Professional HW #11: Having A BLAST!

Chapter 15

1. A goal with no obstacles is not worth pursuing. 
2. What is the relationship between the main character and the goal? Why does the character care about it? 
3. What are the obstacles between the character and the goal? 
4. Do the obstacles gradually increase in difficulty? If yes, how? 
5. Great stories often involve the protagonist transforming to overcome the obstacle. Does your protagonist transform? 
6. How is the game world simpler than the real world? 
7. What kind of transcendent power do you give to the player? 
8. What is the weirdest element in the game story? 
9. How do you ensure that the weirdest thing does not confuse or alienate the player? 
10. Will the players be interested in the game story? Why? 

Chapter 16

1. In what sense does the player have freedom of action? Does the player "feel" free at these times? 
2. What are the constraints imposed on the players? Do they feel constrained? 
3. Ideally, what would you like your players to do (lens #72)
4. Can you set constraints to "kind of" force the player to do it? 
5. Can you design your interface to "force" the player to do what you (the designer) wish him/her to do?

1. A goal with no obstacles is like fishing in the freezer. The goal was to catch fish, but you can just take a fish our of the freezer, so what is the point? Instead, you pursue a different goal because your previous one was too eazy(easy).

2. The goal is what the character is trying to achieve. Giving a character a goal gives direction to the game in the same way that a sign gives directions to a traveler. The character cares about the goal because there is either a reward or a punishment for accomplishing it or not.

3. The obstacles between the character in the goal are the things that the character has to overcome to reach the goal. The difficulty of obstacles is what makes the player feel like he has accomplished something or not.

4. In games obstacles increasing in difficulty is important because if the challenges get easier than the game does not feel like a challenge anymore. When the challenges are increasingly difficult the player feels like they have made progress because they have achieved a certain level of mastery of the game.

5. In the G-Suits the protagonist gets different weapons, changing the way he interacts with the world.

6. The players in G-Suits do not have to eat, sleep, or do most of the things people have to do in the real world. 

7. The player gets the ability to be in space, to revive, and kill.

8. The weirdest element is probably the time gap between what is possible now and what is possible in the game, since the game conceivably takes place in the future and the history between then and now is not explained.

9. The concepts of the game like space suits and fighting are similar enough to people now that the game is still completely understandable to the player.

10. The player will love the story because they are murderous people that will jump at the opportunity to liberate their nation by means of killing.

1. The map is not big enough for the player to have complete freedom, but it is big enough for the player to have the feeling as if he can go anywhere.

2. The constraints might be that the player must move right to advance in the story, but the will not feel constrained since their goal is to the right, so they will choose to go right instead of being constrained.

3.  Good question. Kill.

4. The player will get killed if he does not kill, so this forces him to kill.

5. Yes, the aggressive aliens are enough to get the player kill them though.