with potentially difficult levels and missions.  When gameplay became challenging, it was due to me not knowing what to do, how to do it, or just fumbling the controls. Finally, with time and effort, I was able to beat the game’s challenges. This last aspect I believe is the most important. Challenges in games are not bad, as long as it’s possible for players to overcome them while remaining immersed in the game’s world.

Reflection

The games that I choose for this entry are ones I enjoy playing, but also find challenging. Upon writing and reflecting, I found the challenges in these games stemmed from different sources. Although not something I consciously had in mind when selecting the games, this diversity ended up offering more insight than if the challenges had been uniform. I believe this diversity better illustrates how challenge can be done right, and how it can go wrong.

This post is based on Exercise 2.6: Challenge (“Name three games that you find particularly challenging and describe why.”) from Chapter 2 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton (quote taken from pg. 39).

Sources

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Montreal, QC: Ubisoft, 2013.

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 2: The Structure of Games.” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. Culver City, CA: Jam City Inc., 2018.

The Sims 4. Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 2014.

Rise of Queendom: a D.O.A. mobile game

Over the summer I found myself at a hotel in Florence, SC faced with several hours of time to kill. So I hopped on the Google Play Store and decided indulge in one of my guilty pleasures: East Asian palace role-playing mobile games (henceforth referred to as palace games). I came across one called Rise of Queendom, which based on the title and promotional images appeared to be aimed at female gamers. Being a gamer and a female, I decided to check it out.

After less than 5 minutes of playing, I realized Rise of Queendom is not equivalent to the palace games I’d played in the past. The first strike was the several minutes long tutorial. While a lengthy tutorial can work for large scale games, in mobile games it is an ill idea. This is because mobile games are meant to be played casually in short bursts. (Underberg-Goode) A long tutorial means the first gameplay session will likely not include any actual gameplay (or in my case not even finishing said tutorial). In addition to this, the tutorial ignored one of the most important rules of good storytelling (be it film, literature, or video games): show, don’t tell. During the tutorial I got to read about all the cool things I could do around the castle, but I never got to practice or see these game mechanics. Another, albeit predictable, annoyance was character customization. In previous palace games I’d played, character customization was limited to gender and choosing between several un-editable static faces. Rise of Queendom, on the other hand, promised customization of hair, jewelry, dresses, and all sorts of other accessories that I enjoy spending embarrassing amounts of time fiddling with. However, most of these items appear to be acquired through micro-transactions. Granted, it was hard to tell with the un-intuitive interface if some outfits were unlocked by gameplay or advancing the story, but with the tutorial still in full swing I felt little hope of getting to do either.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing of all about Rise of Queendom is how easily they could have made things better. In each of the palace games I’d played before, the tutorials were an overall enjoyable and engaging experience. In Be The King: Judge Destiny, the instructions and reasoning behind each activity was explained to my avatar by the main in-game characters. This was much more immersive than Rise of Queendom‘s use of pop-up boxes. In the tutorial for another palace game, Call Me Emperor, I was able to try my hand at gameplay in between instructional exposition. Even though this gameplay was simple tap-to-fight battles and winning was extremely easy, it was more interactive and amusing than anything I experienced while playing Rise of Queendom. As for character creation, there are ways to make it more enjoyable while still including those (unfortunately) essential micro-transactions. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery does this relatively well, charging micro-transactions for more elaborate styles while still offering a decent selection of free options. Perhaps if the developers of Rise of Queendom had looked into the approaches of other mobile games and taken some time to get player feedback, it might be a more enjoyable experience.

This post is based on Exercise 1.2: D.O.A. (“Take one game that you’ve played that was D.O.A. … Write down what you don’t like about it. What did the designers miss? How could the game be improved?”) from Chapter 1 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games by Tracy Fullerton (quote taken from pg. 8).

Sources:

Be The King: Judge Destiny. Hong Kong: Chuang Cool Entertainment Ltd., 2018.

Call Me Emperor. Hong Kong: Clicktouch Co. Ltd., 2019.

Fullerton, Tracy. “Chapter 1: The Role of the Game Designer.” Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 4th ed., Taylor & Francis Group LLC, 2019. PDF.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. Culver City, CA: Jam City Inc., 2018.

Rise of Queendom. Hong Kong: FriendTimes, 2020.

Underberg-Goode, Natalie. “Chapter 9: Handheld and Mobile Gaming.” The Evolution of Video Games. Great River Learning, 2018. ucf.grtep.com/index.cfm/videogameevolution/page/chapter9section2.

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