Finals week is about halfway done now, however; my last final happened this evening for the game projects course. We ordered several pizzas and invited a number of other students outside of the class for one last presentation of our work. Every team exhibited the current state of their development, which was a first to have all teams in attendance. I think the most significant thing to come out of this last iteration demo was reflecting on all the accomplishments made this semester and to think about what the future holds. I am glad to say after such a busy semester, it's great to be finally over and have a break from it all. This semester brought new experiences and challenges, most notably was leading a team in developing a game. While I expected leadership to be difficult, having essentially two leaders, thankfully not three as the person responsible for the original decided to back off, complicated thing a great deal more. Not only does this make authority and roles on the team tricky to discern, conflicting thoughts and statements arise on several subjects especially when one leader isn't there at the time. Aside from that, I found it challenging to find enough tasks to keep everyone busy, even with team members helping to create stories. I've also ran into the issue teammates spreading themselves too thin, trying to do everything and getting frustrated when they don't see much accomplishment. I plan to address the later two issues in more depth at the beginning of next semester and will work with my co-leader and professors when needed. As for the break, we're not requiring team members to work on the project due to various complications each may face, such as lack of reliable internet, as well as its supposed to be a break. A few have stated they would not mind or even plan to work on a few stories, though not necessarily at the normal pace during the semester. I myself plan to work on some art assets over break and I hope to finish a significant number by the time we start the spring semester. Here are some examples of the art we've made this semester.

I would like to continue the discussion of winning and losing from the last update. In the previous post, I mentioned how I feel that games need some form of punishment for failure or else lose all meaning, as well as argued that failure in a game can be an enjoyable part and provide a different experience. Developers may find the balance between these two points difficult to achieve and either remove significant punishment to prevent players from becoming upset and turning away from the game or simply force the player to deal with the punishment for failure. While I do believe that players should face consequences, failure ought not to become a wall, and allow the player to continue onward while presenting another challenge to overcome, which brings me to my next point. Players should not care whether or not they lose. At the end of any game, a player ought to walk away being satisfied with whatever outcome they arrived at, and even better, have an entertaining anecdote to share with others. An example of this was a star wars role-playing game that myself and a few friends tried for the first time at Nanocon 2011, in which we were playing the role of sith acolytes attempting to become the next apprentice by secretly killing off all the other players. The game offered a very loose structure in the rules, and allowed for a lot of creative choices, and because of this we were capable of performing some crazy events. As the game progressed, I felt that my characters skills didn't offer much potential for me to win the game, but I was surprised when it came down to myself and one other person, in which the final duel came very close. I thoroughly enjoy the game despite losing due to the ridiculous antics we performed, my favorite being myself dashing down a hallway as far as I could in order to reach my friend's character before chucking and impaling a sharp triangular holocron into his face and nearly killing off his character. Branching of off this, I feel that developers put too much focus on winning or losing in a game rather than ensuring the game is fun for everyone. An example of this is the base version of Twilight Imperium. The game is fun in its own right; however, it had some major flaws, the main one being the strategy cards. If a player wanted to win, they were force to select the imperial card, which gave victory points, if they could, followed by the initiative card after so they could chose from the cards first next time. This forces the players' hands and prevents them from playing their way. The company made new cards in one of the expansions that allowed more choice and freedom in the game, and most preferred to play in a manner that was not efficient to win anyway.