Week 8

This past week we discussed the origins and progression of card games over the years. All those years somehow culminated into the creation of one game known as "Exploding Kittens". I'm sure the ancient Egyptians would have had some complaints about the game, but personally I loved it. Exploding Kittens is a game that I had never played before our Thursday class, but I was still able to follow along quickly and have fun within my first round of play. As one may guess, the thematic elements of the game revolve entirely around cats and cat jokes such as the “taco cat” card. This would have been cause for quite some controversy some centuries ago as Altice states in the Playing Card Platform chapter, “when card games were considered frivolous, unlawful, or sinful, card designers crowded card faces with moral, religious, or historical lessons...” (pg 38) The deck consists of four attack cards, four skip cards. four favor cards, four shuffle cards, five nope cards, five see the future cards, twenty powerless cards, six defuse cards, and four exploding kitten cards. Each set of cards allows the player to do some type of action that can change the course of the game. With detailed instructions on how to use the cards you are holding. The goal of the game is to survive to the end without drawing one of the four exploding kitten cards. The only way to survive one of these exploding kitten cards is to use a defuse card which would negate the explosion and allow you to continue play. Once the defuse card has been used the player then puts the exploding kitten card back in the deck in whatever location they see fit. They can put in right under the top card to spite the next player or the bottom of the deck to be a good Samaritan.  

The “Watch It Played” video that I watched was the card game Million Dollar Script. The thematic elements revolve around the Hollywood movie industry with studio executives and other film industry nods.  In this game you and your friends put together a pitch for the next blockbuster movie for a high-level executive. The producer has specialized interests that they will look out for in the pitch they hear. These interests stay hidden to the players creating the pitch, but they can pick up on what the producer likes as the game progresses. Each pitch team has five pitch cards and there is also a deck of hero and villain cards that come into play later on into the game. A team draws one of the pitch cards and follows the instructions listed on the card. This brings in the hero and villain cards by allotting traits to the characters being created in the game. For example, you would draw three hero cards and three villain cards to create your movies first hero and villain respectively. The next phase of the game is creating the pitch by answering the questions provided by the card. Then, after three minutes, the teams pitch their idea to the executive by taking up different tasks. One will communicate the main pitch; another will create lines of dialogue for the movie, another creates the musical score, and lastly someone will create the background sound effects. Points are awarded by the executive for the best pitch which earns four points. However, the other team can earn up to three extra points for catering to the executive's taste. The game is played over five rounds with four phases in a round. Whatever team has the most points after the fifth-round wins.