Week 5

For my team and I the conceptualization of a sport as ridiculous as a lacrosse and roller-skating mesh was quite difficult at first. We first had trouble coming up with how one would be able to combine the aspects of lacrosse and roller-skating without it being just roller lacrosse. Then we decided to try to think about both sports from more of an abstract perspective so that we would be able to more easily find ways we could implement aspects of each sport onto a paper model for prototyping. This proved to be quite difficult for me personally as I have never created anything in the form of paper prototyping so it was definitely a learning experience from the start. However, we were quickly able to realize that we needed to make revisions when it came to the rules associated with movement. It turned out that our rules for movement were slightly vague and hard to convey to the player. Due to this Lucy introduced the brilliant idea to use the length and width of a standard playing card. The way it would work is the player would slide their chosen token along the long end of the playing card then once the token had reached the end you would simply turn the card and continue along the short end of the playing card. This is allowed players to be creative in how they place their tokens as it is now possible to move at an angle. This allows players to go around defenders to set up better shots for themselves or to set up a pass to a teammate that is in a better position to score. The passing mechanic we ended up adding operated in a similar manner to our movement system as you could pass it to whoever was within one long side of a playing card. This encouraged more teamwork in relation to the tokens being used as you would now be able to set up shots with a strategy. Overall, the paper prototype helped guide us to a movement system that was simple and easy to convey to the player as opposed to the vague instructions we initially left them with. 

I believe that the paper prototype displays to the player that this is a game that cannot be won without some type of team work, accuracy, and good cardio. The paper prototype showed us that it would be quite easy for a player to be contested by an opposing player especially in a scoring situation. Being able to quickly communicate with your teammates to set up shots whilst being aware of the opposition and skating around would require every ounce of attention available in the player. I believe that the moving mechanic introduced by the Lucy would help a player understand the strategic potential the game offers. Due to this they would be able to infer that the actual sport would encourage teams to be more deliberate and coordinated with their movement and passes.