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February 23, 2005
violence
I am not a big fan of violence, so people maybe surprised to find that I am working on a project like Hit Me. Let's face it, Hit Me has the potential to be a very violent game. I know it too -- that's why I added the Personal Injury Waiver Form to the game. But now that I am finishing the game, I need to seriously think about how physical I want the game to be, what I really want the players to do, and how to incorporate that into the rule set.
First of all, I think I can say for certain that I don't want people to get seriously injured playing Hit Me. I mean, a little scrape or bruise here and there can be expected as in any other sport, but it would be simply wrong for me to encourage violence. So, one thing I could do is add a whole bunch of constraints to where and how you can "hit" the other person.
On the other hand, Hit Me is about being physical -- having that physical contact like in Twister. That's like the underlying idea of the game. What's the use if rules are added and there is no physical contact? It sort of defeats the purpose of the game.
Also, I think it's important to keep some sort of freedom for the players for some good ol' emergent behavior. Certainly players will eventually start to come up with personal strategies and styles of playing. This would be crucial for the game to continue to be fun in the long term.
So the point here is that a balance has to be achieved with the constraints placed on physical stuff but without taking away too much physical contact and the players freedom to come up with stuff.
Sumo is a great example of how to make it so that the actions themselves are not harmful. The players only really get hurt when they fall, not when they are hit or grabbed. So let's say I started to play test with the following physical constraints, based on rules for Sumo:
No striking with fists
No hair pulling
No eye gouging
No choking
No kicking in the stomach or chest
No hitting, kicking or grabbing of the privates
Posted by kaho at February 23, 2005 07:17 PM