Föreläsning om Governance game

I somras var jag på GOTO10 i Stockholm med NOSAD och visade upp och pratade om spelet Governance game som jag ligger bakom och som jag skrev om här för ett tag sedan. Nu har vi äntligen fått upp videon från föreläsningen. I den så både förklarar vi idén med spelet, men visar också rent praktiskt hur en spelomgång går till. Om du har funderat på hur ni ska få till förvaltningen av ett mjukvarusamarbete så kan detta kanske vara inspirationen du behöver.

Spel om styrning av mjukvaruutveckling

Jag har gillat att spela spel sedan jag var liten och det har ju synts på denna blog från min kurs i speldesign till mitt experiment när jag lärde mig lite PHP. Så när jag på mitt nya jobb på Foundation for Public Code fick möjligheten att utveckla ett spel var det med glädje jag tog mig an den uppgiften. Nyss publicerade vi ett blogginlägg om hur det har gått med det arbetet och du kan läsa mer här:
A look at our Codebase Governance Game

Continued prototyping

This is post is part of my game design diary, which I make as a part of the course game design.

After have playing the game a little I fine-tuned some of the rules, like how many cards you draw and when. I also changed the drafts of the entities. Heris is the first and second draft of the values.

First values
First values

There is nothing exciting about this, it is purely a mathematic exercise. Of course later on, there will be a need to turn the values into meaning.

 

Second values
Second values

These iterations are very quick and dramatically increase playability. To get some inspiration for graphic styles I looked on several different card games, a sample is in the picture below.

Various existing cards
Various existing cards

My main concern now is how I should transfer the card mechanics into the computer. I am thinking of either keeping it as a card game, or to try to get rid of all that connotations and make it into a smoother experience. However for testing it I will continue using it as such since it is easy to use paper prototyping.

So after thinking a little bit, I developed a template for cards. I downloaded a lot of images from openclipart.org and started designing. I made up a complete deck and started playing. Below is a picture of how it looked.

Continued prototyping
Continued prototyping

 

After playing a while I started tweaking the cards. During play I wrote notes on the cards and later I updated my templates. I also noticed some adjustments that could be made which made the play even smoother. First the number of cards needed to be increased so that the player had more options. Also the number of characters needed to be lowered to not swamp the gameplay. I also introduced ways to get rid of characters and equipment to increase the action.

So it seems like the game mechanics are falling into place. Now I still need to ponder on how to port this into the digital realm.