Blending Medium in Introductory Game Design Courses with Steve Jackson Games' FRAG
Introduction
I recently had the opportunity to teach Game Design and Development 1 (GDD1) over here at Rochester Institute of Technology. In this course, we discuss the iteration and early pre-production phases of game design, what it means to start a game design, and how to develop an idea of a game into the start of a design.
In my program, we focus heavily on coding and programming and so we have to constantly try and balance that content with powerful design courses. No pressure. In this first semester of my teaching GDD1, I developed an assignment that was meant to take the programmer first mentality and turn it on its head.
The basis of the assignment was simple: I need to show them how a paper prototype of a videogame should look and how we can take those ideas and execute them in code.
To do this, I took one of my favorite crossovers of gaming in history: Steve Jackson Games’ FRAG. I asked my students to design an expansion for it while providing some thoughts on how it could be incorporated in a digital game.
This is the prompt:
In this assignment, you will BE ASSEMBLING IN GROUPS OF 2 and making an expansion pack for Steve Jackson Games’ FRAG. This is an FPS made into a boardgame and it gets into a specific problem we tend to see in IGM, “why am I designing video games with paper?!!?!?”
Many of you want to be writing code and will call that design. And yet, code is execution, not design. So if you have this mentality, this assignment is for you.
First-person shooters have a core loop that mostly focuses on shooting and that’s typically mediated by the physics engine. The actual design of an FPS depends on special features, movement, and other aspects of the game. So this assignment is born as I want you to see the relationship between the logic of a boardgame versus that of Shooters themselves.
In essence, I wanted to blend the medium of videogame and boardgame because our students often begin in the former and never touch the later.
The assignment is meant to confine the learner by asking them to expand a game that is a pen and paper translation of a popular video game genre. In getting them to think about an FPS in pen and paper form, the hope is that they understand the relationship between medium and can create more interesting, well-scoped games in the future.
Well, so what?
Teaching game design is a delicate process. You have students who often are attracted to the idea of game design because they identify as gamers. As a result, they have a strong attachment to consumptive behaviors. Your job as an instructor is to augment that identity by shifting it from consuming to creating. The act of creating something based on what we love is constant disappointment until we fully understand what drove us to want to make those things. Not respecting the difficulty of that process will drive students away from designing games.
That new identity is curious, looks at games with an eye on design, and understands the relationship between the world they live in and how it becomes what they see on screen from concept to execution. This is their first course that discusses design and so we try and do a lot within it.
After a post on Blue Sky, Darryll Silva over at SJGames asked me for a bit more information about the assignment and so this post is meant to provide context about the assignment and then highlight what the students made.
So what did they make?
What they made
The expansions are a fascinating mishmash of different kinds of approaches to design. They all have their strengths and weaknesses (like any game) but they all also do something that is extra neat: Steve Jackson Games’ FRAG is a game that attempted to replicate Unreal Tournament back in 2000 or so. I got to go to Steve Jackson Game’s home in Austin to playtest it while it was under development.
FPS, shooters in general, have changed a lot since then and have even begun to see professional play. As a result, this group of students (born roughly around 2004 or later), are looking at a game from the past and being asked to make an expansion that they don’t fully know or understand the context it was created in. Initial play sessions were extremely interesting because of this!
As a result, we see expansions like “Balancing” updates which re-imagine the game from the present. We see MOBA-style hordes descending on the players. We see turrets, king of the hill, and even Hatsune Miku-inspired expansions. One of the most interesting (to me) expansions is the “Revenge Pack” which gives players reaction cards they can play when being shot at at. It adds something to the game that has changed in board games since Frag was created.
And they’re all extra fascinating, take a look!
Frag: Advanced Shooting Systems
Ever think Frag was a bit too peaceful and mundane? Not with this expansion pack. Place turrets that have a radius that will immediately target a player that steps too close.
Set up traps that will debilitate or even frag an opponent. Feel like you can’t carry enough equipment? If you pull the right cards, you can carry so much more… Use this extra equipment to DESTROY YOUR ENEMIES!!! Given luck is on your side ;)
Frag: Balancing Expansion
Jinna Smail & Cameron Wilson
Have you ever played a game with someone who absolutely demolishes all the other players?
Has a game ever seemed ludicrously broken at some parts? Frag is back and better than ever! This expansion pack aims to fix some of the balancing issues that were present in the first edition.
Now, you and your friends can all shoot each other fairly!
Frag is even faster and more violent than it once was. All’s fair in love and war.
Frag: Boss Expansion
Bored of only having your friends to frag? The Frag Boss Expansion adds a new deadly hazard to Frag. One of six unique bosses will hunt you each game.
Kill it to score a frag and take their loot, including a unique boss weapon. You’re not just hunting each other anymore…
Frag: The Chaos Expansion
Julian Vagg and Conor Gutierrez
Frag: The Chaos Expansion is an expansion to the existing Steve Jackson game, FRAG. This expansion aims to bring more varied gameplay, and experimental mechanics that are vastly different from the base game of FRAG.
By using the new Weapon Mod card sub-type, or calling in a carpet bomb, there are so many new ways to frag your enemies and rise to victory.
Frag: Enemy on the Other Side
Giovanna Nelson & Milo Qureshi
This brilliant expansion introduces cooperative gameplay in the form of Capture the Flag. Two teams. One flag. A struggle in the midst of the warzone. Who will seize the flag and reign victorious?
Frag: Fantastical Frag
Samantha Osborne and Silas Howard
You know what’s better than just shooting guns? Shooting guns with a DRAGON flying overhead! Turn this board into a fantasy world.
Where around any wall could land you in the sites of a wild beast ready to pounce!
Can you avoid a golem chasing you down during a pixie raid while your friend has you in their scopes? Find out today!
Frag: Fatal Error Update
Zach Ayers and Davey Walls
In this expansion, dive into the coded void of cyberspace and take control of the battlefield. With several new weapons, items, and specials, the game has just stepped up to a new level. With new ways to combat your enemies, the frags can’t…and won’t stop coming.
Find a way to adapt to the environment and take home glory and fame! With a new expanded board, there is a big focus on longer range combat, and movement abilities that will help you to close the distance. With all the chaos of the battlefield raging at once, it may be uncertain if the world you fight in will be left standing by the conflict’s end. Will you emerge triumphant and commit to achieving your victory, or will you crash and have a fatal error? That is up to you.
Frag: Gamemode - Hardpoint
Gabriel Roddy and Naomi Belgrave
Hardpoint is a gamemode similar to King of The Hill where players need to move to and control specific locations on a map. There is only one hard point on the map at a time, but the hardpoint can move.
While occupying the space, players will gain points, if they meet a certain threshold of points, they win. If this threshold is not reached, then the player with the highest amount of points after three hardpoint movements wins.
Frag - The Horde Expansion Pack
Austin Bonbrake and Eoin Stansfield
You’re gonna need a bigger gun!
Face off against The Horde! The Horde player commands the persistent ferocious Hordlings who fight against a band of Champions (2-5 players)!
Champions select a unique starter gadget and are equipped with shared weapons and other gadgets as well. Champion respawns are scarce with the immense pressure of The Horde.
As a Champion will you stand united to take down the swarm or will you become The Horde?
Frag: Juggernaut
Kiera Szuba and Ben Haines
Fight alongside your fellow players as you seek to take a new, mutual threat, The Juggernaut.
They say that Juggernaut can take on entire fire teams by themselves, but you’re out to prove them wrong!
Team up, coordinate, and hopefully get lucky to take out this powerful new threat before they become too strong to overcome…
Frag: Mutually Assured Destruction
Tensions are running high and the chaos may be reaching apocalyptic levels. In this explosive add-on, players gain access to an arsenal of devastating nuclear weaponry capable of wiping out entire sectors of the map, along with anyone unlucky enough to be standing in range.
But be warned: launching a nuke comes at a cost. Every detonation escalates the MAD meter, pushing the game closer to total destruction.
In the world of Mutually Assured Destruction, winning will require many more casualties.
Frag: New Heights
Claim the high ground and snipe your enemies from above. In this Frag expansion, move across the new three dimensional map in order to take out your opponents.
Or even better, change the map itself! With new gadget cards, you can add new obstacles like extra walls, acid, teleporter spots, and even bombs.
Embrace the chaos of change and use it to your advantage!
Frag: Revenge pack
Ever been the victim of a drive by?
Ever been attacked and not been able to fight back?
No longer!
In this expansion pack, get your revenge instantly.
Frag: SwapZone
The Frag you once knew is dead. It’s been replaced by its cooler, faster, hotter cousin. Gone are the days of walking, running, and tracking your movement.
In this new edition of Frag, team up with friends to spread the carnage across the board. With the invention of swapper technology, not even the laws of physics can hold you back.
Discover new weapons and gadgets that’ll make Einstein weep, teleporting items across the map or remotely blowing up your enemies. Take that, relativity. Experience the mind bending power of the swappers, bringing more chaos, more blood, and more FRAG.
You’ve entered… the SWAP ZONE.
VocaFrag - A Vocaloid Expansion Pack
Josie Verive-Cain and Sienna Sloe
Taking to the arena are a new set of contenders - the Crypton Vocaloids! Play as Miku, Len, Rin, Luka, Meiko, and Kaito and take down your competition with guns and violence - or with the power of song.
Brand new song cards give you a new way to win: outperform your opponents and become the most popular vocaloid of all time. After all, it doesn’t matter if you get fragged if your memory lives on forever.
Conclusion
This has been a busy semester of design in GDD1! For the assignment outlined in this post, the students will be provided the Steve Jackson games Online Policy Covering Fan Pages, Fan Fiction, and Free Game Aids which outlines how to organize their materials, canned text to be added, and what graphics are allowed according to their license.
As a result, the students will be able to (with the help of this policy) create Print and Play PDFs of their expansions with the ability to post them on their portfolios and elsewhere like upload them to the BoardGameGeek page for FRAG (as long as it follows the policy). This also gives them a reason to develop the expansions further than they could in class.
Or in other words, making an expansion from an existing game will give the students an opportunity to polish it and engage with trademark and copyright language that is simple and easy to understand. The exposure to this language will be extremely useful as they continue to develop their design portfolios and get ready to find permanent jobs or open studios of their own. This assignment elevates their work and their portfolio by demonstrating careful attention and care to details around intellectual property.
The best part is that Steve Jackson Games has asked to send us some copies of the game so we can run this assignment in the future, and we will be.
Fnord!