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The Gam3D Life

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I decided to 3D print a car game piece from The Game of Life. I settled on this piece because I didn’t want to just choose one of the default game pieces that you provided us, so I went searching on Thingiverse. I immediately went through all the different board games I played as a kid, and The Game of Life was one of my favorites because it was more complex than Candyland, and I wouldn’t always lose to my brother like I would if I played Monopoly. Luckily, someone had already made an .stl file for car game pieces, so I chose it. Each car has multiple holes that you fill up with SOs and kids as you move on in the game. I also found the game fun because I was introduced to adult concepts at a young age, even though I never grasped them entirely. Luckily, I went with Michael to make it early and the people at the TechLab were very helpful so I had very little trouble making the piece. Although it has that “3D print feel”, I’m happy that I made something from scratch and the final result turned out well.

A Very Impressive Train

Student Posts

As you can see, I 3D printed the locomotive piece from monopoly. I’ve always loved monopoly, and when I was looking through the linked game pieces I picked the train because I found it to be the most intricate. In a way, I wanted to test the 3d printing center and see how accurate their printing of such a small train would be. I didn’t have much trouble getting it printed; I just gave them the file and let them work their magic. Quite frankly, I find 3D printing really interesting and wish I was more involved in the process. The only issue I ran into was being too low on Eagle Dollars when they asked me to pay. I spent 5 embarrassing minutes of silence at the woman’s register before I finally figured out how to replenish my balance. They printed the piece with more detail than I had expected, so this side quest was a success.

Fiasco: my thoughts

Student Posts

By Rachel Vellanikaran

Playing Fiasco was quite an interesting experience, to say the least. With some initial difficulty figuring out game-play and rules, we eventually rolled the dice to establish various relationships, needs, objects, and a location. This initial process of deciding these contextual aspects was a little different from the last time we played in class, as this time we actually selected dice before reading the category and descriptions — adding to that surprise factor that’s so prevalent in this game. My fellow teammates, Austin, Cherie, Sadie, Giovanni, and I chose to play with the Main Playset. Taken place in Hickory Smokes “nursing home,” our narrative included multiple adulterous sexual affairs, backstabbing, murder, and more. My relationships included a friendship with Giovanni as a “manipulator” of some sorts, and co-worker of Sadie, non-coincidentally at this particular nursing home. The narrative started out with Austin and Cherie fighting over financial issues in their marriage, and Austin eventually kicking Cherie out of the house. One of our two needs was to get laid, and with the other need already utilized by another team member, I chose to incorporate this into my narrative. My character was working towards a sexual relationship with the newly-divorced Austin, and would take some deceptive measures to do so. Conveniently, Sadie, a fellow colleague of ten years, was friends with Cherie and Austin and thus my way in. The story continued to take creative and unexpected turns throughout our game-play, from Austin and Giovanni’s conspiracy to murder Austin’s grandmother’s best friend to Cherie acquiring loads of money through her gambling habits to my character’s affair with the divorcee who was simultaneously trying to kill and steal from the elderly woman at the nursing home. It was absolute chaos, but quite fun, nonetheless. 

It was particularly interesting to see how events change so drastically before you even realize it. This game is based on your own creativity when it comes to establishing and resolving scenes. You, yourself create the narrative and can manipulate it for better or for worse. I didn’t realize how open-ended and flexible the game design is, where you(and your teammates) create the basis of a story and see how it plays out. Because it was truly up to improvisation and our imagination, as I said before, it got a little chaotic. For example, at one point the hoodlum murders the old lady in front of me, the unsuspecting, innocent nurse, and I decide to cover up for him and end up in jail — where I eventually kill myself. It was a lot…but it was actually very enjoyable to see how everything played out as we all added new twists to the story.  The game design itself does have certain guidelines and rules, but it doesn’t really limit your ability to, for the most part, change the narrative as you wish — at least until the very end where they add in “the tilt.” My tilt was a little out of place for the situation of my character. The description was basically along the lines of “you f**ked up hard; you’re probably going to kill yourself,” when I truly hadn’t had much involvement in major conflict up until then. So from then on, I had to come up with creative ways to set-up this ending for my character — even if it meant some far-fetched additions.

Admittedly, playing the game seemed a little intimidating at first, since I was playing with new people and felt pressure to conjure up captivating story-lines and premises. But, obviously these initial apprehensions subsided as we continued to play. Since much of the the game is about “winning” role-playing situations and acquiring dice, I found myself being a little more assertive or defensive in my responses to others as I took on the role of my character more seriously with the game’s progression. It was important to be strategic in the stories you created. You had to manipulate the situations created by others in favor of your own plot or chosen line of fate. It required a bit of planning, particularly in predicting how others would react and respond. Overall, playing Fiasco was a rewarding experience, as the game was captivating and enjoyable despite its natural chaos and unpredictability. 

Risk Podcast Reflection

Student Posts

I, along with Will and Sadie, recently completed a podcast on analyzing the game titled Risk (https://eng101s20.davidmorgen.org/ready-set-game/risky-business-a-deep-dive-into-the-game-of-risk/). Due to the tremendous strategy the game requires in order to win, it has always been a favorite of mine to play. Risk requires a lot of critical thinking, so playing is always a challenge I look forward to. Considering my thorough enjoyment for the game, I thought it would be fun to review it in a podcast. Since we were just a three person group, we collaborated for every part of it.

The theme and style of the background music was something we decided to adapt from previous podcasts. We initially had some trouble determining what style of music would work well with what we were creating. It can be difficult to choose a sound that compliments the voices speaking, but also isn’t distracting. After listening to past podcasts, we realized a calm but playful track would fit well. In addition, only being able to explain concepts verbally caused us some issues. I never realized how reliant I was on visual aid until having to explain Risk without any. For instance, there was a point where we wanted to demonstrate the exponential relationship between the amount of land the player has and their power in the game. A graph or hand motion would have demonstrated this well, but instead we had to put it into words and hope our audience would understand. 

Our primary goal in creating the podcast was to keep the audience engaged. In order to keep it interesting, we attempted at finding the right balance between talking about the history of the game, its relevance and meaning to the world, and strategy within the game itself. We found this balance by making connections within all of our information. For instance, we tried to make the meaning of the game transition and connect to different strategies players could employ. Along with frequent transitions to prevent boring the audience, the connections made the podcast easy to follow and compelling. 

Intuitively, one would think that writing in the form of a conversation between people would come easily since everyone converses. I realized while writing the script that recreating conversation is pretty difficult.  After we finished the script, I noticed that it sounded a lot less like a conversation than I was expecting. This was presumably due to my experience in writing being purely formal or scholarly. When writing my next podcast, I’m going to try to be more conscious of how conversational it sounds in order to make it more engaging for the listener.

The Choice is Mine: Playing Fiasco

Student Posts

In our Fiasco game, my group chose the Main Street and Willow Road playset since that most accurately embodied Emory’s quaint, southern location. I established my relationship with Cherie and Rachel, the players to my left and right. Cherie was my gambler and bookie and to Rachel, I was a current co-worker. Even while creating our relationships, I was struck by how quickly the players embodied their roles. Right when a relationship had been established, it was almost like a light switch went off and we each stepped into a new persona. With this new identity, I felt a new sense of control. I have a clean slate and I can make whatever I want to happen try to happen. 

Our Fiasco story was one of ups and downs, surprise, romance gone-wrong. At the start of our story, the main conflict was between Austin and Cherie’s characters, who were ex-lovers. Austin kicked Cherie out of their house because she never did anything productive and stole his money. During scenes, many characters gave their opinions on the matter of their toxic relationship, and I ended up setting Cherie straight and helping her gain self-independence. In retrospect, in most of my scenes, I tried to take the upper hand and help out my friends even if that meant losing a potential opportunity to make money. For instance, I could’ve convinced Cherie to continue gambling and make a profit off of her, but in her best interest, I told her to stop gambling and instead focus on making a steady source of income so she could acquire a new home and live a comfortable life. I felt that my role in the game was not necessarily moving the plot forward but reacting to the actions of others. My character was more of an intermediary than one associated with large plot points and drama. When the tilt happened, I was destined to suffer and be locked up in jail but also make it out with dignity intact. During the game’s aftermath, Giovanni killed Austin’s grandmother’s friend at the elderly home and got away with it but I ended up in jail for helping him commit the crime. I had dignity, though, because I taught the other prisoners how to aid in a crime. 

A strategy I employed was not doing anything too controversial but rather helping players work through their own issues. I found this effective because I highlighted the problems in the actions of my peers, which helped me win all of my rounds. My tactic in this game taught me that one of my strengths is conflict-resolution but not creating conflict of my own. I think that is a valuable asset because I am not a very contentious person but rather like to help others work out their problems. Playing Fiasco differed from other work we’ve done this semester because it required us to perform a task that was constantly shaping and moving, rather than completing one task and the assignment ending. I enjoyed the unpredictable aspect of Fiasco, which kept me constantly thinking about the next move. I can apply the skills used in crafting my Fiasco story to future writing projects by compartmentalizing which aspects of the writing topic I want to focus on and which I should “stay out of,” like I stayed out of certain issues during our Fiasco game. Overall, the game session and reflection helped me fulfill the learning objectives for this course because I’ve learned to write and reflect on a non-written genre, which is a very important life skill. Many of the “texts” we need to analyze in the professional world are not written but rather analyzing real situations that took place and drawing conclusions from those interactions. During our Fiasco game, I took this these situations and truly made them my own, forging the path of our story.

Fiasco Reflection

Student Posts

Greg Lawrence

3/3/2020

Prof. Morgen

Fiasco Reflection

The journey Michael, Winslow and I went through during our play-through of Fiasco were interesting in the sense that initially, our background knowledge of the rules was somewhat helpful but we still struggled to set up our game. Our understanding of multiplayer RPG games was different from Fiasco because you really needed to pay close attention to the rulebook. The assignment of characters was awkward yet funny due to myself not really having known my two mates who I was playing with at the time. The characters we derived were ex-lovers and father and son which brought a communal laugh. My character was Russel Cooper, a gambler who was destined for a glorious death. Michael was the character Edward Anderson, who is my ex-lover and the father of Collin Anderson(Winslow). From my first reading of the rulebook, I got the sense the game was set up to engage our creative minds. The fun aspect of the game comes from your decisions on character roles and actions. My group of players consisted of three boys who more or less wanted an action-packed scenario with death and violence. When we decided on the relationship between Collin and I was that we were gamblers, we almost immediately went to have the problem of being in debt to loan sharks who want their money back. This could have come from past experience from other games or just a common interest in this sort of plotline. The aspect of using two different color dice to determine characteristics and relationships between players provided us with a sense of structure we needed to justify our story. The game does a good job of incorporating our imagination within the guidelines of the 134-page rulebook. The story we told was between three players who were father and son with an ex-lover to the father who has a gambling problem with the son(Collin). We started with the dilemma of deciding how to pay back the loan sharks who were threatening to kill us and we came up with a plan for a heist to steal a large quantity of gold. The dice we rolled, made us incorporate a train and a handrail train car. Our minds related this potential storyline to one like a mission from Red Dead Redemption II, which is personally one of my favorite games and involves the robbery of a train. The robbery went successfully due to a white dice being given to me when it was my scene. It was interesting to see our excitement levels rise when the climax of our story came closer when we knew in a way what was going to happen. Throughout the acting of our story, I was laid back in deciding what happened unless when it was my turn to develop a scene. Then I tried to make it interesting with a good setup for the next person’s scene. At the start of setting up the game, I felt sort of overwhelmed by the size of the guide to playing and the fact that I was working with people I haven’t really had a conversation with before. As we set up the game and came together in deciding to incorporate or leave out certain actions/relationships I grew in the sense that my opinions wouldn’t upset the other players or affect the game in a negative way. So in a sense, as I became more comfortable with my fellow players the game became increasingly enjoyable. 

Fiasco Reflection

Student Posts

Fiasco is an exciting role-playing board game that is surprisingly portable, requiring only several dices and rule books to play with. The setting up process for the game was rather quick. We used Main Street and Willow Road play-set. After rolling the dices, relationships between each neighboring player, locations, needs, objects were settled. The game Fiasco requires a great story-telling ability as well as a creative improvisation skill.
Our game took place in the Woods up around Hickory Terrace. My relationship with Austin, on my left-hand side, was the former spouse. However, the relationship between Sadie, on my right-hand side, and I was a gambler and bookie. The “double identity” of each player makes the game hard but fun to play that everyone has to keep the scripts of settings in mind and to develop reasonable plots accordingly. For instance, in the first place, I failed to set up the connection between my divorcing problem and gambling habit. The opening scene started up with Austin and I arguing and breaking up due to mundane money issue. I was expelled from our house in the county. At that point, the arguing was just about domestic duties and financial problems. Moving to my round, because of my implied relationship with Sadie as friends in the previous rounds and at the same time she being my bookie, the story was messed up a little bit. To make more sense for the divorce and gambling, I suddenly decided to make up the story of I stealing money from my ex-husband and would like to bet my future life no gambling. As my bookie, Sadie could offer me the game; however, as my best friend, Sadie tried to persuade me to keep out of it. The unexpected pieces of information due to the rash decisions formed small conflicts lead to the unsettling feature of the first scene. In Act One, although each conversation was somewhat independent, we were trying our best to combine the two needs and the objects. For example, the hoodlum murdered an elderly lady; the hoodlum and my ex-husband planned on stealing a purebred animal; and the nurse in the hospital tried to develop an affair with my ex-husband.
After getting the tilt, we realized that Fiasco, as a game building up disastrous situations, emphasizes more on the dark side of humanity, greed, lust, jealousy, and insanity. Even the player with the largest number of white dice got degraded and defamed hint that pushed players towards a more chaotic ending in Act Two. Players more actively involved themselves in the crime, even if they are not at all evil figures in the first scene. At the same time, whereas, we failed to keep on track with the details. I remembered almost every single one of us got a “bad” ending. For me, I was publicly humiliated and suffered permanent injury, and the money I stole was mysteriously stolen according to the tilt. That is to say, I ran away from the conversation in the senior care and came across the hoodlum Giovanni, hooking up with him. However, the police came up to us after a few days, and Giovanni hit-and-run, which causes my permanent physical disability. Therefore, I am also humiliated over stealing money from ex-husband and betraying him on his best friend.
The genuinely intriguing part of Fiasco is its flexibility and unpredictability. Every player contributes their idea to the overall story. It is each one of their decisions that leads to the ending of the game. The interactive mechanism makes it more engaging and fun to play. Overall, the gaming experience is a little bit struggling for me because of its chaotic nature and the mismatched expectation. I would like to try Fiasco with a better-prepared mindset if there is another chance.

Podcast Reflection: A trip down memory lane

Student Posts

I was the assistant producer on Winslow’s podcast “Minecraft: A Trip Back Through Time.” We focused on nostalgia, the memories video games brought back to us that we played growing up, and how we use things we learned in our everyday lives. We chose to revisit Minecraft since it was a game both of us were familiar with. In preparation for the podcast, we each played Minecraft and explored our worlds. We also watched YouTube videos which helped bring back memories of playing in our childhoods. This was a fun experience because I had not played Minecraft since I was in middle school. 

We decided to make the episode very personal and conversational because we liked how it worked in a prior episode. This helped achieve our goals because it allowed both of us to reflect on our personal experiences from the past and present. The goal of our episode was to show people how video games changed our lives for the better and to realize how video games can grow our character. In addition, we wanted to prove how video games bring back nostalgic memories and spark creativity. 

Decisions were made throughout the process to fit the requirements and goals of the podcast. Originally, we wanted to focus on just how video games can ignite nostalgia and how nostalgia effects people. However, we decided to focus on the experience of revisiting video games. Minecraft was the perfect game to focus on because we had not played it in awhile and our lives have changed in that period. This allowed us to show how some life skills that Minecraft promoted have helped us grow as individuals. If we had more time, we would have discussed more than one game.

The filming of the podcast went smoothly because we communicated efficiently, and we were both familiar with how to use the technology. We wrote down bullet points for each segment rather than script it which made the conversation sound more natural. One area I could improve on is that I say filler words like “um” often. Luckily, we edited them out, but I will work on speaking more confidently and without interruptions. 

Podcasting is better than writing a traditional essay because it is more informal, personal, and allows you to go off track. This allowed for a more creative conversation and to explore areas that really interested us. I hope to be more creative in future writing projects and say my thoughts aloud to organize assignments like podcasts are organized. For future episodes, I would recommend that people explore their game for as long as possible and choose something they enjoy because they will be more invested and have a higher quality of conversation. 

I am most proud of the collaboration that Winslow and I did for this episode. We both helped each other out and gave each other ideas to build off throughout. Having a partner who was willing to listen to ideas and implement his own opinions made it an enjoyable working environment. We also communicated well with each other which prevented conflicts from arising. 

Podcast link: https://eng101s20.davidmorgen.org/ready-set-game/minecraft-a-trip-back-through-time/ 

Collaboration Story Telling Getting Wild: Fiasco

Student Posts
https://geeklyinc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fiasco

I played Fiasco with Wenyi, Ruohan, Alan and Keita. Our scene was set on Main street, and my relationships with my neighbors were my fellow thief friend and my fellow drug buddy. So as you can tell, it’s pretty exciting. Who does not want to be the villain when no responsibilities are taken?

Playing Fiasco was probably the first time I “write” a fictional story. Creative writing was never easy to me: it is hard to gain inspiration, and sometimes if the inspiration or creation went too far, the story starts to disconnect and fall apart. From my point of view, an interesting creative writing work is somehow related to the actual society no matter is the morals or possible events going on in the real world that the readers can somehow relate and be affected. That being said, Fiasco was pretty hard for me, because the story falls apart, everyone has ideas in their mind about where the story is going to be, and everyone’s anticipated storylines are different. So, adaptation and interpretation are really crucial. As I played, I had to change my story line constantly: when my ally decided to turn her back on me, when someone gives me a white/black dice, or when the person I tried to kill in the story got a helper to keep her safe. I had to modify the story lines, adapt them, and interpret whether my allies/enemies are wishing me to go certain ways. These elements, without writing down, can be forgotten in future story line. That is when the story starts to get messy and ambiguous. Players starts to ask: “wait I thought we said A at the beginning and why are you saying B now? That does not follow what is actually happening.” That actually happened twice or three times in the game I played. Making up stories is already difficult to some extent, not to mention people had to come up with them without a lot of thinking and had to follow the relationship of so many characters. Five gamers were in my game, and everyone is the protagonist. That does not happen very often even in formal books. It is more like some sort of complex episodic TV show that the camera shifts between different populations and bring them all together as a resolution like Lord of the Rings. I personally found coming up with a rather complex story with certain limitations like locations, objects and relationships were challenging. But part of the fun was to justify your story: to make the nonsense make sense. Even though it took a lot of brain cells, I had to find ways to make the seemingly dead characters come back alive, or the lost item is found. We make up events that seems not related to explain the mistakes we made in our storylines and let them make sense eventually. In one case when I was playing the game, everyone is trying to fight to gain the mystery suitcase that is supposed to have ton of cash in it. By the end of our part 1, according to one player, it is actually a poisonous snake in the suitcase. Now that does not make sense, because why would the entire first part of the story be fighting over a snake! That is when everyone starts to justify for the story, and it ended up being a revenge drama that the person who is carrying the suitcase is trying to kill the specific character that is about to get the suitcase. I found it fascinating that at the beginning we were all going off our own tract and manipulating the story set up to whatever we wanted it to be. But as soon as we realized that we have to fix the story, we started collaborating very well. We started to make predictions about what everyone else’s story and going off fluently from that.

Overall it was hard to set up the first half of the story and keep track of what everyone said, but it was definitely fun and trained ability to come up with stories within instance and connect small chunks of information into larger scale storytelling.

Fiasco: Controlled Chaos

Student Posts

Fiasco is an interesting game that requires more creativity than any of the games I’ve played in the past. We got to form a completely original instance of the game through our creative scenes and decisions. We compiled short scenes which fit all the components chosen, and eventually connected the scenes. Part of our fictional story included a hoodlum character, represented by myself, who snuck into a senior center and committed a homicide robbery on an elderly woman. I found myself contemplating sanity due to my made-up decisions when the crime went unsolved causing my character to get away with it. These aren’t the types of thoughts I would ever have, so I was horrified to see the story I had developed. Later I realized that a dark story was inevitable by all the elements I had to incorporate; how is one expected to create a happy fairytale about a man who needs to get rich by the death of an elderly woman? Aside from the overall plot, there was a sense of entertainment that came with the ambiguity of the game outline. Similarly, Fiasco’s spontaneous and creative structure reminded me of the MadLibs I used to fill out as a kid. Just with more room for mature creativity. 

I was impressed by the way we connected everyone’s scenes together. The first few scenes were completely independent of each other, having only overlapping characters in common. In the beginning, I felt hesitant of the success of fusing all the situations together in an interesting, but also logical, way. Situations ranged from two hoodlums killing an old woman with horse tranquilizer, to a married couple getting divorced over money issues. We chose the “In a Nice Southern Town” playset; the person on the right and I were hoodlum partners, and I was the victim of manipulation by the person on my left. The unordinary relationships and detailed specifics between the players is what made Fiasco enjoyable for me. This made it exciting for me, as I was able to be introduced to relationship dynamics which I do not experience with in day to day life. Another exciting aspect of the game was our ability to create it ourselves. In most games, you’re placed in situations where you have to make decisions, and those decisions usually dictate the future situations, regardless of what you want to happen. In Fiasco, we created the situations and made the decisions, so we were in full control of the storyline. I found it more fun when I was designing interesting situations, rather than role-playing as my character. I felt that creating the situations was what really shaped the game, since your options become limited once you find yourself in a particular situation.

In my attempt for success in Fiasco, I strategically set up scenes that would easily allow for me to control the situation so I could accumulate as many white dice as possible. In order to be controlling, players needed to be very convincing. Being assertive, whether that be through manipulation or honesty, was the best strategy. There was a point where I put my success in jeopardy by making a rash decision to ask the nurse at the senior center to put the elderly woman down for me, after being caught in the act. I tried to guilt the nurse, the player whom I had the manipulative relationship with, and tried to make her feel like she owed me a favor after all the times she had exploited me. To say the least, it was a huge failure, and the game went downhill from there. In retrospect, I was under pressure. I was expecting her to give in when there was no way she was going to agree. If I played again, I’d plan out my decisions and conversations more meticulously so that I don’t get stuck in situations where I don’t have ideal options. Overall, I enjoyed the game because of its dynamic and structure. It was like nothing I’d ever seen, and I found it to be extremely engaging.

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