Reach the Passenger

 

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Pandemic the last two weeks in class. What emerged from playing Pandemic was that I have never played a game (that I can recall) where the whole group of players had to work together to beat the game.

 

 

I can only remember playing analogue games such as The Game of Life (my ultimate favourite game), Monopoly and digital games such as Call of Duty, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bro’s which all require you to beat other players to win.

 

 

 

Also surprising was that considering that I am well travelled person, I was embarrassed at my lack of knowledge as to where specific cities were located.  Pandemic introduced me to a lot of cities I had previously not heard of or known its geographic location. Treher (2011) explains that the true value and impact of board games designed for learning are unrecognized by most people.

 

 

 

 

Thus for my independent game project I would like to create a board game centred around airports, planes and travelling to different cities. If my game does nothing but teach people about the world and cities that are exploited from world news I will be content!  If at all possible I would also like the game to be similar to Pandemic in that players work as a team.

 

This is because properly designed team-based board games encourage communication, collaboration and risk taking (Treher 2011). My game ‘Reach the Passenger’ (name likely to change) will be for adults as sadly now, in the world of education, most games today are created only for young children (Treher 2011).

Basically this is the way I have envisioned it in my head:
Each player would be an airline and the physical board of the game would be a world map.  The way to win would be to reach the stranded passenger before time runs out. Obstacles stopping players from reaching the passenger could include but are not limited to:

• Occupied air space
• Sick air hostess
• Engine failure ect.

The choice of creating an analogue game over a digital game first off is because of my current skills and abilities but also I also want to represent the idea that digital games do not have precedence over analogue games just because of the introduction of new technologies. However, just as the television did not eliminate the radio, nor should technology-based learning tools be considered a replacement for those used in face-to-face settings (Treher 2011).

 

However, if I was to create a digital game I would have followed the game team-based,  thinking strategy model as to do justice to the complexity of the human experience, the dominance of computer games being orientated toward the actuality and causality of action should be broken through with games that are also based on intensity of feeling and reflectivity of thought (Raessens 2005).

Next week I plan to focus on the actual structure of the game.  If you have any ideas or particular flaws in my plan, please comment!