Journal Response Week 1

Reading Chapter 10 of Lenses, the author states there are different types of game mechanics that aren't universally agreed upon, but they still attempt to make classify them in different groups. The 1st group is about the mechanic of space. The examples they used was tic tac toe, a soccer field, and games that just take place during conversation. It's interesting, as this branch of mechanics enforce the idea that even if there's no board there is still space of where the game is being played. The 2nd group is the states of attributes as well as information that's displayed to the player about attributes and it's "states". The 3rd is actions, explaining how multiple actions and objects interacting with each other or having a game with enough actions to form strategies is key to a very dynamic type of gameplay. The actions your players can make and the interactions they have with the word; this really took my interest while reading.  The 4th is rules and how important they are.  Rules themselves are the game and it's important to make sure the goals are achievable, the rewards are satisfying, the game's rules are clear, and when creating the rules they have time to develop and grow. The 5th is skill. This group of mechanics talk about skills directly coming from the players themselves as games might require players to develop real skills like remembering where certain locations are or being able to quickly press a button as a reaction, compared to virtual skills that develop without the player themselves growing in the real world. The 6th and final group is luck. Luck itself can be intertwined in every other mechanic mentioned above, and its important to calculate what in your game is based off probability and how well the player can control this chance. 

Chapter two in "Theory of fun" by Raph Koster talks about the cognitive brain. It talks about how there are three types of the brain: The conscious part of the brain, the part of the brain that "chunks" memory, and finally the third is all about  muscle memory or "grokking". The conscious part of the brain is the part that always thinks about what we do, and using this part of the brain we mainly always seek for patterns in everyday life. Chunking is when we do things in routine so much that we don't remember and just go into auto drive while performing them. I didn't know grokking was the actual term for this, but this is something I've done as well. Muscle memory is the most important one that stands out to me, because I can understand how this can be applied to games. Just like memorizing where all the keys are on a key board, memorizing a certain input in a fighting game or how to use a quick inventory menu in games is a skill you can practice overtime, to where it just becomes a reaction against something that pops up in a game. In Chapter three, we talk about what games are: patterns and rules. A game presents a pattern and our brain consumes it, but if the pattern never changes then the brain will get bored of the same old thing. What this talks about is mixing up a game so it's not the same repetitive process to players if you want to keep them engaged or entertained. You have to find a balance of ramping up the difficulty in the pattern. Too fast and it might discourage players too keep going, while too slow can make the pattern too easy and unstimulating to the brain. Games is all about stimulating the brain basically, and this is a very interesting way to view it. It also talks about the brain being a teacher, and this too is also interesting as games let our brain learn and progress to continue gathering more and more information.