Essays

An exploration of how games encourage emotional response from players through their characters, and how the player's relationship to those characters affects that response. Written for my game design class at Texas A&M University.

One of the primary ways in which games elicit emotional responses in their players is by connecting them to the human elements within a game's systems and themes. People are naturally drawn to emotional connection with other persons, whether human or approximately so, and how the player relates to representations of such elements in games can influence how the player responds to them emotionally. Three categories in which these elements may exist in relation to the player appear in the presence of other players, of player-controlled characters, and in non-playable characters. Each such element can exist distinct from, or in concert with the other two, but each has different advantages for providing points of emotional engagement to the player.

An analysis of the game Warchest, comparing and contrasting its use of mechanics to other games with similar features. Written for my game design class at Texas A&M University.

Warchest is a board game in which two teams of players seek to hold the most control points on a hexagonally-gridded board. Players must balance the maneuvering of their units on the board with the recruitment of further resources to replenish lost forces and provide more opportunity to command those units. This choice is driven by the mechanic of "bag-building", in which players may recruit several units of the same type to their bag of unit coins. Each turn, players draw coins and may perform one action relating to the unit type of each coin. Players do not have the same set of unit types, and each type possesses unique behavior, creating diverse army compositions and variability of play.