Team members:
Yuhao He, Jeffrey Hsu, Ferdi Yu, Michael Hirsch, Steven Harmon

First day 8/31/2017

We first used the class time to coordinate our means of communication and created an online group chat room then proceed to schedule a date for our first group meeting for further brainstorming. With the time left over we bounced around ideas with the constraints in mind of a multiplayer traitor auction bidding game involving memory and had come up with a rough idea of an art bidding game where players must determine which paintings are fake to bid on the correct one.

Second day 9/1/2017

Not everyone could make it on the friday night but Yuhao and I fleshed out the painting idea a bit more. However, in the process of doing that we discovered some holes that would make it difficult to execute well and came up with an alternative based more off on the central auction bidding mechanic rather than using the idea of a traitor as the starting point. We watched an episode of Auction Kings which inspired us to dig deeper into the mechanics and tactics of professional competitive storage unit auction bidding. We found the idea of advanced players hiding their excitement or disdain during previews, the “poker face”, as great social interplay. The mechanic of bidding low and selling to make a profit in the end game based on how well you gauged the price of the item seemed too good to pass up.
Ferdi arrived and added the idea of a set up round at the beginning of the game that determines the player roles and amount of money for the later game. We fell in love with the idea immediately, whilst still agreeing that it was something that we’d only further develop once we had a solid gameplay loop for the main course of the bidding war. Yuhao suggested to automate the randomization of the game, purchase tracking, and calculations he could create a companion website for the game. But before we cemented that as a possibility we had to consult with the TA. It was getting late and we all decided on the next time we’d meet up and went our separate ways.

Third day 9/3/17

Sunday we all met up. Even when Michael was sick he still got a skype call up and running to be there. We all took time to get on the same page and finalized on what game we wanted to make and be proud of making and how we were going to do it. I had gave the verdict on companion tools, which was a no, but we quickly rerouted our course and found a new solution that technically was approved. Whilst it is against recommendation to use electronic mediums along with analog, we only really saw “You can”. Yuhao is also a beast at Excel so he’s somehow configuring it to help the players keep track of the game.

We soon thereafter went to rapid prototyping. I quickly folded and tore a sheet of paper into 10ths and made cards of the items for auction with arbitrary values, secret to everyone else besides the “traitor” who gets an advantage but can be accused and kicked from the game if caught using it too suspiciously. It was funny trying to have everyone close their eyes / tilt the laptop and pick a traitor when any Heads up 7 up tapping movement was easily heard. So we soon learned how we’d now pick the traitor, which was by shuffled role cards, similar to the game Werewolf.

The game was fun, and it gave us a good sense of how the game was going to play out once we had polished art pieces and printed rules. Afterward, we gave ourself roles and responsibilities in the team which I’ll now list below.

		
			Roles & Responsibilities
. Yuhao: Design of formal elements, specifically -> creating the means of randomizing the object values, in-game record keeping, and making the game replayable and interesting each unique round.
. Jeffrey: Playtesting log & design
. Ferdi: Rules & design
. Michael Hirsch: Art/Design
. Steven Harmon: Photo Journal, Box & Card Art
		
	

After that, we came created a google doc to contribute to and made it our assignment to come up with 10 items each with a value range (min, max) and public domain or our own photos for them by that night for Michael, our artist, to have time to assemble, print, and cutout. After that, we split.

Fourth/Fifth day 9/6/17 - 9/7/17

8pm the night before the game is due wasn’t our desired time to work on finishing the rough draft of the game, but it was the only time when we could all be together so we made it happen. So it’s 9, we get news that our artist can’t make it and there’s no doc created yet of all the items assorted, so we rush to create one ourselves. There are printer problems. Now it’s around 11pm, we’re gluing the cut out images onto pre made cards and Yuhao is entering the values into his Excel spreadsheet. By the time the game is finished, it’s Midnight. On the bright side, we had playtesters nearby who were ready and willing to playtest on the condition we playtest their game first. The testers really enjoyed the game and the bidding wars had. However, we discovered many flaws in our game… First off, the surefire method to winning the game is by not playing; is there a real world lesson in here somewhere? Also, the accusation mechanic made it impossible for the traitor to win and the game’s calculations were far too complex and ate up too much time because the bidding system was a too realistic. Long story short, our game was broken the night before it was due. We rushed to finding new ways of tracking money and started manically cutting paper into small Monopoly styled currency, but that still didn’t change a thing about the traitor and metagame problems. We were tired, it was already 2am and some of us had 8am classes in the morning. We gave the game a swedish name, because we were loopy from sleep deprivation and decided the best course of action was McDonald’s. The game wasn’t good. Yet, it was playable and at the end of the day that’s what matters most. Also sleep, sleep matters.

It’s class time. We are the first and only group to have turned in the needed materials on time before class. We knew beforehand that the game wasn’t going to be accessible, but we didn’t realize it would take 10 whole minutes for the players to understand the rules and actually begin playing the game. So we scrapped it and started anew. We realized the most fun to be had was not in the highly realistic bidding simulation, but people entering bidding wars for sentimental items. So we started off with that as our main focus. Also adding fake play money and rethinking the traitor mechanic so now everyone has the opportunity to become a betray and become a traitor for a specific player. The game still involving memory by memorizing the selected player’s objective. Everyone is a traitor of someone else. Furthermore we gave the players more agency by letting them chose their own “wish lists” at the start of the game. We had the concept and needed to make the pieces.

Sixth Day 9/8/2017

Everyone showed up to paint the coins to make it trackable and organized for players. (not fraudulent in nature)

Seventh Day 9/9/2017

Today Michael translated all the items into Swedish then I created the card designs and printed them out. Ferdi had brought his heavy cardstock sheets and we began cutting and pasting the prints onto them. We had liftoff. We all debated for awhile on how many players were necessary and if we even needed a auctioneer at all. We replaced the 5th auctioneer player with a timer, but soon found an annoying and impersonable meta of waiting till the last second and shouting a large number not fun. Also we ran into a problem when players can predict they’re going to lose halfway through the game and essentially give up. So we reverted back to 5 players, made it best out of 5 by the end of the game, and if there’s a tie the players get rewarded with a dance party because in Sweden everybody wins. Or we’ll have a tiebreaker thing?

Eighth Day 9/12/2017

We all did a playtest with Ferdi’s friends and the game was well received. We got some great feedback on unclear parts of the instructions and were relieved that the auctioneer role was in fact one of the most fun aspects of the game.

Ninth Day 9/13/2017

Wednesday night we met up to do some finishing and polishing with the box, the rules, and do one final playtest to make sure everything is good for the final build.

The players accidentally associated colors of role cards with token colors. Eventually they found out how to play after around 10 minutes, but to be fair most of that time was arguing if the rice cooker was indeed a rice cooker or vacuum, played by putting the tokens in the center during bidding, and didn’t know whether to write in swedish or english. Good thing is, there was a lot of laughter and once they got an understanding of the game they really enjoyed it. So we refined the rules with some photos and minor tweaks, and printed more than one copy for the players.

All in all, the game is something we’re all really proud of. We made a game within the constraints, managed to localize it for another language in the process of finding a theme, and soon we’re releasing it free online as a print and play after getting the feedback we from the grade report.