The game designer, as the game’s title suggests, clearly had an open mind while creating this game. In my experience of building my own drawing game, I pretty much had one main goal in mind: let the players draw however they please; the player is responsible for the creativity on the canvas I’ve created, not me. However, it is this shattering of my expectations that makes me enjoy this game so much: I, now as the player, have very limited creative control with what happens on the canvas. It is this feeling of limited control that drives the correlation between this game and drugs. And when I say drugs, I don’t only mean the hard stuff (which I’ve never even entertained the idea of trying), but I include over-the-counter medications like Tylenol or Benadryl.
Getting back to the point, in this game, the game designer retains some of the creative control stored within the game’s p5.js code, forcing the player to work within the game designer’s limitations. This is comparable to how a drug inherently forces a person into its own limitations. For example, a patient hooked up to an anesthetic I.V. has very limited control over what they can do; the patient can pretty much breathe, but other than that, the patient is forced into a state of induced sleep. Likewise, alcohol limits a college student in their motor and cognitive functions, where said student can still retain the ability to move and think, but perhaps not in a way that they intended. If I had to choose one drug in particular to compare this game to, I honestly wouldn’t be able to come up with one, and I truly think that’s the whole point of this game. The game developer is communicating to the player that they have three options/drugs to paint the canvas with. However, each paint option has different limitations, functions, and uses for the player to get hooked on. In the end, the drug this game makes the player feel is really whatever the game designer wants to give them.
In Joe's game, there are three brushes. The first brush has dots of varying sizes, sometimes several in a straight line, sometimes only one. There are three colors, white, blue, and dark blue. The second brush is a triangle of different colors and sizes. The first click identifies the vertex, and the second identifies the bottom edge of the triangle. The third brush has colorful eclipses. It is horizontal on the left half of the screen and vertical on the right side of the screen.
I wish I could have buttons to clear or undo the screen when playing this game because the first and second brush takes up more space with each stroke. And because of their randomness, they appear in positions where I don't want them to appear. If I could only refresh each time, I wouldn't be able to create the pattern I wanted all at once and would waste more time. When I'm using the third oval brush, it only changes direction on the left or right side of the screen. I wish it could change the size a bit to allow me to create a more varied ellipse.
When I played this game, my feelings were as "abstract" as the title. I don't think size control is destructive. But the advantage of not being able to control the size of the brush only randomly is that it fits the theme better because there is a strong connection between randomness and abstraction.
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Prompt 5:
The game designer, as the game’s title suggests, clearly had an open mind while creating this game. In my experience of building my own drawing game, I pretty much had one main goal in mind: let the players draw however they please; the player is responsible for the creativity on the canvas I’ve created, not me. However, it is this shattering of my expectations that makes me enjoy this game so much: I, now as the player, have very limited creative control with what happens on the canvas. It is this feeling of limited control that drives the correlation between this game and drugs. And when I say drugs, I don’t only mean the hard stuff (which I’ve never even entertained the idea of trying), but I include over-the-counter medications like Tylenol or Benadryl.
Getting back to the point, in this game, the game designer retains some of the creative control stored within the game’s p5.js code, forcing the player to work within the game designer’s limitations. This is comparable to how a drug inherently forces a person into its own limitations. For example, a patient hooked up to an anesthetic I.V. has very limited control over what they can do; the patient can pretty much breathe, but other than that, the patient is forced into a state of induced sleep. Likewise, alcohol limits a college student in their motor and cognitive functions, where said student can still retain the ability to move and think, but perhaps not in a way that they intended. If I had to choose one drug in particular to compare this game to, I honestly wouldn’t be able to come up with one, and I truly think that’s the whole point of this game. The game developer is communicating to the player that they have three options/drugs to paint the canvas with. However, each paint option has different limitations, functions, and uses for the player to get hooked on. In the end, the drug this game makes the player feel is really whatever the game designer wants to give them.
(WC: 345)
Prompt 2:
In Joe's game, there are three brushes. The first brush has dots of varying sizes, sometimes several in a straight line, sometimes only one. There are three colors, white, blue, and dark blue. The second brush is a triangle of different colors and sizes. The first click identifies the vertex, and the second identifies the bottom edge of the triangle. The third brush has colorful eclipses. It is horizontal on the left half of the screen and vertical on the right side of the screen.
I wish I could have buttons to clear or undo the screen when playing this game because the first and second brush takes up more space with each stroke. And because of their randomness, they appear in positions where I don't want them to appear. If I could only refresh each time, I wouldn't be able to create the pattern I wanted all at once and would waste more time. When I'm using the third oval brush, it only changes direction on the left or right side of the screen. I wish it could change the size a bit to allow me to create a more varied ellipse.
When I played this game, my feelings were as "abstract" as the title. I don't think size control is destructive. But the advantage of not being able to control the size of the brush only randomly is that it fits the theme better because there is a strong connection between randomness and abstraction.