Week 9 - Avatartok

   The process of designing Avatartok with my team was fun and informative. Having the basis of the game Bartok to work off of, we unanimously decided that we wanted to try to deviate from the original rules as much as possible while maintaining the original game’s aspects of playability and fun. We ended up basing our theme off of the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show which I never actually watched growing up. However, the main idea was simple: we could replace the suits in the game with elements and vary the base gameplay to coincide with the four elements. We went back and forth pitching different ideas as to which direction we would take with the rules and gameplay, eventually taking bits and pieces of different ideas and mashing them together to craft what eventually became Avatartok. This process is similar to how Richard Garfield talks about some rules that were commonly used in early iterations are, “now nonexistent” (Garfield, p. 6). However, the biggest and most impactful changes to the rules came about through playtesting. We playtested our game with other groups and collected feedback on how they felt our game could be improved, and then regrouped at the end and shared our own thoughts as well. Up until that point, our group hadn’t gotten a chance to have everyone in one spot at once talking about the game; but once we did, everything easily fell into place. We made major changes to some rules, like implementing elements and type advantages, and then would play a few rounds, tweaking things here and there until they felt right. Without having playtested with other groups and among ourselves, our game would not have ended up the same way. Playtesting is fundamental to game design: some ideas might sound good on paper, but you have to put them to the test by actually playing your game to see what sticks. Richard Garfield says it the best when he describes playtesting as, “a significant task that involves designing, constructing, and shuffling,” because without playtesting, your game could risk being unbalanced or no fun to play at all (Garfield, p. 6). 

   Altice’s chapter was helpful in providing a basis of terms and specific uses and benefits of using playing cards as the medium of creating and playing a game. As I’ve stated before, I feel that the biggest affordance playing cards give you is what Altice refers to as concealment. Depending on what you’re playing, you might not want other players to know which cards you have up your sleeve (quite literally), which is why “countless [card] games...rely on concealment” (Altice, p. 5). Yet it is worth noting that the, “cards’ planar surfaces simultaneously excel at both displaying and concealing information” (Altice, p. 6). In the specific case of Avatartok, you don’t want other players to know what is in your hand, how close you are to winning, or how close you are to screwing them over. Although cards that have already been played display a wealth of information, like if it is a face or number card (affecting actions within the game), and what suit, in this case element, the card is. There are many different ways to go about playing a card in Avatartok, and you want to look closely at the cards already played and the cards in your hand to ensure you’re making the most effective decision possible. Cards provide many affordances that other game-playing mediums do not, and it is an interesting and classic way to provide a fun experience for the player.