APD week 1: Play and Self

Rules:

1. Player closes both hands to make fists.
2. Player choose one finger to stretch each turn.
3. Player cannot stretch fingers in the same hand consecutively.
4. The finger stretched can't be next to the last turn finger in both hands. (Example: if player stretches the Middle finger last turn. Middle, index and ring fingers in both hands are unselectable this turn.)
5. The game finishes when to hands are fully opened (win) or no actions can be done(lose).

Theme

Play & Self

Context

This is inspired by some traditional finger games I played in primary school and the counting method named Finger binary. What are differences of the definition of "me" between taking part in these games and other interactive systems, and what makes these systems playable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopsticks_(hand_game)

Method

Set the target: the player needs to fully open hands to win. Based on this, I added rules, actions to it step by step and try to find what makes the differences.

1. Add Action: Player can open hands or make fists.
2. Add rule: Player can only move 1 finger at once.
3. Add rule: Player cannot stretch fingers in same hand consecutively.
4. Add rule: Player cannot move the counterpart of adjacent fingers in another hand.

In step 2 and 3, the meaningless action can be named as "count", it's easy but not funny, the player can make the choice that which fingers first but it doesn't matter if not think about it.

But things changed in step 4, the rule constraints options and brings the possibility of failure. As a result, the action of making choices has the meaning that can influence the next move and the final result.

Reflection

Different from the human-machine interaction, these finger games (or other games only needs body parts of players) formed a system which utilizes the physical state of our body. Our mind plays the input part and body plays the output part of the system, which extract the self-cognition from our physical body. The analysis of this experience that extracts the sense can reveal how self-cognition is dynamically changed when interacting with a system, while in the opposite direction of the Extensions of Sense(Steve Swink. Game Feel.) And also, by adding rules step by step, I found one basic element of a playable interactive system is choice, more detailed, give meaning to choices.