Women running

I’m being naïve and disorganized, but at least I posted something this week.

Call me slow, but recently I realised how similar DICE’s Mirror’s Edge is to the 1998 German film “Lola Rennt” (“Run Lola Run” for English folks). Not only do they both feature running female leads, but the way the narrative is handled in Lola Rennt is somewhat similar to how gameplay is handled (or supposed to be handled) in Mirror’s Edge.

Risk Analysis: Rolling and Downtime

This week I will be super efficient and cover two topics (although I have already touched on dice rolling):

“The game is full of dice rolling.”

AND

“There is not that much to do while other players take their turns.”

http://www.hlcomic.com

Sitting around waiting hardly qualifies as fun, yet in many board games (and to a certain extent, some video games) it is absolutely required. If the game has a turn-based structure, like Risk, every player but one is left idle with usually nothing to do. In board games the term for the time spent waiting is “downtime”, while multiplayer video gamers might use the term “spawn time” or “round time”. There are two simple solution to reducing downtime: Reducing time spent “out” of the game, or giving the player something to do during downtime, in effect removing it. Extensive dice rolling is somewhat related to having long turn times, since a long battle takes a lot of time, while players not involved are only interested in the results.

Necessitiation of Demonstration?

There will be NO Risk this week, dear (non-existent) readers. Instead, I heard about something esteemed “Gears Of War” designer CliffyB said about the lack of a demo for his hit sequel “Gears of War 2″:

“A beta is like hooking up with a girl just to say, ‘Yeah, I f*cked her’,” Gears of War 2 Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski told GamePro “I know that sounds crude, but it’s the honest-to-God truth. Once you play a beta, you can check it off your list – you can say, ‘Yeah, I played it.’ Then you might not feel motivated to get that initial cherry popping from the proper, final game.”‘

Standing exposed in the open is a viable tactic.

Risk Analysis: Diplomacy

“Diplomatic negotiations are few and very basic.”

Risk is a game of war, not peace, but there is some room for the fine art of diplomacy in the game. But since the purpose of the game is armed conflict, you can’t expect that any agreement made will last very long. A long term alliance between two players will provoke other players, and will nullify any benefits of the alliance. But what opportunities do exist for sly manipulation in Risk, and can we change the rules to encourage a little (temporary) teamwork?