Experimental Game Design
DETAILS
Pre class prep:
* Bring in one sample of best work ( not necessarily art,
but the best work you have done.
* Do Personal Game Archaeology Project
Week 1:
Discuss
* overview of course
* What is a game? See Jesper Juul
*
Why do people play games?
*
creative practice in cross disciplinary collaborations
*
studio practice
* definitions.html
*
Game History:
See: http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/ArtofGaming/Gamehistory.html
Look at best works (not a critique)
* Personal Game Archaeology Project presentations
* Rensselaer Folsom Library Game Research Resources review
* Salen and Eric Zimmerman Unit 3: PLAY pg. 298-361.Defining Play, Play of
Experience, Meaning, Pleasure
Readings:
• Beyond Productivity:
Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity,
http://books.nap.edu/html/beyond_productivity/ch2.html
(near footnote 43)
* Your personal research.
Please cite your references in your presentation.
* Jesper Juul Gameness
Assignments:
• If you have not done so already, bring sample of best work to next
class
• Personal Game Archaeology Project (see assignments section for details)
Week 2:
Discuss
Teams
formulate and work in studio on Scenario Game of the Future
Discuss
Issues in interdisciplinary endeavor
Beyond Productivity:
Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity
http://books.nap.edu/html/beyond_productivity/ch2.html
(near footnote 43)
Tips
for successful collaboration:
some from my research
http://www.nwrel.org/cfc/frc/collabtips1.html
Scenario Planning
Scenario
planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the
nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting
our future. It is a group process which encourages knowledge exchange and
development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues important to the
future. The goal is to craft a number of diverging stories by extrapolating
uncertain and heavily influencing driving forces. The stories together with the
work getting there has the dual purpose of increasing the knowledge of the
business environment and widen both the receiver's and participant's perception
of possible future events.
The
method is most widely used as a strategic management tool, but this and similar
methods have been used for enabling other types of group discussion about a
common future.
Scenarios
are narratives of alternative environments in which today’s decisions may be
played out. They are not predictions. Nor are they strategies. Instead they are
more like hypotheses of different futures specifically designed to highlight
the risks and opportunities involved in specific strategic issues.
http://www.well.com/~mb/scenario/#What_is_Scenario_Planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning
Visionaries
of the Future
the
Future: In a linear conception of time, the future
is the portion of the timeline that is still to occur, i.e. the place in space-time
where lie all events that still have not occurred. In this sense the future is
opposed to the past
(the set of moments and events that have already occurred) and the present
(the set of events that are occurring now).
The
Future becomes the past
*
The 1939 New York World's Fair:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/DISPLAY/39wf/front.htm
Artists
as “visionaries”
Futurists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist
The
Situationist
International:
In 1957 a few experimental European groups stemming from
the radical tradition of dadaism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadaism)
John Heartfield http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/art/art.html
Hannah
Hoch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch
http://hannahhoch.com/hhindex2.html
Comics
as cultural barometers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics
COMICS: A TOOL OF SUBVERSION?
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol2is6/comics.html
Machinima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1232
Roy Lichtenstein http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html#images
Assignments:
Finish work on Scenario Planning
Game Design with your team
Week 3:
* Scenario Planning Game Design Presentations
Assignments:
Week
4:
Discuss
*
Final Project Teams Formation
*
Basic Game
Design Fundamentals by Chris Crawford
* Basic Game Design Document
Innovative creative ideas and artists who create games:
Rez -
Sega's quirky, abstract art-influenced
shooter, an endorphin machine, video game inspired by the abstract
artist Kandinsky aims to overload the senses with its psychedelic visuals and
pulsating dance beats.
Rez for the Playstation 2 seeks to create a sense of synaesthesia, literally a
crossing of the senses, so that you can "see" sounds or
"taste" colours.
"Rez is an experience, a fusion of light, vibration and sound completely
immersed in synaesthesia," said its creator, Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Japanese
game developers United Game Artists.
The game takes place in a virtual world inside a computer. You play a hacker of
sorts, flying through six levels of cyberspace in search of the artificial
intelligence at the heart of this world.
But there is a twist to the traditional shoot-em approach that makes Rez stand
out.
Virtual DJ Every time you destroy one of the insect-like enemies, a
sound is generated. This sound becomes a form in the scrolling, flashing 3D
computer world rushing past.
Katamari Damacy-
When
the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys all the stars in the sky, he
orders you, his pint-sized princely son, to put the twinkle back in the heavens
above. The only way you can do that is by rolling everything on Earth into
clumps so that he can replace what's missing in space. "Everything"
includes cookies, lawn mowers, lamp posts, sumo wrestlers, bulldozers, brontosauruses
, cruise ships, and more. Katamari Damacy also includes a two-player battle mod
e where you and a friend can see who can grow the biggest ball of stuff. For
one to two players.
Features:
Simple play controlled with analog sticks only; no buttons to press
Dimensions change drastically as clumps grow; 2-player battle mode
Ball-rolling and object-collecting gameplay with quirky, infectious humor
throughout Insanely cosmic animations; wacky musical stylings; royally
contagious storyline
Bot
Fighters-
http://www.botfighters.com/
location based mobile games
Can
You See Me Now? by Blast Theory
Activating Play
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/EGD_Prof_Ruiz/ACTIVATINGPLAY/newwebsite/index.html
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/index.html
Natalie Bookchin
‘The Intruder’ [1999] an experimental adaptation of a short story by Jorge Luis
Borges, and represents a new hybrid form of narrative that exists on the border
of computer and video arcade games, cinema and literature.
http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder/
Eric Zimmerman
‘Sissyfight’ [2000] an intense war between a
bunch of girls who are all out to ruin each other's popularity and self-esteem.
http://www.sissyfight.com
Michelle Teran & Amanda Ramos
The Playgirls [2000]
http://www.ubermatic.org/playgirls/
Thomson & Craighead
‘Trigger Happy’ [1998]
http://www.triggerhappy.org/
Jodi
‘sod’ [2000]
http://sod.jodi.org/
AnneMarie Schleiner
Playskins
http://www.playskins.com/about.html
selectparks.net games by artists
http://selectparks.net/
GAME PATCHES
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski
‘Bio-Tek Kitchen’ [1999] is
a Marathon Infinity game patch. In Bio-Tek, the player cleans up the kitchen
laboratory of a home biotech enthusiast using weapons such as dish cloths and
egg flippers.
http://lx.sysx.org/biotek/index.html
Anne Marie Schleiner
‘Madame Polly’ [1998] a video game whose eponymous heroine engages in
first person shooter style combat. The premise of this experimental game is
that the near future is characterized by data "population
overcrowding"; it is flooded with human controlled avatars and software
personalities of all ages, sexes and gene lines. This problem is exacerbated by
the emergence of a prolific hybrid breed of software agents called data ghosts,
which are imprinted personalities of humans who continue to participate, to learn
and thrive well beyond the life span of their physically human bodies.
Robert Nideffer
Tomb Raider patch [1999]
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/crack/
Exhibits:
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n2/index2.html
http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/WPG/past/language.htm
http://www.re-load.org/
Team work in studio on Scenario Planning Games
On storyboarding: http://www.mediaed.org.uk/posted_documents/Storyboarding.html
Storyboard examples: http://movies.warnerbros.com/ed/cmp/storyboards.html
, http://movies.warnerbros.com/eraser/cmp/sketches.html
, http://sleepers.warnerbros.com/cmp/storyboards.html
The Construction of Experience:
Interface as Content David Rokeby
http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/experience.html
- WarCraft
- Genderplay:
Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Video games April 16, 2003
posting by Jane
- Sublimation
-Beyond Shoot your Friends http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/digital-illusion.html
- The Addictiveness of Games, Steve
Meretsky
Assignments:
Week
5:
Discuss
* Students present Phase I
Proposal of Final Project Presentations: rough storyboards, concept ideas
* Social Issues:
Engagement & Social Formation:
- social conditions in MMORPGs:
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1222
- From
See: http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/
- WarCraft
Problematics of Warcraft:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060224/qhong_01.shtml
- The Simms
Gender:
Show
- Genderplay:
Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Video games April 16, 2003
posting by Jane
- Skins,
Patches, and Plug-ins Becoming Woman in the New Gaming Culture http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_polsky.html
- Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons? http://www.opensorcery.net/lara2.html
- Genderizing HCI by Justine
Cassell
- Henry
Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered PlaySpaces
Violence:
The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence
Are violent games cathodic or desensitizing?
- See Video & Discuss, An interview with Lt Col. Grossman
Stop Teaching our Children to Kill
Col. Dave Grossman believes that returning veterans are
lesslikely to engage in violent acts than civilians, despite the psychological
effects of war, because of the discipline learned while in service. However, he
also cautions that "with the advent ofinteractive 'point-and-shoot' arcade
and video games there is significant concern that society is aping military
conditioning, but without the vital safeguard of discipline. There is strong
evidence to indicate that the indiscriminate civilian application of combat
conditioning techniques as entertainment may be a key factor in worldwide,
skyrocketing violent crime rates, including a sevenfold increase in per capita
aggravated assaults in America since 1956."
LoPiccolo, Phil. Editor-in-Chief, Computer Graphics World, Vol 23, Issue7, July 2000
From the FTC youth violence report http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/09/pitoftestst.htm
Trigger Happy : Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution by Steven Poole
Videogames first came on the market thirty years ago as a marginal technological curiosity. Now they are virtually everywhere. Videogame sales have equaled movie sales. They are played by more adults than children, and game design can even be studied in college. Yet videogames are still often viewed as a minor form of entertainment, at best shallow, or at worst harmful. Now, Steven Poole argues that videogames are a nascent art for on track to supersede movies as the most popular and innovative form of entertainment in the new century.
- ABOUT WAR:
REALITY: GAMES & GUTS
- Issues & ethics: osma
games nytJanuary 10.htm
- most current: www.americasarmy.com
(absence of blood and gore)
- tried and true: www.counter-strike.net
(lots of blood)
- Tom Clancy based games: http://www.redstorm.com/
(minimal blood)
-Beyond Shoot your Friends http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/digital-illusion.html
- Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar
New Ways of seeing the “other”
Saving
the World, One Video Game at a Time .doc
Addiction:
- Addictive Technologies http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/addictiv.html
- The Addictiveness of Games,
Steve Meretsky
*- The Art and
Science of Level Design by Cliff Bleszinski
also other articles at: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/
- How
to Build a Better Cutscene
- Color Theory for
Game Design
Assignment:
Work on Phase
II
Rough Prototype
Week 6:
Discuss:
* Phase II of Final Projects
* Level
Design
*
mise en scene in videogames
* Jason Rubin's
"Great Game Graphics... Who Cares?"
-
The Art and
Science of Level Design by Cliff Bleszinski
also other articles at: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/
- How
to Build a Better Cutscene
- Color Theory for
Game Design
* Genres
Genre and the Video Game:
http://www.robinlionheart.com/gamedev/genres.xhtml
A Taxonomy of Computer
Games by Chris Crawford:
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Chapter3.html
General Taxonomy of Game Genres:
“Flash” Games
First-Person Shooters (fps)
Action Games
Real-Time Strategy
Turn-Based Strategy
RPGs
Sports Games
Simulations
Adventure Games
Immersive Reality
Emerging Genres, case studies:
* Rez- endorphin machines
* Bot Fighters- location
based mobile game
http://www.botfighters.com/welcome/
* Can You See Me Now?
PC
Mac
On-line
Dedicated
systems
Hand held
emerging
- Everything
But the Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers
by Hal Barwood
- Storytelling in
Action by Bob Bates
- Building
Character- An Analysis of Character Creation by Steve Meretzky
- Building Character By Toby Gard
Assignments:
Phase
III of Final Project:
Rough Prototype
Week
7:
Discuss
*
Phase III of Final Project: Rough Prototype
Character Development
- Building
Character- An Analysis of Character Creation by Steve Meretzky
- Building Character By Toby Gard
- Motion
- http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/gallery.asp?cat=character
- Calisto:
calisto.wrl
callistofinal.max
* Visiting Artist
Ian Stead:
- work (both personal and professional)
-
Overview of 3D
-
Review Game Engines Unreal: Project Alterius
What
they are
How
to work with them
What
is a Game Engine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
Unreal: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/ut-ld-tips.shtml
Torque:
*
Other Artists who have worked with game engines:
Kurt
Hentschlager
http://epidemic.cicv.fr/geogb/art/gs/kurt/karma.html
Freidrich Kirschner
http://www.aec.at/en/global/press_detail.asp?iPressID=81&iAreaID=3
Paul Marino
http://www.machinima.org/
Workspace Unlimited
http://www.workspace-unlimited.org/vwa_flash.html
Assignments:
Phase IV Game Prototype
Week 8:
Discuss
Phase IV Game Prototype
Poetics+Emotioneering
In February's Game Developer magazine, David Freeman,
a noted film, television, and game industry writer and producer explained the
important role of emotion in games. "First of all, many more people watch
film and television than play games. Most will never be lured into playing
games until games begin to offer the emotional range and depth of the
entertainment that they're used to enjoying. Also, a more involving game
experience means better word of mouth and more buzz. The press likes to write
about these kinds of games, which results in more sales. Those creating games
with stories and characters without investing in putting emotional depth into
their games will find themselves further and further behind, and their games
will be eclipsed." David Freeman's webpage http://www.freemangames.com/idea/6_3.php
POETICS & Aristotle (Greek philosopher 384-322 B.C.) http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/aris.htm
one of the fathers of Western Philosophy, wrote over 400 books on nearly
everything from mollusks to immortal souls. He believed there was something
wonderful about the whole of the natural world.
Aristotle invented deductive logic:
Premise: all frogs can swim
Premise: This is a frog
Conclusion: Therefore it can swim
Similar logical structures or syllogisms can be produced with: No frogs” and
“Some frogs”
He is known for induction: These frogs can swim, therefore all frogs can
swim.
His teleological (circular) approach relies on methodological, cautious
tendencies which rely only on what one knows from what ones’ 5 senses tell
them. (This is in opposition to Platonic
tendencies which strive to seek hidden and ultimate mystical truths through the
use of reason.)
Aristotle's Poetics http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt
Now I know who thought up plot, character, and grammar and wrote one of the
first style guides. He wrote that tragedy inspires fear and pity. Are any
computer games
tragedy- is it not possible to make and sell them?
His 4 kinds of tragedy: Complex; Pathetic; Ethical and Simple would apply to
Computer Games?
and similarly 4 kinds of epic stories (longer than a circuit of the sun and too
big to be staged)
Epics: "The Iliad is at once simple and 'pathetic,' and the Odyssey
complex (for Recognition scenes run through it), and at the same time
'ethical.' Moreover, in diction and thought they are supreme." Part XXIV
He seems to say that tragedy is superior to epic but he hedges his bets (as a
Macedon
All of a sudden, Aristotle is everywhere. Following a link from
ludology.org (Thanks, Gonzalo), I found myself in the recently opened
"Armchair Arcade" (www.armchairarcade.com).
And lo and behold, what do I find there? Matt Barton's 'Treatise on
Videogames', in which he applies Aristotle's Poetics to (among others) Space
Invaders.
He writes: "Like tragedies in Aristotle's time, Space Invaders' story is
obvious and irrelevant. We also know how the story must end--eventually, the
player will be destroyed. The 'fun' of this videogame is not the story, but
rather the gameplay. In the case of Space Invaders and other tragic games, the
player's satisfaction arises not from the literary contemplation of a story,
but the measurement of his gameplay skill as represented by the score."
(http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/article.php?22.0)
So, Matt thinks Space Invaders is tragic, and - as he later points out -
even cathartic. But is it really? And why do we keep playing it if it cleans
our souls of eleos and phobos? [I am not going into the details about the
different possibilities of translating the according passage in Aristotle, but
for those of you into that sort of thing, there's a short summary and
bibliography on the subject at http://qsilver.queensu.ca/classics/clst312d.htm]
Narrative
The art of telling a good story…..
-Everything But the
Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers by Hal Barwood
- Storytelling in
Action by Bob Bates
Assignments:
Phase
V Refinement
Week 9: ::::::::::::::::::::::: Intensive Studio
::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Assignments:
Phase VI Further
Refinement & Formal Group Presentation with a fully updated and perfected game
design document is printed and formally handed in.
Week 10:
Discuss
*
Phase VI Game Prototype Presentations
* Possible user evaluation test plan talk & testing guide if project is developed enough.
* If applicable Craft your User Evaluation Test Plan
Game
Theory
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/eco/game/game.html
History of Game Theory
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/class/histf.html
• personal research bibliography
• Salen/Zimmerman
pp. 377-419; 461-489 (Chapters 26 Games as Narrative Play and 28 Games as
Social Play)
• McGonigal—A Real Little Game: The Performance
of Belief in Pervasive Play (download pdf, top paper listed at: http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm)
Assignments:
Phase
VII Project Work
Week 11:
Discuss
*
User evaluation test plan
Inhabiting a virtual space: gamers
maximize their play
experience by performing
belief, rather than actually believing, in the permeability of the game-reality
boundary. http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm)
Factors::
Flow and Action
Csikszentmihali, M., Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Inherent in the escape from reality are factors that are akin to Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi’s concepts of flow experience where the following occur: 1) a
challenging activity that requires skills, 2) the merging of action and
awareness, 3) clear goals and feedback, 4) concentration on the task at hand,
5) the paradox of control, 6) the loss of self consciousness and 7) the
transformation of time.
see
also see "Communication and Community in Digital Entertainment
Services" prestudy research report by Aki Jarvinen, Satu Helio and Frans
Mayra, University of Tampere, Hypermedia Laboratory pg.20-26.
http://tampub.uta.fi/tup/951-44-5432-4.pdf
Game Play Gestalt
http://www.tii.se/zerogame/pdfs/CGDClindley.pdf
Sound
Assignments:
Phase
VIII Final Project Pre-Reviews
also if
applicable: User Evaluation Testing Summary and Recommendations
Week 12:
Discuss
Final Projects Pre Review Presentations
* User
evaluation summary and recommendations Presentations
Assignments:
preparation for Phase IX- Final Revises
Week 13:
:::::::::::::::::::::::::THANKSGIVING
BREAK:::::::::::::::::::::::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::ENJOY:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Assignments:
preparation for Phase IX- Final Revises:
refine work for final projects
Week
14::::::::::::::::FINAL PROJECT REVIEWS
Discuss
*
Phase IX- Final Revises on Game Projects Due
Final input for critiques
Assignments:
complete and refine all work on
final projects for
Final Completed Game Project:
*
CD # 1: your game
and your game design document in
html format with all relevant files in a folder labeled: yournamefinalproject.html for example, if I were
a student, my files would be accessed by: ruizfinalproject.html
* Printed posters
* Printed Final Game
Design Document
Week 15: :::::::LAST DAY
FOR FINAL PROJECTS SUBMISSION
Formal Review and discuss all games
Discuss the future of games, simulation and upcoming
developments.
Last submission day for your Final
Completed Game Project:
*
CD # 1: your game
and your game design document in
html format with all relevant files in a folder labeled: yournamefinalproject.html for example, if I were
a student, my files would be accessed by: ruizfinalproject.html
* Printed posters
* Printed Final Game
Design Document* Printed posters
* Printed Final Game Design Document