Yup! I can’t believe it…I finally got to play GameGame (how long have I been wanting to do that?)! And guess what? I got to play it with the wonderful designer of the game Aki Järvinen in the room!!! Excellent, excellent!!!

I almost missed it though, because no one thought to tell me he was coming!!! I mean, stuff like this is such a secret at my department it’s disgraceful!! Seriously folks, it wouldn’t have hurt you to say something like “Psst…guess you’re excited about Aki Järvinen coming on Monday…right?”. I’m so sick of this happening soooo often!

I’d write more…but there’s just way too little time in the day…I need to get some other stuff done for my advisor! So, Stavelin! I encourage you to have a go at some analysis!!! ;)

I will say this! It was a lot of fun!!! My creative juices definately woke up!!!

Update: So, although it’s really sad to admit it…I couldn’t sleep last night because I was going through some thoughts on this session! Uff…I need a life, don’t I?

Anyways! I was grouped up with Nina Svane-Mikkelsen, who already has a gaming project underway, so we decided to use her theme as basis for our game design. I suppose what really struck me was our complete disregard of the rules. We really didn’t care that we didn’t have the card that gave us the game mechanic to put our gameplay into action. The rules were more helpful than restrictive for us. Little lightbulbs to guide us through the dark. For example…”Ok…so we’ve decided it’s a strategi game and that it’s all about figuring stuff out so you can get points to see more…but how do we awaken that interest? There has to be some incentive here. ” And after an intriguing discussion we came up with the advancement of our avatar’s bodily functions. The more you advanced into the game, the more power you had to transform your avatar into a fish if needed a.s.o. Yeah! I probably should mention that our game was about exploring the sea, but I still haven’t quite gotten a grasp on Nina’s project, so I don’t feel comfortable on dwelling on the details here, yet. But…back to my point. When Nina and I were discussing this stuff, I really wasn’t paying attention to what the other players were doing at all. And when it was our turn we really didn’t think strategically at all…it was just more like “Let’s toss a coin – trade a card or buy an asset!” – and then we discussed some more. When it was time for us to ‘pitch’ our game to the ‘producers’ I hardly knew what cards we had or what they meant for that matter. I was completely oblivious to the rules of the game and I was much more excited about our ideas and how they might work.
However! It was really inspirational hearing the other’s ideas. And I was so impressed because the others played by the rules. They had their cards in their hands and laid them on the table one after one after they used them in their ‘pitch’. Anyways…I thought it was interesting. I had such a good time playing, but with complete disregard of the rules, well…most of the rules at least!