Initial Ideas

When we first found out what the brief was we had a couple of ideas what we could create and which board game we could focus on:

• An idea that we thought of was to go for a simplistic classic game design, such as those seen in video games such as pac man and space invaders. These games are classics and where the original idea of 'gaming' first started from so we thought we would be able to use this style to make some really original and something that would stand out. Most games these days use high definition, technical images such as those seen in games like COD and grand theft auto, but we wanted to look at where these games came from and how we could incorporate something into our design and final piece. 

• Staying on a similar theme as simplicity and classic gaming we thought of the idea of going back to basics and what the original concept of a board game is. The inital idea of a board game is to bring the family together into one area and to interact with each other and we thought of using this as the theme for our installation. We could create something thats initial use is to bring the family together and from here we can expand our ideas to incorporate a specific game. 

• We thought about what games we could incorporate into the idea of bringing people together. Our idea was to start out with the players away from each other, and simply just bring them together. We decided that whatever we created would be an iPhone application and a web application with the idea that we would later be able to expand it to android phones and blackberry. Games we thought of that use this similar concept:

• Battleships: The idea of battleships is to find the ships on the other peoples radar. We could create a similar idea, with a game that plots people on your phone on a radar and the user has to find their friends within a certain area.  
• Hide and Seek: Players simply have to use their mobile phones as a hide and seek device that allows players to login in a game together, with one player finding all the others in a certain area.
• Guess Who: We thought of having multiple dynamics and uses of our game, another we could include is a similar concept to guess who, rather thang guessing who is hiding, you have to guess where they are hiding with random clues sent to the phone from the person hiding, such as photos, messages, tweets etc.
• Pictionary: Developing again on the idea of using pictures to give ideas as to where the person is hiding we could include a similar concept to pictionary where the seeker is not given the entire photo as a clue but instead given random sections that they then have to guess from. This adds another concept to the game and makes it slightly more challenging.

Looking at the real use of board games which generally seems to be a way to bring the family together into one area and to interact with each other, even if this may be unwanted or awkward, the general use is that of bringing people together, and trying to have a good time.  We brought this concept into the theme for our installation, defining the 'board game' genre in this way, means that rather than take a single board game like say Monopoly, and enlarging it to a city scale, which could be just as awkward and uninteresting for those using it, we could create something thats initial use is simply just to bring family or friends together and from here we can expand our concept, rather than aiming to to be a just a game which can be played, but starting with a functional piece simply aiming to help bring people together, which acts as a catalyst; a platform in which people can expand the base function into a game.