As a start to A2 photography we were asked to design any type of game as long as it had some relation to photography- I decided upon a portable sized game with the aim of improving the player's knowledge about photographic techniques and photographers. Prior to this I had written notes on what I could possibly include in my game, whether or not I wanted to educate the players and other details.
In Pictionary the teams are required to guess what one of their team mates are drawing in order to reach the end tile before the opposing team. I feel the artistic undertones of this game link to those present in my own but I felt that it was more competitive than I had wanted mine to be.
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After settling on a basic idea of my game I sought out information about other games similar to mine that could I could use to improve upon my current idea. I found that my game was similar to Cranium as both games involved multiple aspects of one subject, for example in Cranium one of the possible sets of cards you can pick from are 'Creative cats' which had a range of creative activities such as drawing and sculpting to be completed in order to gain points.
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From these two games I decided to find a way to incorporate the aspects of other players guessing about another player's work. I found that I could create a rule in which the other players would discuss and guess what formal element other players had focused on the most when creating photos from prompts that did not cover the formal elements. This would encourage the players to constantly refer back to the formal elements and become more focused on how they frame their work while taking photos. Both games also included team competition rather than single players competing against each other, I questioned whether or not I should add this to my game but later decided against it upon realising that it would be difficult to collectively take a photo as each player would have a different creative vision.
I continued developing my game concept until I came to somewhat of a solid idea. I wrote out these rules and drew a rough sketch of my box, I had decided that my box would have a camera with the flash going off to correlate with the title of the game I also decided to have a rope trailing the sides of the lid with images relating to the game hanging off like a clothing line.
I also created a prototype to see a physical representation of what my game could possibly look like, this allowed me to alter the dimensions of my box to encourage portability. It was here that I also found that I would need thinner card for my box as the thickness that I had been using was difficult to fold and had begun to separate.
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In search of photographers to include in my game I looked through two books and selected those whose work I liked and felt could be used as a starting point for a player's idea. I also included photographers whose work I had seen in galleries and asked around for photographers who had inspired some of my classmate's photos.
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I went into further detail of what questions would be included in my game and what the cards would look like. During this process I debated whether or not my cards should be shaped like road signs in order to present the aspect of the prompt cards but decide against it upon realising that I would not be able to fit enough content on each card resulting in me settling on rectangular cards slightly smaller than the compact box, I gathered various quotes that I felt could be interpreted through photos, created a list of photographers who's work could be used as inspiration and also noted different photography styles to be used as prompts.
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I then began to design my game box and cards using a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop:
I glued the net of my box and cards on to thinner card than that used in my prototype and cut them out then assembled the box with super glue. I'm extremely happy with how my design turned out although I later realised that I had forgotten to remove the lines that indicated where to fold the box, although luckily it's not extremely obvious. |
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I played a round of my game with another classmate to see whether or not it flowed. We selected a prompt card which asked us to take a picture inspired by an image by Steven Shore, we set a time limit of 10 minutes to take and edit our pictures but finished before this. Upon discussing our photos we saw that we had both been inspired by the shots of architecture and the orange tint to Shore's photos, we also discussed the placement in our images and how we felt this affected the overall photo. |
My game was also played by 2 others who filled in an evaluation form(click to enlarge) informing me of what went well in my game and what I could do to improve the overall game. From this I found that they all found it quite simple and easy to play without instructions but having instructions included would assist in making the game smoother to play, so if I was to recreate my game I would include instructions in the inside of the lid to avoid bulk. It was also advised that I'd include more photos relating to the photographer and a short description of the movement, when creating my game I had assumed this could be searched which would allow me to reduce the amount of cards included in the game and avoid the cards looking disorganised but I feel if I was to redo my game now I would include definition cards as I had originally planned to explain the movements and formal elements, I would also include multiple 'Take a photo inspired by x' cards for one photographer. I believe that my game could also be improved by the box being made out of card thicker than that used in my final outcome but thinner than that used in the prototype, this is because I aimed for my game to be portable meaning it would have to be durable enough to not be crushed in a bag when being transported but the card used in my final was slightly beat up after being carried around in a bag with other items, although overall I am pleased with the concept and design of my game.