Research - The Game of Life

The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a board game originally created in 1860 by Milton Bradley, as The Checkered Game of Life. The Game of Life was America's first popular game. The game simulates a person's travels through his or her life, from college to retirement, with jobs, marriage, and possible children along the way. Two to six players can participate in one game. Variations of the game accommodate eight to ten players. This game has similar characteristics to what we want to convey in our game making it a good basis.

The board:

"Originally the Game of Life board was checkered. This makes its use of space more efficient as the squares fit side by side on the board. However this layout wouldn't fit for our game as it’s too regimented which does not represent the first year well. For many people this will be the first time they experience overlapping modules and this will be a learning curve for them. With this in mind, our board should be more like the current Game of Life board." - Becca Jones

The Board layout, intertwines around the board forming an irregular pattern, and in comparison to other games such as monopoly lacks a form of structure. This design outcome over laps with other paths around the game, making the overall board seem complicated and hard to follow, a great connotation to Life itself, hence the name. This is the style of design that will be incorporated into the final outcome of ‘Just play with it’ connoting the complexity of a Level 4 student’s life, relating the overlapping modules and continuous work flow. Although the game will have a comical aspect, it will also reflect the somewhat of the truth in Level 4, highlighting the work load they will face. 

"To represent what feels like a never ending work load, we want the board to be a continuous loop meaning no one can actually win."  - Becca Jones

Counters:

In the existing game now, The Game of Life uses pegs as their forms of counters, and each peg added represents a child or a partner. In relation to the use of objects as a form of counters, the counters used for ‘Just play with it’ should link to some aspect that is relatable to students, objects such as pen lids and bottle caps could be used to further reinforce this microcosm game of a Students life.

Cards:

"The cards themselves show things like possible jobs, expenses and other life events. This is where we can swap out these things for more course specific events like paying for adobe and missing a day of uni.

Design wise it may be possible to follow a similar design, however they can be improved drastically to appeal to a more design aware audience." - Becca Jones

Colour:

There is a great presence of colour used in The Game of Life board design. By taking existing aspects of the game such as the rainbow spinner, and relating it more to the life of a Graphic Student this could be related to the Rainbow Wheel known by all Graphic Designers, the Apple products loading symbol. Slight linked variations add a form of contextual value relating back to the research. Also the board of the original game is designed to represent the world of the players, this result in ‘Just play with it’ game being grey and white, relating to the world for the Level 4 Students, the classroom.