Sunday, January 20, 2019

Space Travelers Board Game

Hello I am a freshman at GCE Lab School. In my STEAM course Game Changers we've been learning about and playing many different games. Mostly card, board, and dexterity games. We also learned about the elements of a game and how you would play it. We also got to meet and talk with game designers.My teammates and I made a game for our class and the game we’ve created is called Space Travelers.

Space Travelers is a game where players are placed on earth, choose what planet they want to go to. Players have to go around the game board and pick up resources from different planets such as Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Neptune. In order to win the game, each player that feels like they have enough resources in order to return to Earth with, they stay. The player with the most resources who comes back to Earth wins the game.The audience that might utilize our game are groups and organizations who are interested in space. A lesson that our game can be used to teach is making strategic decisions.




I feel that our game is the outcome of hard work and teamwork. Thinking about game as an idea then making the game was a pretty good start into the creation of the game. Creating the game started as an idea, got into visualizing the game by drawing sketches of the game, then from there we started physically putting our game together. The first time we play-tested our game, we noticed many things that we can improve, change and take from our game. The play-testing went good and we got some descriptive feedback. During the play test, some people enjoyed playing our game and some got uninterested in our game. The revision process of our game was very critical towards inventing our game. We made a lot of changes to our game. We changed the size and shape of the board, discarded of our cards we made and added small blocks into the game, changed the icons of the spaces and we added more planets to the game, and we also changed some of the rules to the game. Overall the making of this game took a lot of work and effort and I think our group succeeded in making a game people will enjoy. 

Space Travelers is the first official game that I have ever made. Including myself, I worked in a group of 3. I feel that I personally put as much work into the whole process of inventing a game as my teammates. Some of my personal contributions to this game are being open minded to new ideas for the game, making multiple game boards by cutting paper and cardboard, making game pieces such as meeples, getting materials from the “Waste Shed” for the game, making cards that were for the original version, finding time to work on improvements for the game, and just overall participating in group work and activities. I am most proud of all the hard work and teamwork that resorted to our game being a representation of something that started off as an idea and then became reality. I feel that I have the most room to improve on the game board of the game and some of the factors to the game. I feel that if I have resources that I need, I can improve the quality of our game board. Some of the factors I would add are things like low gravity airs on the board and more player interaction features like the taking resources factor.

Friday, January 18, 2019

#20ShotsForChange

For this elective term, I am taking the class Global Peace. In this class, we have been learning about  Gandhian principles such as Sarvodaya (the uplift of all), Swadeshi (local economy), Swaraj (self-rule), and Satyagraha (the power of truth). We have studied different types of violence. They are structural, cultural, and direct violence. Structural violence is injustice and exploitation that is built into a social system. Cultural violence is the prevailing attitudes and beliefs. Direct violence is a combination and the outcome of both structural and cultural violence referred to as one-to-one. Sharp's Methods are a list of more than 190 methods on non-violence actions. For this action project, we selected an issue we have noticed around our city and society, and I chose to address the issue of homelessness in Chicago.


 
N.L.#20ShotsForChange.1/14/2019
N.L. #20ShotsForChange.1/14/2019
Works Cited 

“Cornerstone Community Outreach.” Cornerstone Community Outreach, 1 Jan. 2014, http://www.ccolife.org/. 

‌“Homeless Facts - The Conflict - Warriors Center.” Warriorscenter.Org, 1 Jan. 2012, http://www.warriorscenter.org/the-conflict/homeless-facts/. 

‌Zacarias, Michelle. “Chicago Residents Losing Their Home under a Major Viaduct.” People’s World, 24 Aug. 2017, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/chicago-residents-losing-their-home-under-a-major-viaduct/.