Long Blog Post - Full Ice Climbers Review

This is the first full version of my Ice Climbers critical game review - by that I mean I've reached almost 1500 words... It needs work, as would be expected, but I need to go back and change bits regardless as I don't talk about variety of people's work - I purely use Doug Church's article, etc. In that sense i'm not happy with it...

This post is purely to show the basic structure of what I am writing and see if I am doing is on the right track - if it is I know I don't need to re-write the whole thing and just need to edit it and clip and trim bits to make it work.
 So... here it is... it's not brilliant as I've said but anyway...
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Ice Climbers is platforming developed and published by Nintendo made in 1985 for their Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly know as a NES). It is a game with 25 years behind it and as such can be considered a ‘Retro Game’ and in comparison to mainstream games that are made today can be considered very basic. However, it is because it is basic that it is a good starting point to review a game critically, analyse its key gameplay aspects and see what makes them good or bad.

There are several ways that Ice Climbers could be analysed as games have been analysed in different ways by numerous writers. However, due to the sheer number of works that there are, to apply them all would make this either a very long review or one with too many unexplained points. Therefore, I have chosen to review Ice Climbers primarily using the work of Greg Costikyan’s article ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design’ and back it up now and then with other authors works. Costikyan breaks down all games into 5 key areas, ‘Interaction’, ‘Goals’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Structure’ and ‘Endogenous Meaning’ and it is this basis with which I will begin my review.

Costikyan begins his article talking about what Interaction means within a game and ultimately he defines it as the player’s ability to make choices. He says about games that “If it isn’t interactive, it’s a puzzle, not a game.”, therefore saying that a game must have good interactive choices to help shape it otherwise it will be something you just have to work out and then you can do it all the time, any time. If a game has choices it means there are elements of chance, it adds replayability and this leads to the game being good fun.

So how does interaction link in with Ice Climbers? Well the most obvious way is that the player controls their character and chooses their path up the mountain. The path up the mountain is whatever the player wants; they can break through any part they wish to get to the top, making it easy for themselves by avoiding enemies or deliberately heading towards them to challenge themselves – it is their choice and thus interaction is present in the game.

This is the limit of the interaction in the game as the player does nothing else except climb up the mountain avoiding the enemies – other elements of the game change but this doesn’t effect the interaction. Ice Climbers does an OK job of giving the player a choice but ultimately there could be more in this regard, they could choose different characters to play as, different difficulty levels, etc.

Onto Goals, Costikyan defines goals as something that gives choices purpose: he says ‘But what makes A better than B? Or is B better than A at some times but not at others? What factors go into the decision? What resources are to be managed? What’s the eventual goal?’ Goals links into interaction, it takes the players ability to choose to do something and put a purpose behind it.

Ice Climbers is a strange game really in regards to goals as, unless you are playing with a friend, there is only one clear goal in the game – get to the top of the mountain. The player’s choices in-game are so restricted due to the simplicity of how the game works that ultimately Costikyan’s definition of goals being choices with defined outcomes never comes into effect. If there were two set routes up the mountain with one being better than the other or a choice of character with different abilities then the player would have a choice with an outcome that would affect the gameplay. As there is not this, Ice Climbers is a game where the player ultimately does the same thing over and over with the only variable being determined by the game itself – there is no freedom.

Next comes ‘Struggle’ which is apparent even before we look at what Costikyan makes it to be – the challenge the player experiences. Costikyan specifically says ‘We want games to challenge us. We want to work at them. They aren’t any fun if they’re too simple, too easy, if we zip through them and get to the endscreen without being challenged.’ It can’t be clearer than that – games should be challenging to make them enjoyable, this however, should be within boundaries (not too hard).

Ice Climbers is a game with a strong sense of struggle and is, in my opinion, the main driving force behind the game. What Ice Climbers lacks in its goals and interaction it makes up for in the elements of the game that make it a struggle for the player. As like many games, it has enemies and these are the main components that the player must try to overcome to complete the game. Ice Climber incorporates them well into the struggle of the game, giving the enemies variety in what harm they can do, increasing the numbers that appear as you progress up the mountain and altering the stage layouts to make the enemies appear in more hazardous locations. These enemies are the only real components for struggle in the game but they help make the game what it is as a whole, a challenging race to the top of a mountain.

The fourth part of a game as defined by Costikyan is Structure, which he says as ‘To think of a game’s structure as akin to an economy, or an ecosystem; a complex, interacting system that does not dictate outcomes but guides behaviour through the need to achieve a single goal’. What he means by this is that structure is not the story of a game but rather the rules and restrictions that guide the player to the goal. If a game has no structure the player is allowed to use any means to beat it which not only removes the challenge but also the fun and everything that goes into it from a development point of view.

In Ice Climbers the structure is defined by the levels themselves and the elements of the game such as lives and continues. There are clear stages within the game as each new layer of the mountain is clearly separated from the other through the use of numbers and colours – this gives structure to the way the game progresses. This works well as it gives the player a clear sense of whereabouts they are and how much they have progressed, it makes it easy to see and recognise their achievement which can be very crucial to some players to getting the full enjoyment from the game.

Lives are a crucial part of almost any game as it makes it so the player can’t try endlessly at a game – this would remove any element of challenge that could be easily created this way. In Ice Climbers this is a key mechanic in increasing difficulty and adding challenge to the game as other than the enemies that can hinder the player’s progress of the game. Basically, in Ice Climbers the components of structure contribute to making the game work and enthralling players in the challenge of the game.

Finally, Endogenous meaning in a game means that something in the game creates its own meaning – it has no relevance anywhere but in the game. Costikyan attributes this to possessions or currency in a game, achievements or anything else related – they don’t exist in the real world and therefore hold no meaning or value. This is therefore a part of making games fun and making them work, a game must have components that players want to reach or obtain however these will ultimately not exist.

This is true in Ice Climbers, getting to the top of the mountain is the key sense of achievement one can get from the game, but the player has nothing to show for their efforts in the real world and doesn’t gain anything from doing it. Another gameplay element that holds meaning in-game but no meaning otherwise is the in-game score, the player will try to get the highest possible score for their own satisfaction and sense of enjoyment. The fact the player wants to do this though proves that the game works and has enough components and rewards that serve them some form of meaning.

As a whole, using the works of Costikyan as a base, Ice Climbers has all the elements required to make up what he defines as ‘a game’ and does so in such a way that the player can challenge themselves to beat the game and do better each time. What it lacks in certain areas (interaction and goals) it makes up for in other areas, particularly as this is a retro game which are known for their simplicity, and the game is ultimately fun to play through as a result of this.
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Short blog - Game review begining

Okay, this blog post is literally going to have the opening couple of paragraphs of my retro review in it - I've got myself stuck with a bit of writers block; I know what to write about but I'm having trouble getting it down so I thought I'd stop, think about it and put what I've got so far down here. It's not much and it doesn't even begin to go into gameplay, just introduces the game and my review.

So here it is:

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Ice Climbers is platforming developed and published by Nintendo made in 1985 for their Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly know as a NES). It is a game with 25 years behind it and as such can be considered a ‘Retro Game’ and in comparison to mainstream games that are made today can be considered very basic. However, despite this its development process would have been one that was well thought out and every gameplay aspect designed in relation to what the player could get out of it. It is with both these things in mind that retro games are for looking critically at how games are made and related design issues and this is the basis on which my review of Ice Climbers is written.

One way to look Ice Climbers is to break down the game and look at it in game defining terms as outlined in Greg Costikyan’s article ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design’ – the terms being interaction, goals, struggle, structure and endogenous meaning. The first thing to discuss in terms of gameplay is the basis of the whole game and its unique defining gameplay feature (at the time of its development) which is that it is a vertical platformer.

This one feature of the game essentially is the basis for the ‘goal’ of the game as the objective of the game is to get to the top of the mountain, avoiding enemies (though they are another element that will be discussed later) along the way.

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So, 'til next time - that's all folks!

BBFC and Machinima

Okay, I admit, this blog is somewhat a bit belated as the events in question occurred a week ago but I thought 'I'll do a blog about it at the weekend' and then my life was lost in a world of Photoshop and Illustrator annoyance preventing me from doing it - so here we go.

Last Wednesday we were lucky enough to have not one but two guest speakers come in to our university and talk to us about what they do. There is normally one guest speaker that comes in on a Wednesday afternoon to give their talk which we are 'advised' to go and see for the sake of 'broadening our influences' but most of the time the speakers are for things I really don't care for, thus why I haven't been before - may seem lazy but that's just me, I won't do something that doesn't interest me.

Anyway, one of the speakers this week was a man (who's name I never learnt...) from the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) that provides age ratings for films and, until recently at least, video games in the UK and a man called Johnnie Ingram who is the product manager at a company called Moviestorm that makes Machinima movies. The one I was most interested in was the Machinima one as that tied in closer with video games as  Machinima is basically making movies using game software and engines, however, the BBFC one was a lot more interesting than I would have expected and, at the end of the day, everyone loves films.

The first talk was from the BBFC so I'll talk about that first. The man talked for a couple of hours about who the BBFC were and why they exist - basically they are a group of independant individuals who watch films as they are made and want to be released in the UK and give them an age rating (U, PG, 12, 15, 18 or R18) so that we as consumers know what to expect in the film and are restricted from seeing the film if we are not the appropriate age. It is now part of the law in the UK that EVERY film that wants to be released, at the cinmea or direct to DVD, HAS to have received a certified age rating from the BBFC - so they are quite important - and this is how they make their living as a company; film makers and companies give them a fee to watch and rate the movie.

The BBFC has become a necessity in the British entertainment industry so their work is very crucial and must be carried out in a logical and accurate manor so that films are given the ratings they deserve. To this end, the man told us and gave us copies to look at of the BBFC guidlines that they follow when rating films - if soemthing for an age rating comes up they can check to what it applies to, such as what level of violence can be displayed at a particular age rating.

To round off he then proceeded to show us some film clips and ask us to rate them, this allowed us to see what we make of films and, once we were informed what the age rating was, learn why the decision was made, etc. In summary, the lecture was informative about learning the amount of work the BBFC have to do each year and also how critical they must be at almost every moment of a film - it also works in reverse; how critical film makers must be if they are trying to achieve a particular age rating for their movie.

Now onto the Machinima speaker... well... it was different to say the least. Johnnie Ingram only had an hour to talk to us which made it more difficult right from the off but let's just say the guys a tad eccentric to say the least - in a good way mind you, it made the talk a lot of fun and easier to listen to and take in. Johnnie first explained what Machinima was and how it developed, as said above it is basically making movies using game software, engines, models, etc - they've been around for years but only really picked up in the past 5 years or so.

The thing to make clear is THEY ARE NOT GAMES, you don't play them, you watch them, they are just like any other CG movie (such as one by Dreamworks or Disney Pixar) except they LOOK like games because they are made from the same engines and models as them. We then watched a couple of these movies, one was about World of Warcraft and was made using the creator software for said game - I didn't really like this movie if I'm honest, I dunno why, I just didn't... maybe the pacing of it was off, the plot... I dunno. The second one though was... well brilliant. It was a gangster/noir film made using the Half-Life 2 engine and models about a man who was forced to become a gangster due to his skills and need for money but ultimately couldn't handle all the killing, rebelling and killing his old boss as an act of retribution for the slaughter of his sister. It was something you could imagine could be a film made in any other media but that's why it worked, just because it was made using game engines did nothing to harm it.

He then talked about himself and how he got into Machinima (which was a funny story in itself) and then moved onto his current position with Moviestorm, a Machinima movie making company. He demonstrated the companies software which was interesting to watch - I wouldn't get it personally because, although I find watching Machinima can be good and interesting I could never find the devotion to make one. This was ultimately the full one hour talk.

It was good to hear both these talks as they left me walking away knowing more than I did - knowledge is always a bonus - and they got me thinking more about the processes that all people go through when making... well anything. You have to consider so much, how the viewer might react to stuff differntly to you, how the production of games and films a collaboroative process that even ahs parts out of your control going into it, how games can ultimately lead to more things than the game alone can envisage.

So anyway, that's my post on these talks... they were fun. 'Til next time - that's all folks

Memorabilia and the success of games and franchises

Random Blog post time! This post is in context to games design but it can be in regards to any franchise in any media.

Basically, I am going to talk about the ability of franchises to draw people in so much and immersing them that people will buy items about the franchise simply because... it's about the franchise. There are endless franchises in games, books and film that we all like and are drawn to for various reasons, however, once a franchise has the power to make us as consumers buy items that aren't the main focus (something not a game in a game franchise or a film in a film franchise) it proves that the franchise is successful - something that any designer, creator, writer or otherwise hopes to achieve.

The reason that I am talking about this is because recently I purchased 2 pieces of memorabilia for a particular gaming franchise; doing so doesn't help me in any way in terms of entertainment and derives from the main media of the franchise. This got me thinking about how much stuff I have about related to particular franchises and how much contribution I have made (and others obviously) to the overall success of these franchises and their creators - this ultimately is what the creators (and companies) must want for their franchise, that it is so popular and becomes such a success that people want to immerse themselves as much as possible in the world they have created.

In particular, a franchise that I have invested much in, is the Final Fantasy series of games. I have purchased several pieces of memorabilia for the series, nearly all the games in the series and several versions of them therein - I would not have done this if I did enjoy the series and get as much from it as what the creators of the games wanted me to get. As a potential designer with games ideas floating in my head, if they were ever to be made that is the kind of desire and devotion I would want my fans to have.

I believe designers should strive to make their games in this fashion, so that they can make it as big and immersive as possible and should get the satisfaction that people want to buy the game and related products - if a game reaches that level you know you're good.

Anyway, for reference the following is a list of all the final Fantasy related stuff I own or have owned - proof that games can have success and the level of success that can be achieved. So, 'til next time - that's all folks.


Currently Own - Main Series
Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (Game - GBA)
Final Fantasy III (Game - DS)
Final Fantasy IV (Game - DS)
Final Fantasy V Advance (Game - GBA)
Final Fantasy VI Advance (Game - GBA)
Final Fantasy VII (Game - PSN)
Final Fantasy VIII (Game - PSN)
Final Fantasy IX (Game - PSN)
Final Fantasy X (Game - PS2)
Final Fantasy XII (Game - PS2)
Final Fantasy XIII: Limited Collector's Edition (Game - PS3)

Currently Own - Spin-Offs & Sequels
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (Game - Wiiware) 
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete (Film - Blu-Ray)
Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus (Game - PS2)
Final Fantasy X-2 (Game - PS2)
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (Game - DS)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Game - GBA)
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of Rift (Game - DS)
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Game - Gamecube)
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (Game - DS) 
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Game - Wiiware)
Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders (Game - PSN)

Old Versions I have Owned
Final Fantasy Origins (Game - PS1)
Final Fantasy Anthology (Game - PS1)
Final Fantasy IV Advance (Game - GBA)
Final Fantasy VI (Game - PS1)
Final Fantasy VII (Game - PS1)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Film - DVD)
Final Fantasy VIII (Game - PS1)
Final Fantasy IX (Game - PS1)

Guides/Walkthroughs
Final Fantasy VIII Official Guide
Final Fantasy IX Official Guide
Final Fantasy X Official Guide
Final Fantasy X-2 Official Guide
Final Fantasy XII Collector's Edition Guide
Final Fantasy XIII Collector's Edition Guide
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Official Guide

Other Memorabilia
Final Fantasy VII Silver Sephiroth Ring
Final Fantasy VII Sephiroth Wall Scroll

Yup, that's a lot of stuff :)

MUDs

This blog post basically sums up an article that we read as a part of our reading and am mainly doing it as, personally, while the article was interesting, I feel that it was long and drawn out and could be summed up much better. The article in question is 'Players Who Suit MUDs' by Richard A. Bartle where he discusses the different types of players in MUDs (Multi-User Domains) - the early form of game that would later become MMORPGs.


So... here goes the summary of the article. The article breaks the people who play these games into 4 categories; Killers, Socialisers, Explorers and Achievers and talks about how they interact with the game world and how they interact with each other. Achievers are people who play the game to get something out of it in-game such as getting the strongest weapons, the strongest armour, finding something really 'rare'. Explorers are people who play the game so that they can see the world the game is set in and experience the story of the game. Socialisers are people who like playing games to interact with others and chat with them - they prefer the people in-game rather than the game itself. Finally, Killers are people who enjoy going round and killing other players and duelling with them - this can be linked with 'griefing' people (annoying them).


So that's the 4 types of players the article then talks about how they interact with each other and how the numbers of each type of player changes the number of another. It basically says that Killers and Achievers go hand-in-hand and as one goes up the other goes down and vice-versa but can also go and down with each other at the same time. Killers and Socialisers also go hand-in-hand but more dramatically as socialisers can easily get annoyed as their fellow players kill each other and socialisers can easily overwhelm killers. Explorers and Killers interact but less and it causes a more minimal outcome in the number of players, however, Explorers will have more of an effect on killers than the other way around due to explorers not caring how they do and rather on just playing.

The best way to show all the relationships is by the diagram shown below. Red is for decreasing numbers and green for increasing.

 

Ultimately, this is the entire article in a nut-shell - the writer simply goes into more longer explanations but generally as long as you understand the 4 types of players and what they do how they interact and compliment and annoy each other should be apparent.

So anyways, that's my blog post on people who play MUDs so 'til next time - that's all folks!

New Games Journalism and Old Games Journalism

Two Blog posts in one day again - yep, you can tell that I'm taking today to get my work done and catch-up can't you...

Anyway, this post as the title suggests is about new and old games journalism. But what is games journalism and how can there be new and old versions of it without a present journalism (yes, I know Present Games Journalism would sound stupid but I'm making a point here...), well to answer that lets break down the title into 2 sections, new and old.

New Games Journalism
What is new games journalism? It is games journalism, which can be anything from a review of a game to talking about its development, written in the style of what is know as 'New Journalism' - see it all makes sense. New journalism was a writing style that developed in the 1960s-1970s where the writer of the article is writing more about there personal experience with what they are writing about rather than the the thing they are supposed to be writing about - for example, if they were supposed to be writing an article about a football match rather than writing about the game and how it was played by the players they would write about what they felt watching it.

In my opinion, new journalism seems a bit stupid - I can understand writing about how you feel watching or playing something but for its purpose, which like traditional journalism is to inform people about something, it seems really annoying. Anyway off my hatred of new journalism, lets get back to new GAMES journalism.

As a part of this exercise I am going to blog about 2 NGJ articles that I have read, one called 'Bow Racist-word-that-begins-with-the-letter-n' by Ian Shanahan and another called 'Dreaming in an empty room (a defence of Metal Gear Solid 2)' by Tim Rogers. Basically I'm going to be putting my thought about them and how effective the articles are.

The first article, Bow N***er, talks about the writers experience playing Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast on-line and how people can be disrespectful and talks about it brewing into a battle between good and evil. The article is written in the style as if the writer is his character in the game and such is the style of new journalism, trying to get the reader to connect with how he is playing the game.

The second article, Dreaming in an empty room, talks about the writers experience playing Metal Gear Solid 2 and defending it from the criticism it gained from being different to the first game. This article isn't written in quite such a NGJ way but as it talks about the writers experience playing the game it is still considered such. The article tries to get the reader the understand the writers way of thinking about the game - the best way to describe how it's written is to say that it is as if two friends with different view points are discussing their opnion on the game and the article is about one of their view points.

The two articles are very different as I said, one is very informal and somewhat aggressive, talking from the character in-games' point of view, making the article almost seem like it could be a diary extract of the person in-game talking about their last epic battle, the other is more formal and simply written as means of a discussion about a game but from their point of view of playing it. Ultimately though, they both portray the opinions of the writer and expect the reader to perceive and get a view of the game based on this.

In my opinion NGJ is not very effective, I'm sure that it can be to some people, I can see how they might be able to read the article better and understand it more if it talks about the experience you get from the game rather than how you play it and how it was made, but I just don't get it at all. I can't get anything from reading the articles that are written this way, I like to know how the game plays, I like to know its combat mechanics, the visual style, how long the game takes to play, if there is a slow build-up of tutorials and so on - I don't care how some guy I've never met feels when he nearly lose when fighting someone on-line; tell it to someone who cares.


Old Games Journalism
Old games journalism is something that I like - traditional writings about a game, almost like reviews written in classic magazines that I used to buy such as the Official Playstation magazine. They can still be informal but they cover aspects of the game and talk about that rather than what the reader experienced playing it - yes at times they may voice their opinion but it's different from NGJ.

Anyway, in this case the two articles I am looking at are as follows:- a Half-Life 2 review by Kristan Reed and a Gran Turismo 4 review by Nik Dunn. Both are just standard reviews written as if you would find them in a magazine or elsewhere.

The first article is instantly recognisable as an article written in OGJ style, it talks about the visuals of the game and how the game was developed and evolved over time, it then moves on to talk about the player and their interaction with the game world around them, moving then onto the story and style of gameplay and then onto in-game combat and so on. This is what one would expect from OGJ - it doesn't talk about them playing it and if it does it is in context or to back-up a point they have made about the game to better help them explain it. It is still written informally, not exactly in a silly way but rather in a way that simply makes it easier to read - it still covers all the points and goes into detail about them. All-in-all it is a very detailed review of the game and gives the reader a clear overview of what does and doesn't work about the game in terms of its mechanics, aesthetics and otherwise.

The second article is very similar to the first but actually has something that to me makes it better - it has a seperate section of the article for the writer to discuss his personal thoughts  and experiences playing the game. This shows it is not NGJ but still acknowledges that opinions can be an influence on decisions made by the reader about the game they are looking at. The article talks very much about what is in the game, such as how many cars and tracks there are, what game modes there are and the interface between the player and the game itself. Again ,this article is what one would expect from OGJ.

As should be clear, I find OGJ articles to be every effective about what they do - they clearly tell the reader what  is in the game and what is good and bad about these different aspects. They cover everything one would consider about a game - the look, the gameplay, player interaction, different features, etc.

Final Opinion
After what can be considered a long rant against NGJ and for OGJ I will now sum them up - I can see a point for both of them, I really do but not in the right medium. OGJ is really the best way for someone to find out about a game and influence whether they think they may like it or not. NGJ is more about looking for reassurance in my opinion, if I had looked at a game review and thought 'that game looks good' and then happened upon a NGJ article I could use that to see whether the game is gripping and how it draws you in - I couldn't solely base my opinion on the game on it.

So there we have it, you now know what New Games Journalism is and what Old Games Journalism is and what my thoughts on both of them are. So 'til next time - that's all folks!

Battleships Iteration

Okay, I know it's been a while since I've done a blog post but I can assure you that I'm on form and not missing any - I am keeping on top of it, was just having a break while I could in my reading week. Anyway, on with this blog post on Battleships.

As a part of my lecture last Tuesday we all were told that we would be iterating the classic game of battleships, a game of strategy or luck is debatable (I'm more inclined to say luck which is why I personally don't like the game that much), where the objective is to sink all of your opponents ships on a 10x10 grid - one ship of 5 in length, one of 4, two of 3 and one of 2.

Anyway, to start with we were told simply to play the game just to familiarise ourselves with it in case we'd forgotten and just to see if we could think of anything that did or didn't work very well about it - this was the real point of the exercise; to see if we could iterate an already existing and established game and also to see, as a class, how different our ideas of iteration were.

Matthew Jarvis and I were a pair that did iterations and our iterations were quite basic as we didn't want to overcomplicate the game - I personally wanted to try and do iterations that would remove the random luck elements of the game as I feel that a game that relies on luck to be fun, while it can be enjoyable and tense, has no learning curve or skill which is what I prefer - I like to call myself a master of a game. The first iteration we came up with was being granted another move if your found get a hit on a ship (only for the first hit, not every hit otherwise you could completely destroy a ship in one go) - this worked well as it gave a person a chance to recover if they were heavily behind, it sped up the game as well while retaining all the tension that already existed.

Our second iteration was essentially an undo button - if you got hit you had 3 'repairs' that you could use to remove the damage to the ship; this was basically the opposite to our previous iteration and allowed the player to lengthen the game and give them a chance to find more of the opponents ships before they lost the game.

Other iterations that people came up with were missile attacks that hit everything along a row, radars for finding ships, power-ups that strengthened your ship or weakened enemies and the ultimate square of death which would cause you to lose if you hit it. As you can see there was plenty of diversity with the iterations which proved that two people, even on the same course and similar wavelengths can have their own unique ideas.

This exercise was good fun to do and proved to be very useful for us - it showed me that any game can be iterated, even if it works perfectly fine and you think its a good game, if you want to you can put your own spin on it and make it your own. It also showed me that iterating is a very personal process as demonstrated by the assortment of ideas generated over a simple game like Battleships.

Anyway, that's it for this blog post. 'Til next time - that's all folks!