Explanation of the game:

This game is inspired by Erik Olson’s workshop and research on designing games.

The intended use case for this game is aimed towards first-year BASPO students at Nord University. We consider this game as a tool for Applied Game Design, demonstrating a method for organizing the brainstorming process for game ideas. Moreover, participants in this game will get prompted to define different kinds of game-related details that they can benefit from when forming/creating their own ideas for games both inside and outside of BlazeStorm’s “magic circle”.

In BlazeStorm, the most prominent design choice that players experience is the use of anonymity and combinatory mechanisms. Each player’s contributions are deconstructed and reassembled in various ways throughout the three stages of gameplay, without labeling who wrote what. The game’s goal is to encourage teamwork, as well as being an icebreaker tool/ fun way to kick off the game development process in Nord's Game Lab course. By design, we believe that minimizing a lot of the politics of cross-interaction would make it easier for first-year students to begin working in a group and getting into a shared creative flow/state of mind. Because, through BlazeStorm, they can collaborate without a lot of the fear of  e.g. your ideas getting shutdown immediately, or judgment over writing a differing idea, among other potential concerns. Whilst simultaneously getting familiar with their peers!

We would like to highlight that the mechanics in this game version are simplified and some sections are missing planned features. However, playtests have shown that most players grasp this brainstorming method well enough.

If you want to read more about related research, you can refer to these sources:

• Micah Hrehovcsik—Teaching “Applied” Game Design
• Margaret A. Boden—Creativity in a Nutshell