Game Night

For thesis, the CCA ID senior class has been exploring games and the concept of gaming since last September. The research and prototyping culminated this past week in a Game Night intended to be something of a dry run for the big end-of-year show in May. The event was held at Submission Gallery in the Mission, which, as we hoped, provided just the sort of casual ambiance for a semi-chaotic jumble of gameplay.

I brought Matchmaker, the strategy-based pattern game that might be described as a mash-up between Scrabble and Dominoes, with a dash of Tetris thrown in. In truth, I had apprehensions as to how well it would capture attention in a raucous environment, but I was pleasantly surprised that people actually waited to play ("oh, can I jump in the next round?"). All in all, I probably played four rounds with as many as 16 people over the course of the night. (These were sustained, 15-20 minute rounds.) The feedback was quite positive overall, and I'm looking forward to moving some of Matchmaker's underlying concepts into new games for the remainder of the term. Read more about Matchmaker here.

Keeping score. Good idea for next time: a wall-mounted white board for better visibility.