Inspiration: 

Greed, disloyalty, trust and betrayal always revolve around money and I wanted to create a game demonstrates the power dynamics revolving around this very idea that even when you have a tight group of friends, greed and money always prevails. To demonstrate this concept, I created a bank heist game to simulate the idea of “how well can you really trust someone?”.

Concept and Idea:

• Objective (Win State)
  • The player with the most money at the end wins the game

• The Crew (Player Cards)
  • The crew consists of 6 players, which simulate the tight knit friendship who all have skills of their own.
  • Player cards are not to be shown to anyone other than yourself

• Player Special Skills
  • Each player has a special skill that can be used only once throughout the game
  • Player cards have special passive skills that enhances the bank loot at the end of the mission

• Bank Job Missions
  • There are a total of 4 missions
  • Each mission requires the crew leader to pick his crew
  • Each mission has a designated bank job leader who chooses the crew members
  • Depending on the number of crew members, each player picks a digit from a pile of faced-down numbers and this will total up to be the loot

Player Cards:

Each player has a special ability that they can use only once throughout the game. There are a total of 6 players.

Infiltrator:

Take a Bullet for Me – Cause another player to be shot by a gun pointed at you for a round

Vault Cracker:

Hidden Compartment – Double your loot for a round

Weapons Expert:

Always Carry a Spare – Point 2 guns at 2 different or the same player for a round

Hacker:

Wire Transfer – Re-route a player’s loot to your bank account for a round

Mastermind:

Disappear – Remain invulnerable to all guns for a round

Brute:

Brute Force – Force a player to point their gun at another player for a round

Gun-play Mechanics:

After the leader selects his bank heist crew members and the loot has been tallied. The leader counts down 3-2-1 and everyone draws their guns. There are 2 options open at this moment: you can draw a gun at someone or you holster your weapon

If you draw your gun on someone: that person will lose a life but will still get a share of the loot

If more than one person points their gun at you: you lose a life and you do not get a cut of the loot

Mission Board:

The mission board serves as a marker for what mission you are currently on, how many crew members are participating in the mission and how big your loot will be in thousands. On the first mission, a 2 represents a total of 2 bank heist members participating in this round and a total number of 2 digits that will make up their loot (i.e. 10K). Players who are unlucky and draw 2 0’s will have no loot.

Player Lives:

Each player has 2 lives. When a player is shot he or she will overturn their life card to show an “X” meaning that they have been shot.

How to Play/Gameplay:

1. Pick a player (player cards are distributed and not displayed). Only the player knows his or her character
2. Move the “mission marker” to the first mission
3. Crew leader picks the crew members to join him on the job based on the number on the “mission board”
4. Each crew members pick a number from a bag
5. The numbers are placed on the table that forms the total amount of loot
6. Total amount of loot is revealed
7. The leader calls out 3-2-1 and all players either draw out their guns at another crew member or holster their weapons (see Gun-play mechanics)
8. Loot is then split evenly between crew members who are still in the game
9. Game moves onto the next mission and repeat from step 3

Authors Note:

About The Game:

When creating this game, I wanted to create a game where it evoked emotion and forced the players to experience what it is really like to be somebody else. The idea of this bank heist game came to me when my friends and I were watching a YouTube clip of a bank robbery trailer and a he said that if he chose the bank crew, no one would back-stab each other after a successful heist. I wanted to challenge that idea.

Actual Playtest Observations:

When I play-tested this game in class I was very surprised to see that the game demonstrated the relationship between money and trust. The big question throughout the whole game was “who can I really trust?”. I think that the dynamic between power, money and trust was really highlighted in the later phases of the game. In the beginning, when only 2 members were chosen to go on a bank heist they could only receive a maximum of a 2-digit thousand number. So it was almost always split evenly between the two members. No one really cared about the smaller loot numbers and it was rarely fought over. As the game progressed and more and more players were chosen to participate in the heist the loot trust issues quickly began to grow and people started conversing with each other to try to reason things out. Today I played this game again with Mark, Carter, and Rachel. One of the interesting things that happened during the game was when Mark and Carter discussed about a compromise that if Mark pointed a gun at me this round he would not point the gun at Carter the next round. When the loot stacked up to be 5 digits people became anxious and there was no way to tell who you could trust unless you had protection or a way of assuring the other person that you would do what you say you would do.

Classroom Inspiration and Application:

Much of the inspiration came from “Jejune Institute” and the in class game “Room at the Top”. I have found that I like games that make you embody an emotion or a person and ultimately make you feel a certain way about a story or perspective. “Room at the Top” gave me some insight on hidden agendas and how they affect the dynamics of teamwork. I wanted to incorporate hidden agendas because the game “Room at the Top” demonstrated the awkward dynamic of trust and what are you really here for?  question. I added a hidden identity and ability to mimic the hidden agenda. I really liked how the “Jejune Institute” created a story for everyone to follow. I believe in a successful game the story creates flow in the different phases of the game and most importantly the story has to make sense for the game to be believable. The “mission board” idea was an appropriation of a game called “Resistance”. The board serves not only as a tracker for which current level you are on but also a counter for how many people are playing at a certain time.

What is needed:

1. First 3 floors of the library
2. 3-piece token
3. Timer

How to play:

The objective of the game is to find the 3 token pieces and complete the puzzle. Each of the token pieces has been given to random strangers on each floor of the library. You will need to retrieve these pieces from these strangers by asking around and saying a secret passcode. The library is structured so that the first floor is an open work space with no noise restrictions and the third floor is a silent floor so the difficulty increases as you move up the levels. The goal is to complete the puzzle in the fastest time.  In my play test, the secret code was “do you have the stuff?” If the stranger has the token he will give you a piece of the puzzle.

The token:

Observations:

Level 1:

The first floor of the library was the easiest. There was absolutely no distinction between the outside world and the first floor of the library due to the fact that there was no restrictions to noise.

Level 2:

As we progressed to the second floor, you could tell that the social norms in the library started to impact the player as he did not breeze through the level and tried to stay quiet when approaching people asking about the passcode.

Level 3:

The third floor was the hardest. Everyone on the third floor was quiet and the player did not want to continue. But after much deliberation he continued with the game when I told him that I will go around the floor with him.

Authors Note:

I was inspired by the in-class discussion and movie about “The Jejune Institute” where much of the game depended on the environment and immersing players into the world, burring the notions of reality. As the players get more involved with the environment the game becomes a reality for them as they are fully immersed in the environment. I wanted to flip this idea and push the boundaries of how social norms in an environment will effect players playing a game. Ultimately I found out that when you, as a player, do not care about anything, especially about how others view you, then you become invincible and this game will be a breeze. For more self-conscious players social norms it becomes incredibly difficult to break social norms. When we got to the third floor, the player did not want to approach students that had headphones on and ask them the passcode because it was not normal. Overall this game pushed the limits of what a game could be transformed to in the context of another environment. If I just played this game in Curry it would be a totally different game because of the social norms in the environment.

Guess

Materials:

1. Play cards with pictures of characters
2. A dice

How to Play:

Aim: Be the first to guess who is on your card. The clues you give about each other’s character has to be valid and true, however, you can determine how much information you want to give away.

1. Shuffle the cards and have all players to pick a card without looking at it
2. Roll the dice to see who goes first (highest number goes first in the clockwise direction)
3. Roll the dice and pick an action

DICE ROLLS:

1. Skip my turn
2. Pick someone to act out an action about your character
3. Pick someone to make a sound about your character
4. Pick someone to say a word about your character
5. Ask a yes/no question to the group
6. Skip someones turn OR choose options 2-5

Appropriation:

This game was appropriated from the game “Heads Up”. I felt that the game “Heads Up” was too one dimensional and needed more depth to the game. Whenever I saw the game played, the players were very awkward, which meant that there was not enough awkwardness or players were not drawn into the game enough. I appropriated the cards to have only pictures of people and characters like Pickle Rick, Kevin Hart, and Kanye West. This game can be appropriated to accommodate for any types of personalities, accents and topics.

Authors Note:

I chose to create this game because I felt that the game “Heads Up” was way to boring and non-immersive. By adding the dice roll for different actions a new level of difficulty was added. When I play tested this game in class, everyone was enjoying the game. There were multiple comments on how dice roll number 3 was extremely hard.

The Dada movement was a cultivation of multiple cultures and ideas. Art was created by taking created art and distorting it, thereby creating new meanings and ideas. Bringing together popular personalities from movies, tv shows and celebrities was a representation of that idea. I was inspired by the Dada collage we did in class. Given pictures of art during the Dada movement we had to create a collage to represent the Paris Dada movement. Taking that same idea and applying it to the “Heads Up” game, I took a game and reinvented it with the question of how well people know the characters that build up their culture. Incorporating dice rolls into this game brought in a different popular game culture of random generated options and difficulties. The appropriation of adding portraits of popular personalities onto cards was another aspect of creating inspiration for the players to pull from.

Abstract:

This piece is meant to demonstrate a point. Ideas and thoughts are passed on more successfully when the curiosity of the audience is evoked and want to know more about what is happening. The application of this technique can be applied in many ways.

What  you will need:

1. Chalk
2. Blackboard
3. Class-room setting with rows of desks for depth
4. A facilitator

How to play:

1. Draw a palm-sized circle on the blackboard
2. Break up a piece of chalk into small, diced-sized pieces
3. Give the pieces of chalk to students in the class
4. Tell them to try to hit the circle
5. Facilitator to deliver the message

Message:

The idea of an institution for learning is a wonderful one. Students should be ingrained with the idea to never stop learning. However many students fall short in entering top tier institutions because they are unable to cope with the stringent standards brought up by the institution. Education is not a “one shoe fits all” situation. If Cinderella was in this situation, Prince Charming would have never found her. People come from different cultures and backgrounds and have different values and morals. Everyone has different ways of learning and understanding material. There needs to be a reformation on the ways of teaching and inspiring students.

In this demonstration many students will fall short of hitting the target. Students sit in rows and the students in the back will have a harder time than the students in the front to hit the target. In addition to this students all have different throwing abilities.

Author’s Note:

School was always a challenge for me. It was not easy for me to conform to the rules set by the institution nor was it easy for me to learn by reading a textbook. I found the best type of learning was when I was self-motivated to find out the answer and this was further instilled by the many great teachers I have had throughout my education.

Yoko Ono’s City Piece in “Grapefruit” sparked this piece:

“Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage” (Ono).

As a bystander on the street going about your daily routine. If I saw someone pushing an empty baby carriage I would ponder about the possibilities of why someone was doing something like that. If the opportunity arose I would probably ask the person why he or she was doing something like that. It is not that I cared for the answer. It is about finding closure to my curiosity.

When people are exposed to an idea being spread they often put up walls to counter the idea. However, when they are drawn in by a well crated route they expose themselves in order to know what is going on. When we look at optical illusions we often look for hours to find the duck hiding in a rabbit (image 1) and when we are unable to find the duck we ask for the answer until we get it. Once we see the duck we remember where it is forever. This is the power of curiosity. If an idea wants to be spread, we have to craft it in such a way where the idea can be delivered without the initial judgement of the audience. It is only then will the idea be remembered.

Image 1: Rabbit/Duck

Great companies evoke this technique. A famous example evolves around two competing companies in the tech industry: Apple and Microsoft. Apple was successful in portraying themselves as a more user friendly product than Microsoft because their advertisements targeting why you need and Apple product rather than what specifications does the new product have.

Gordon Lo