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John Paul Messerly
United States
Sherman Oaks
California
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My goal today was to talk about all the changes the game has gone through over the last 8 years. In reality the only thing that has remained the same over those years has been the name and a few of the design goals. A year and a half ago, when I changed jobs, I threw out all my old game designs and decided to start completely from scratch so these latest two Touchstone games use nothing from the original design.
Before we get into the history lesson here's a quote from the Doctor Who:Solitaire Storytelling Game Blog -
Quote:
So let's enjoy the show for what it is - brilliant, funny, moving, exciting, scary and thrilling.
While reading this I was reminded of how few games (traditional or digital) have been able to capture this range of emotion through their gameplay. Those that come closest are often part of a franchise and rely on emotional responses and memories triggered by gameplay events that mirror what happened in the original book or film. Can a game achieve this range of emotion directly without referencing other more cinematic media?
My favorite game right now is Ranger because I totally get lost in the experience and forget I'm even playing a game. When I started reading a book called "Lima 6" I found this gameplay become even more descriptive and detailed... my imagination kicked into overdrive filling in details from the book into each encounter. The more I think about this game the more I realize the thing that originally pulled me in was that the actions I take in playing the game perfectly mirror those of my ingame character. He is constantly looking at his map, plotting a coarse, checking the passage of time, and worrying about whats over the next ridge.
So for me this idea of the player and avatar actions mirroring each other is key because otherwise the game mechanics come to the forefront and the theme and emotional content (story context) slowly fade away. The Lord of the Rings LCG is my perfect example of this. I LOVE that universe and the idea of exploring it but as soon as I start just focusing on resources and math I no longer feel like an adventurer! The mechanics succeed in creating challenges but fail to create the sense of adventure, danger, fear, or fun! It claims to be a questing adventure game but turns out to simply be a resource management game. If I'm missing something about this game that helps it feel more immersive and exciting please let me know because I really want to enjoy this game. I'm confused because both games are about characters trying to achieve a goal while racing against time and having to make very hard decisions BUT one feels like an experience and the other feels like balancing my checkbook.
Touchstone 101:
I used to be totally obsessed with Bloodbowl. I loved the amazing plays, the highs and lows that come of building a team in a game were death is common BUT I hated that the game took about 2 hours to play. I also didn't like that the theme turned of most potential new players. I decided to remake Bloodbowl with some new design goals. The game should play in under 30 min, should still be chaotic, but had to be less reliant on random dice results. The result was a game played on a chessboard with 8 miniatures per side. It kept a few rules from bloodbowl but it also used the "skill based" dice system from "Kerrunch" to make a really fast and simple version of the game. In the "skill Based" dice rolls system the final result wasn't based on the face up symbol on the die BUT instead it was based on the location where the die ended up making it more of a dexterity game. So throwing the ball was mirrored by a motion of throwing the die.
The result (while not extremely original) was very successful. A lot of people who would never play Bloodbowl because of the thick rulebook and long playtime were hooked. In fact my girlfriend really got into this game and she has never like anything made by GW. So I had achieved my design goals but couldn't really do anything with the game because it was essentially a Bloodbowl mod.
This is the point at which Touchstone started to evolve. Before this point I still considered the game to be bloodbowl but at this point the world and characters start take on a life of their own. At this stage Touchstone referred to the stonehenge like standing stones in the endzone that the skull(ball) had to hit to score a touchdown. I also played with the idea of the goal being a huge gong so there would be a cool sound cue when a goal is scored.
The games world and rules went through many variations to numerous to describe but in the end the design goals were forgotten and it became bloated and died. It stayed dead until something drastic happened ... I lost the company I'd spent almost 10 ears making successful and found myself starting over. I threw away everything that was part of that past and decided to start from scratch!
to be continued...
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