Melonmaru

Contextual Statement

Most of the board games are designed for long-term usage. They can be used multiple times after bought. Also, there are many different genres and rules to fit them in different time, place and mood. This project, Ponto, tried a different way to approach the usage. It is not a one-off game but can be enjoyed lightly like eating a snack. And, it does not stay as a toy, and percolated through to the public and their daily life to extend the area of ‘play’. The meaning of ‘extend the area of ‘play’ is increasing the popularity of the board game, so people may have less interest in board games can enjoy the games. The McDonald’s Monopoly event is a good example. The Monopoly is called as a family board game, but the actual use of the game is set on groups of people who are interested in it. However, using board games in the marketing increases the sale. Moreover, the Monopoly event increases the public interest of board game and that affects on people’s diet. So, the Monopoly event extends the popularity of the board game to the public. Of course, McDonald has a higher awareness because of its name value. So, the influence of the popularity is strong compared to my project. It is one of the reasons that I choose the vending machine as the medium to communicate with the public. It is popular, convenience and easy to maintain compared to a shop and it helps to increase the public contact. Also, the vending machines coincide to the purpose of the project because the items selling in vending machines are mostly the daily essentials and foods such as snacks and beverages.

Japan has about 5.52 million vending machines in the country. They sell snacks and beverages as New Zealand Vending machines do. However, those 1.52 million vending machines are not filled with the food and beverages only, but they are selling umbrellas, books, neckties and rice and they also sell insurances through the vending machines either. When the number and types of vending machines increase, people do not need to face each other to buy a thing. Then, the communication between people decreases and it can cause the reduction of the sociality and lose the connection between communities. There is a problem already in the communications in the physical community. The increase of digital-based social media and the wide use of smartphone caused the social communication lean to the digital medium. The developed technology linked people who are not in the same place, but it disconnected the communication between people just next to us. So, Ponto tried to rebuild the physical community by using the existing technique, the board game.

The purpose of the project is to build a physical community and the place, playtime and the targets are important because the place will group the people and people will be linked by sharing the each other’s time. So, I could not say that my project is for anyone in any place. Because it is too broad and I needed a threshold point to reduce the production process and time.  As the threshold, I decided the train passengers as the target user. The reasons are; First, the number of the trains station and the route of train rail is fixed and the travel time is steady compared to other transports and they helped me a lot to set the average play time.  Second, the number of passengers that a train can carry at once is higher than other transports. The Higher number of passengers means there is a higher potential for the usage. In fact, the number of train passengers was increased. From the article of Our Auckland published on 6 April said that 19 million passengers made trips for the year to date by train and it is an annual increase of 19.4 percent. (OurAuckland, 2017) This statistical data shows the number of target users will be increased and the potential of the usage even higher than now.

The play time is also affected from the train passengers. A report of ‘The use of travel time by rail passengers in Great Britain’ said that train passengers are spending their travel times on;

·       sleeping/snoozing;

·       reading for leisure;

·       working/studying (reading/writing/typing/thinking);

·       talking to other passengers;

·       window gazing/people watching;

·       listening to music/radio;

·       text messages/phone calls - work;

·       text messages/phone calls - personal;

·       eating/drinking;

·       entertaining children;

·       playing games (electronic or otherwise);

·       being bored;

·       being anxious about the journey (e.g. delays or where to get off);

·       planning onward or return journey; and

·       other.

The most important point on above list is the ‘window gazing and people watching’. In the report, the window gazing rated higher in people who journey of less than 15 minutes duration and they suggested that is a possible travel duration threshold below for doing something else. So, the play time of each game is less than 15 minutes because people may not get interested in anything else if they have something to do, and the threshold of the spare time is 15 minutes as the report.

Now a day, smartphones are using widely for killing time and my project may not be able to bring a big change to the world. However, I believe Ponto can build a different type of community compare to the online community. And the board game is not an electric and electronics fixed technology, so the project tries to escape from the ‘electronics jail’. Ponto has a vending machine to connect the board games and users, an Arduino is used in the vending machine and I coded the Arduino. However, the key item of this project is the board game. So, analysing the board game component and finding methods of building a community using a board game was the main research area. Extension of these, the emotions related to the components of the board game was very interesting and it will be a good future research area.

 Conceptual Statement

Ponto is a socially engaging board game to support users to build a physical community and it can be bought from a vending machine. The game is constituted of 3 different component. Each package contains one component of the game, not a whole game, so the user must find the other user who has a package of another component. It is a very inconvenience process. However, it is needed process because the purpose of the game is rebuilding a physical community. And this process will pursuit the new way of the community by meet, talk and play the game with others.

Each package contains one of dices, cards or tokens and up to 7 different games can be built by the pairing the packages. There is a short storyline to increase the relation between packages. The storyline is;

There are 3 little aliens living in a vending machine, and they are named as Rockie, Scizzy and Palate. Rockie loves cookies, Scizzy loves fizzy drinks and palate loves chocolates. When they fight, Rockie wins to Sizzy, but he cannot win to Palate. Scizzy always loses to Rockie, but always win to Palate.  

These characters came out from Rock-Paper-Scissors game. The story affects to the rules of the games.

The main target is the train passengers but it can be anyone who can access to the vending machine. The game is designed for playing during the travel time so it can be used as a travel game too.

A board game is a basic format of the social game that makes people face to each other, talk and enjoy. It is different to the online which has anonymity. So, their words, acts and emotion of a person is delivered to the opponent directly. It makes people take care of themselves and it helps to develop their sociality. While playing this board game, people in different religions, cultures, ages, genders group up with one common factor, ‘play’. And it can be a new culture and new community can be built within this new fresh culture.

Ponto in technical side tried to focus on breaking down the board game to its components and reflected each property of them.

Dice: Emotions delivered from rolling a dice such as tension, hope and so on.

Card: inference and prediction skills to win the game.

Token: A technique to get the advantage of the game.

There are only 3 components now, but the extension is possible and same components can be redesigned to a different rule. Now, only 3 games are ready to play, and all others are still under development. Each package of Ponto is the only half of a board game. It is nearly impossible to play with one package, and if it is possible to play with one package, players cannot enjoy much as the set. And, the game attaches the user to the community since the user starts looking for other users.

The main item of the project is the board game, but the vending machine is also iconic in this project. It is a bridge between the users and the board games because they only can get the games from the vending machine. The vending machine also reflects the ‘fast, easy and convenience’. The time taken on designing board games took so long, so I was planned to skip the vending machine production. However, the board game became more complex, so it stayed as a concept with few demos. Then, I built the vending machine to reflect that the start point of the project is the vending machine.

I am thinking of 2 different future developments. One uses existing Social Networking Services to find the opponents and they will build a new fused community of the digital and real world. It will extend the physical community to the digital world and also works on the opposite way.  So, the advantage of both types of the community will be reflected in one combined community. The other method is using the board game as a new advertisement medium. Like the McDonald’s Monopoly event, uses their own story with own models and build small board games and sell them in the real vending machine or use as a promotional material for the higher benefit. Or, combine the real food as board game components or use the package of the item as a board game, so it can build a community of ‘eat, enjoy and share’.

I learnt a really important point from this project. The idea of the initial project was a consumable board game, but it is developed to a social development tool now. And it also reflects the problems and became provided a solution. I did not think about this at the beginning, but it is developed well over the researches and developments. This project tells me how the research and developments are important.

References

OurAuckland. (2017). Record numbers of passengers using trains. [online] Available at: http://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/articles/news/2017/04/record-numbers-of-passengers-using-trains/.

Poster

I love laser cut because it is fast and most time, they cut as I wanted.

All cards and tokens were fine and they came out as I imagine, but dice had a problem. The dice cube I bought is a pressed wood to several different layers. So, the density of each layer is not even and it is reflected on the result of the laser engraving.  

Illustrator files for laser cut.

A game using token was very hard. Because the token does not have any specific character, and it can be anything. To make it works, I used the storyline.

The game is based on the poker game. I used the ingredient of the foods in the storyline.

The selected ingredients are Cacao, Butter, Flour, Sugar, Milk, Sparkling water and Fruit.

Rules:

1. Set 5 random tokens on the longer edge of the box. Make sure ingredient side should face to the inside of the box.

2. Pick 2 tokens from the opponent’s box.

3. Every time the token removed by the opponent, fill the space with spares.

4. If both players agreed to move on, pick the next token from the opponent’s box.

5. When both got 5 tokens, check the tokens.

The winning priority:

A storyline is needed to connect the 3 components. Most board games have a story to follow and the story also builds a connection between the components.

I should have made it before I design it, but I did not think about this much until now. I only focused on making the mechanics of the board game. Making a story that fits on existing mechanic was very hard. So, I decided to use the existing mechanics as the main characters of the game.

I used the rock-paper-scissors game for the card game, so I used it to make the characters. Then, the dice game has a pair of animal-food relation. To make it works within the storyline, I included a cookie, fizzy drink and chocolate bars to replace the food part of the game. These 3 snacks also can be found from a real vending machine. Also, they are related to NZ’s famous snacks and drink. The Cookie is related to the Cookie Time, the fizzy drink is Lemon and Paeroa and chocolate bar is Whittaker’s chocolates. However, I am not going to use the real brand this time, because it will make the stories complex. Finally, the story ended up as;

There are 3 little aliens living in a vending machine, and they are named as Rockie, Scizzy and Palate. Rockie loves cookies, Scizzy loves fizzy drinks and palate loves chocolates. When they fight, Rockie wins to Sizzy, but he cannot win to Palate. Scizzy always loses to Rockie, but always win to Palate.  

I asked few of my friends who are not in BCT for playtesting the dice and card games. And now, I realised that I don’t have any picture of playing. I only found a picture of chicken we ate during the playtesting(…..).

Anyway, the dice game was fine. However, the card game needed some development.

I increased the number of rock, scissors and paper cards and reduced the joker card. And players said that defence card has too much power and it makes the attacks so vain. So, I changed that defence card only can defence the rock, scissors and paper cards and the attack card only.

Another important point I found from the playtesting was that the emotion of player while they are playing the games. When they play the dice game, which is a luck game, the randomness of the dice generates the tension and players are hoping a specific side of the dice. When they play the card games, their thinking process generates another kind of communication between the opponent. Both games generate the jokes and laughs, and the mood of the place filled with enjoy. 

The card game idea comes from Rock-Paper-Scissors Game. Each player has 12 cards and the deck contains 2 of each rock card, paper card, scissor card, attack card, defence card, and joker card.

So, the player starts with 5 cards on hand and start from one of rock, paper or scissor card. If the player does not have any of them, the player should grab 2 cards from the deck. After the first card shown, the loser of the first cards should protect the opponent’s card using the card they have. As the normal rock-paper-scissors game, if the opponent’s card was paper, the player should protect the card using scissor card, attack card or jocker card. Or, if the player has any of these cards but has a defence card, protect the opponent using the card and should grab one card from the deck. Once the round finished by the attack, that round is finished and the next round starts as the same method.

Feedback and idea:

-If there is not enough time, focus on board game and skip making the vending machine

The key item of this project is the board game, so it is true that I need to focus on the board game. But the vending machine reflects the key ideas of this project. I still need to think about that.

-Social media interaction: Use Snapchat to find the opponent

One dice package can be built into 4 different packages depending on the opponent’s package.

Dice-Dice rule

There are 11 dices per package.

Each player starts with 10 dices. The dices are 6-sided dice with pictures on it.

There are dog, cat, mouse, bone, fish and cheese images on each side. They can be divided into 2 groups, animal and foods. So, the dog eats bone, the cat eats fish and the mouse eats cheese.

Players roll the dices and group the dices as an animal-food pair.

Then roll the spear dice. Both players should remove the dices which are matched with the spare dice and the same number of its pair.

The first player who took all dice out wins the game.

The images on dice are the sample for playtesting.

5. Rule and system development// big changes Because I decided to focus on the social part, I changed the whole design and the rules. The game package only contains half of the game. So, one package only has one component and the game requires at least 2 packages to play. Possible combinations are; Dice-dice Dice-card Dice- token Card- token Card-card Token-token Card-token-dice

Another mistake that I had during the design process was that I was focusing on the components’ function. It is reflected in the design and it made the combination complicate. Also, the game only focused on mechanics because I was trying to highlight them as much possible. Mechanics are important, but it should be melted well into the game. So, I reviewed the mechanics of the components and I tried to develop them.

Dice

Dice is mainly working as a random generator. It works purely on luck and players cannot manage or predict them. It may have less tactic, but it may give less stress to think. Ages, thinking skills, and knowledge levels do not affect on gameplay and that makes all players feel equal.

Card

The card can be used in many different ways. It also can generate random by drawing a card from a randomly stacked deck. The difference between the dice is they can manage the situation. Players can use tactics to make the game advantage to themselves.

Token

Tokens do not have any fixed form. It means they can be anything. It can transform to any shape and it gives a wider option. However, in this project, I need to think about carefully. The game will be played on a train; no tables and no fixed board to place the tokens. The number of tokens in a game is also important. If there are too many tokens, players will feel hard to manage them in a moving transportation.

Another point that I need to consider is the components can be crossed over to other components’ functions depending on the board game rules and components designs. I was thinking about using a dice only as a dice and same to other components. So, the flexibility of the usage will change the rules a lot.

I am unhappy with the first designs of the games using dices and tokens. I tried to develop the games from existing games and I thought that is a good approach. However, they seem very tight fit to the existing rules with little changes. So, I tried to step back to the priority that I set to design the game to review the process.

I was focusing on 5 points;

Easy to learn

Solo player game

2+ players game

Place

cost

And I realised that I was focusing on the ‘solo play’ game during the designing process. Actually, the most important point that I need to concern is the ‘2 and more players’ game. It takes the social building part and it is the core of this project. If the game can be played alone, there is not a difference between playing a smartphone game.

I reset the priority as;

2+ player game - social

Easy to learn

Place

Cost

Dice: The theme of the dice game is Lemon and Paeroa drink. There are 2 dices and they have 2 different patterns on each dice, which are lemons and cups of spring water. The number of drink can be removed from the list when one dice is the lemon pattern and the other dice is spring water pattern. It is inspired from shut the box game.

Tokens: The theme of the token game is Bluebird chips. The game is inspired by the peg solitaire game and it has extra rules with different types of the pegs. One is a peg of penguins and the other is a peg of a potato chip. The penguins can jump over the chips and the other penguin, but chips cannot jump over the penguins. Playtests are required to adjust the number of pegs. 

The vending machine in this project links the players to the board games. The vending machine reflects a busy life of modern people in these days and it symbolises the ‘simple’, ‘convenience’ and ‘fast’. However, the board games are very opposed to the conveniences and they are very physical. Another student from my crit session asked about the reason I choose the board game. There are so many smartphone games for killing time, and it does not need to be a physical model. Yes, I agree with that. And I could not answer the question at that time.  

Now, I think the format of a community follows the format of tools used to build the community. Since the social network services became popular, the proportion of time spending on online community increased because the tool that built the online community was the social network services. So, if the tool of communication is a board game in a physical model, it can build a ‘physical’ offline community which needs to face a real person, not a screen. And it is a good and important reason that board games in digital format cannot replace the real board game.

So, I believe that the vending machine can deliver the board game to modern people who are habituated to the convenience and the fast.

In the exhibition, I would set up a small and simple vending machine which dispense the board games. I was thinking about two different types, a candy dispenser type and a general vending machine type. However, the candy dispenser type is too complicated and I need to concern about the size of the board games too. So, I decided to make a general vending machine.

There are two different ways to build;

-Manual

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPJ1e1Hc1hw)

It does not need to connect to a power. Simple mechanism but it will take time to design my own to fit the board games in it.

-Arduino

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qPCrWp8L4s)

It uses sensors, motors and Arduino to control the dispensing mechanism. It requires power to maintain the system.

I found some travel board games from K-mart and Whitcoulls.

$2 Travel board games

I bought these games from K-mart. They are 2 dollars each and made of plastics. Because they are travel games, the size is very compact and I can hold whole board game with one hand. Games are familiar, Snakes and Ladders, Checker and Ludo, so there are not any rules written in, even on the package.

The boards have holes on it and the player pieces are a pin shape. The pieces are plugged in the holes, so the pieces do not disperse from the board even the board is moving or shaking. And the head of the pieces has a pit to stack another piece over it. However, Ludo and Snakes and Ladders have a dice to roll, and it will make the play harder if there is not enough space to roll the dice.

 Magnet and board game

These games are the ideal model of this project if there are not any limits on budget and technique production. The case is made of metal and pieces and tokens are made of cardboard with thin magnet sheet attached on. The magnet is not strong but it still has enough power to stick on the metal plate.

The size of the package is larger than a smartphone but smaller than a 7-inch tablet. And it is very thin and light. Because the pieces and tokens are made with the magnet sheet and the cardboard, they held on the case very well. However, the cost is higher than the K-mart ones, from $10 depending on the game. The manual is written on the case and inside of the case is the board which has guidelines on it.

The games rely on the magnet, the games are mostly puzzles and quiz games. It is not a ‘problem’, but there is a limitation on the genre.