Games Studies Exercise 2

From the board game Scotland Yard to The Fifth Person - how the digital medium is reconfiguring hide-and-seek

1. Space mastery

- Tabletop game Scotland Yard: players move abstractly through the board and transportation tickets, relying on paper-based reasoning to plan their routes.  

- **Digital reconstruction of "The Fifth Person ": 3D madhouse map provides three-dimensional spatial interactions, such as flipping windows, smashing boards, and circling pillars, which transforms strategy from "calculation" to "intuitive reaction".  

2. Information mismatch  

- The board game "Scotland Yard ": the hunter (the regulator character) holds the whole map vision, and the fugitive can only speculate the hunter's position through limited clues.  

- Digital Reconstruction of Fifth Person:  

   - Regulators have perspective skills (e.g. "Peeping Tom" props), but are limited by cooldowns;  

   - Survivors collaborate with dynamic information such as decoding progress through cryptographs and teammates reporting points to balance the information gap.  

3. Sense of tension building

- Tabletop game "Scotland Yard ": turn-based pen-and-paper projections, tension from mental gaming and delayed feedback.  

- Digital reconstruction of The Fifth Person:  

   - Real-time sound effects: heartbeat sound, red light warning when the regulator approaches; 

  - Character dynamic feedback: injured gasps, camera shakes when running, transforming stress into sensory impact.  

Gains and Losses of Digitization  

Gain Dimension:  

- Operational Depth: QTE calibration, prop combos (e.g. flare gun counter) add operational layers;  

   - Narrative Enhancement: character-specific actions (e.g. Priest through wall animations) tie functionality to character context.  

- Cutting Dimension:  

   - Socialization of "face-to-face bluffing" in tabletop games (e.g., lying about your location) is replaced with pre-programmed shortcuts to speech, shrinking the space for player-directed fraud.  

Medium Revelation： Digitization is not a simple transplantation of rules, but a technological redefinition of the instinctive experience of 'hide-and-seek' -- from cerebral projection to adrenaline-driven -- and the need to devise new mechanisms (e.g., voice roulette) to make up for the social attrition.