Flow, CoLiberation, and Headshots: a Halo 2 story

Celia Pearce, game designer, play scholar, and my friend, sent me the link to - Students Blog: Flow, CoLiberation, and Headshots: a Halo 2 story - written by a student of hers. It is profoundly gratifying to be able to share profound gratification.

Here's a good and particularly relevant taste of Nathan McNamara's musings:

"Secondly, when my roommate David joined us, it presented us with a problem. With only 3 people, normal team games like capture the flag would be utterly unfair, because of the unbalance due to the number of people. But the normal 3-player option, free for all, or as the game calls it, “Slayer,” would have been unfair as well because David is not as skilled at the game as myself or Steve. So he would have been killed rather often, and not gotten many kills, and it would have been frustrating for him. And Steve and I would have had too easy a time killing him, which would be boring, but at the same time we would be frustrated that each other was getting easier kills off of hunting David. So both of these scenarios would have ruined the Flow. Doing capture the flag would be too easy and thus boring for one team, and too hard and thus frustrating for the other. And doing normal Slayer would have been both boring and frustrating for all involved. We had to come up with a solution to the situation."

See also my online articles on: Coliberation and The Fun Community