Design Document part 2

Board Design

For my board design I started by making two mood boards one for sea textures and one for how other have used sea effects in boards games, both are shown below.

After making these I decided my board would resemble a rough sea similar to the bottom left sea texture very dark and thick swells. I made a very quick board design in 3DS max I like the way this board turned out and have decided to use it for my design document.

Design Document Part 1

While researching Vikings for the theme of my tafl iteration(Siggurdsson, 2013), I came across a naval battle that took place on the Baltic Sea in September 999 or 1000. The king of Norway Olaf Tryggvason was returning from a trip to Wendland (Pomerania) when he was ambushed by the kings of Sweden and Denmark. He was severely outnumbered, Olaf had roughly 11 warships while the combined forces of Sweden and Denmark had around 70. Olaf ships were captured one by one until his ship the Ormen Lange was finally surrounded. As the ship was surrounded king Olaf threw himself into the sea rather than be captured and tortured by his enemies.


This battle is going to be the theme for my game, it is almost identical to the actual game play of tafl. For my game pieces I will be using traditional Viking longboats and will try and replicate a sea setting on my board.

Britannia - Joystick Generation

This was my favourite episode of games Britannia so far, I had so much nostalgia watching all the old games I used to play as a child in the 90s. I think this episode really shows how gaming is transforming peoples lives and connecting us. With the rise of Xbox live and other platforms for social gaming people have been making friends from different cultures and countries. Its the social side of gaming that most interests me, how people from different backgrounds can work together and complete complex tasks.Sometimes the people your working with do not even speak the same language or their is no communication at all.

The main point I pulled from this episode is that games are still evolving with the soon to be released Oculus Rift and other virtual reality devices a whole new generation of immersive games will be released. You will not be viewing the games strange and exotic worlds you will be in them. 

Pervasive Gaming

I had never heard of the killer games before, however now I have I really want to play it. It is the sort of game where people could get really competitive, like eddy stated you can do anything you want to achieve your goal its the ultimate paideia game. The only downside I can see from this game is people who are not aware you are playing could get drawn in. When I heard of this game my mind immediately jumped to a you tube video I watched of two pranksters who where pretending to rob people at cash machines,  it goes horribly wrong one of them ends up with a broken nose. Its the theme if you panic people they become unpredictable so running around pretending your murdering someone could have unexpected consequences. It all comes back to Huizinga’s assertion that play is “outside ‘ordinary’ life”. while playing might be outside ordinary life it can effect ordinary life, someone leaves a suspicious packages outside while playing killer, someone who isn't playing gets scared and calls the police.

I do not think the fact these games blend into real life is a bad thing, its mainly because they are attached to murder themes or war themes if you could find a non violent theme and make it work people would be playing these sort of games a lot more.

I  think with mobiles these games could become very popular. I was thinking of a massive game of tag you download the app when someone else who has the app is nearby it notifies you and sends a picture of your target. it notifies your target you are nearby but doesn't show who you are. you have to tag them within a certain time.

La dicima vittima

As I missed the lesson on la dicima vittima, I decided to watch some of it online I have to admit I didn't have a clue what was happening(The version I watched had no subtitles). The scene I watched had a women kill a man with guns inside her bra which is the weirdest yet coolest assassination I have seen. Then everyone around her just acted like nothing has happened.


I did notice the Austin Powers feel to it that others have been writing about on their blog's especially Ursula Andress's influence on the Austin Powers fem fatales.

Tafl Iteration

For the ancient board game iteration I will be trying to focus on balancing the game. I first started by looking what others had tried. I liked the idea of a bidding mechanic so I started there. I decided that each player would have 10 tokens and at the start of every turn would be a bidding round, you could bid any amount of tokens who ever bid the most gets to move. after some play testing I decided that these counters should be reset every third move that way you had to think three move ahead which added a lot more strategy to the game.

I am also going to put special squares on the board, if you land on one you get an extra token to bid with. I placed these central on the board to try and take some of the game play away from the edges.

Games Britannia Part 2 - Monopolies & Mergers

I really enjoyed part two of game Britannia, the episode started by explaining a game from the 18th-19th century called the mansion of bliss. This game was made to get more children into school the whole aim is to reach the middle of the board which had a huge Georgian house. It was a way of telling the lower/middle class that you can aspire to more in life if you behave proper.

After success in the UK the mansion of bliss was copied in America, however there were some changes made, instead of a nice Georgian house at the end it was replaced by president of a company. It was telling you to work hard and you will become rich. You could say the american dream come from this morality based game by saying to win you need to be rich you need to be powerful.

In this episode they also talked about a game called br'er fox and br'er rabbit this was a game made to raise debate about redistribution of wealth from land owners. It helped raise debate about a sensitive subject by making a safe setting your disconnected from the subject your just playing a game. From this game we ended up with a classic board game monopoly.

I am starting to realise how games have been used in the past as a way for discontent people to express their feelings just as books and films have.