Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
is drawn. his act actually makes Katniss a hero to many, not a loser as the game
indicates.
As we have seen with, for example,
he Walking Dead Board Game,
the
choice of character is an important one in paratextual board games. In the two
Hunger Games
games, characters play a crucial role in the way that individual
players achieve a sense of afective play, cohering the experience of playing the
game with the immersion into the two games' narratives. Characters have been
a central focus of many of the paratextual games analyzed so far in this topic—
from character attributes in
Arkham Horror
and
Battlestar Galactica
to character
relationships in
he Walking Dead
and
he
Lord of the Rings
, the explication
of character development within paratextual board games relects a cohesion
between player, character, and game. he fact that the only character one can
play in
District 12
is Katniss, limits the scope of the game's connection between
player and character—while you may want to avoid the Glass Ball because you
do not want to lose the game, you know that from a narrative point of view,
Katniss
will
get reaped no matter what you do. Since everyone plays as the same
character, there is no uncertainty in the outcome of the game's narrative.
By limiting everyone to Katniss's character, the game ills in the gaps of the
larger
Hunger Games
ilm narrative, but in doing so it also closes of gaps for
players to imbue with their own meaning. For example, the only time that
Katniss travels to the Bakery in the ilm is in a lashback: she is starving and
Peeta throws her some burned bread. By linking the Bakery with an image of
Peeta to the playing piece standing in for Katniss, the game manages to ill in
that gap in the narrative of
he Hunger Games
: “what if Katniss had visited Peeta
at the Bakery?” the game seems to ask. But the question is never answered; or
rather, the answer is the same as it is at every other location: Katniss draws a card
(which might not even be food). At the same time, the game includes “special
cards” that grant powers to the player that owns them, inherently changing the
narrative. For instance, generally if a player lands in the woods, she can keep the
food she inds there—narratively, this links to the ilm as Katniss is a hunter and
would be able to keep what she poached from the woods. Drawing the “Gale”
special card allows the holder to keep two kinds of resources, food and medicine,
from the woods. Although this dramatically changes the game play, it does not
it within the basic structure of the character it is based upon: it is Katniss who
knows about the medicinal properties of the forest, not Gale.
Because the narrative of the game is relatively basic—the world is limited
to District 12 and there are only six places to visit—there is little opportunity
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