Experimental Game Design

DETAILS


Pre class prep:

* Bring in one sample of best work (this does not have to necessarily be “art”, but the best work you have done to date.) Not for critique, but to know each others’ talents

* Do Personal Game Archaeology Project


 

Week 1:
Discuss
* overview of course
* What is a game?

Jesper Juul The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness

* Why do people play games?

* creative practice in cross disciplinary collaborations

* studio practice

* questionnaire
* definitions.html

Look at best works (not a critique)

* Rensselaer Folsom Library Game Research Resources review

Readings:
* Play as Design by Brenda Laurel
* Your
personal research. Please cite your references in your presentation.

Assignments:
• If you have not done so already, bring sample of best work to next class
• Personal Game Archaeology Project due next week (see assignments section for details)

 


Week 2:

Discuss:

Studio visit by Igor

* Personal Game Archaeology Project presentations

 

Readings:

* Homo Ludens: A study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
* Man, Play, and Games by Roger Caillois

 


Week 3:

Discuss:

 

* Collaboration:
Issues in interdisciplinary endeavor

Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity

http://books.nap.edu/html/beyond_productivity/ch2.html  (near footnote 43)

Trans disciplinary team building /dynamics of collaboration

Tips for successful collaboration:

some from my research
http://www.nwrel.org/cfc/frc/collabtips1.html

 

* Teams formulate and work in studio and start work on Scenario Game of the Future

 

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 The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro (February 20). Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.

Marinetti's impassioned polemic immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese paintersBoccioni, Carrà, and Russolo—who wanted to extend Marinetti's ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions).
The italian painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed: “
We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.”
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://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/hoch_big2.html

 

and surrealism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism, but seeking to avoid the cooption to which those movements succumbed, came together to form the Situationist International.

 

The name came from their aim of liberating everyday life through the creation of open-ended, participatory “situations” (as opposed to fixed works of art) — an aim which naturally ran up against the whole range of material and mental obstacles produced by the present social order.

 

Over the next decade the situationists developed an increasingly incisive critique of the global “spectacle-commodity system” and of its bureaucratic leftist pseudo-opposition, and their new methods of agitation helped trigger the May 1968 revolt in France. Since then — although the SI itself was dissolved in 1972 — situationist theories and tactics have continued to inspire currents in dozens of countries all over the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

Comics as cultural barometers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics

 

COMICS: A TOOL OF SUBVERSION?

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol2is6/comics.html

 

Sprite Comics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_comic

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63691,00.html

 

Machinima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=1232

Sample1

Sample 2

Sample 3


Roy Lichtenstein http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html#images

 

Readings:

* Ernest Adams Design Philosophy
* Adams and Rollings, Creating the User Experience
* Basic Game Design Fundamentals by Chris Crawford

____________

 

Feb 1 Visitor

Martin C. Martin:

On Game Design: What is it that makes a game really engaging and enjoyable?
Martin C. Martin, game and software designer
Martin C. Martin did postdoctoral work at MIT's Media Laboratory, in the Human Dynamics group and was a postdoctoral associate at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has worked on the Amiga, Star Trek: Armada at Activision, and headed Esc, a virtual nightclub mod for Unreal Tournament.  After completing his Ph.D. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University he now applies his artificial intelligence knowledge at ITA Software.

For more info please see: http://martincmartin.com/blog/?page_id=23

 

Readings:
* Adams and Rollings The Level Design Process

Other readings:

* 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

Assignments:
Work with your team on “Yet to Come” Scenario Planning Game

 


Week 4:

Feb 5

* Studio: Team work on Scenario Planning Games

* Basic Game Design Document

 

Discuss:

Homo Ludens: A study of the Play Element in Culture

 

* Level Design

 Show “The Making of Myst

* 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

 

* Level Design:
* Adams and Rollings The Level Design Process

* 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

* A Multi-Dimensional Typology of Games

 

____________

 

Feb 8

* Scenario Planning Game Design Presentations


Readings:

The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content David Rokeby
Gender and Human Computer Interface

 

Assignments:

Consider prospective teammates and potential final project ideas


Week 5:

Feb 12

Discuss

 

* Final Project Teams Formation



Innovative creative ideas and artists who create games:

INNOVATIVE IDEAS:

Blended reality games

Physically based games:

            Issues: Obesity, Coronary Heart Disease & Diabetes

            Eyetoy

            Wii

            DDR
            http://www.ddrgame.com/?gclid=CLLE7u7-p4oCFR4cgQodbStGqA

            ParaparaParadise
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSeCfMpeMOQ

 

            Guitar Hero
            http://www.guitarherogame.com/gh1/

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW_Zkc7WAS8

 

            Sony patent towards real life MATRIX.doc "The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the cortex," the patent states. "No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds."

 

Rez -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuQvctStmw



 
  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-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqpPyhE5x2M


 
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

Social Impact Games
a new generation: games that immerse people in the real world, full of real-time political crises. games’ designers aren’t just selling a voyeuristic thrill. Games, they argue, can be more than just mindless fun, they can be a medium for change.
http://www.socialimpactgames.com/

Serious Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game
http://www.gdconf.com/conference/seriousgamessummit.htm
http://www.seriousgames.com/

Games for Change (G4C)
http://www.gamesforchange.org/

Food Force United Nations game
http://www.food-force.com/

Peacemaker Game
http://www.peacemakergame.com/
http://www.peacemakergame.com/game.php

Darfur is Dying
http://www.darfurisdying.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_is_Dying

Climate Crisis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/index_1.shtml

Impact Games
http://www.impactgames.com/company.php

Persuasive Games
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/

UTOPIA REVERSED - An Assault on Neurospace
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=17458&page=1

Paolo Pedercini
 
YouTube - Molleindustria

www.molleindustria.org

 

Gonzalo Frasca http://www.powerfulrobot.com/web/index_content.html


_______________

 

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


Rensselaer Student Projects:

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
GAmeLab
‘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/

 
selectparks.net games by artists
http://selectparks.net/

Ozymandias

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.
Marathon patch
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.
Marathon patch http://cadre.sjsu.edu/amschle/PollyGunn.html
Playskins
http://www.playskins.com/about.html

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/
 

Readings:

Behavior:
* From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games by Ed Halter

Write a short reaction paper

* Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar

Write a short reaction paper

* Baudrillard and Hollywood: subverting the mechanism of control and The Matrix by Jim Rovira

Write a short reaction paper

* The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence, J. Baudrillard

Write a short reaction paper


Assignments:

Work with your team on
Phase I Proposal of Final Project Presentations: rough storyboards, concept ideas


 

Week 6:  Class does not meet on Monday, but will meet on
Tues Feb 20


Discuss

Behavior:

* Sublimation


Social Issues:
Are we constructing our game characters or are they constructing us?

Military Industrial Entertainment Complex:
* From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games by Ed Halter
* Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar
* WarCraft
Problematics of Warcraft:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060224/qhong_01.shtml

 

Two contrasting ideas about Play:

Play creating culture

Homo Ludens written in 1938 by Dutch historian, Johan Huizinga

Huizinga_ Nature Significance of Play.pdf

 "play-instinct" as an instinct that emerged very early in human prehistory - in fact, he sees it as one of humanity's primary instincts, one which provides the fundament for other elements of society, such as religious ritual, war, and poetry. He has an esthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle play an important role. He was held in detention by the Nazis where he died in 1945. 

 

The Ambiguity of Play

Brian Sutton Smith_ Play and Ambiguity.pdf

by Brian Sutton Smith, a New Zealand play theorist who studies the cultural significance of play in human life. He demonstrates that children are not innocent in their play and that adults are indeed guilty in theirs. In both cases play pretends to assist them in surmounting their Darwinian struggles for survival.

Play shows us the dark underbelly of the world

Catharsis and inoculation against the dangers of reality 

Symbolic side of human culture

A child gets the chance to make mistakes

Adaptation, teaching skills

Introducing us into certain communities

Fate, power, communal identity, frivolity, the imaginary, the self

 

Jenny Terry: Killer Entertainments: Conditions and Consequences of Remote Intimacy. The project theorizes remote intimacy by tracing the relationship between entertainment technologies and militarism in the US, during the 20th century to the present. Chapters focus on case studies of military uniform design, fashion, and wearable computing; surveillance technologies and remote tracking devices; weaponry design; psychological operations; USO shows; and computer gaming. The technologies analyzed, share capacities for entertainment and aggression and are tied to new forms of commodification and governmentality.   

The technology brings its military weight to creators.


The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence:

* Baudrillard and Hollywood: subverting the mechanism of control and The Matrix by Jim Rovira

* The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence, J. Baudrillard

Are violent games cathartic 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 less likely 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

 
New Ways of seeing the “other”

Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time .doc

Feb 22

* Students present Phase I Proposal of Final Project Presentations: rough storyboards, concept ideas

 

Readings:
Gender:

* Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered PlaySpaces by Henry Jenkins

Assignment:
Work on Phase III Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation

Feb 26 with formal presentation March 1

Rough Prototypes include design document outline, research with artist statement including treatment, narrative, more refined story board, and at least 5 citations of games/ websites/readings/ literature/ films that have influenced you. (conceptual geography, maps, scenarios, trainers, strategies, symbolism, scoring, rules, etc.)


Week 7:


Feb 26

Discussion:

 

* Phase II Rough Prototype of Final Projects Reality Check Studio

 

Gender:
* Show Laura Croft movie excerpt

*  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


Addiction:
-
The Addictiveness of Games, Steve Meretsky
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-867451.html
- Addictive Technologies http://www.cpandfriends.com/writing/addictiv.html
 

Engagement & Social Formation:
- social conditions in MMORPGs:
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1222
- From Ward Childress, This trend towards "massively-multiplayer" games has opened up a new way of enjoying virtual worlds. One in which its inhabitants can act out in ways relevant but often impossible in the real world. It has also changed the role of the developers. No longer can they idly sit by watching as things play themselves out. They are the gods and governors of this world, and hold all the responsibilities that go along with it. Edward Castronova site contains a wealth of economic information about these fictional worlds. Just how fictional is a game that has an exchange rate with dollars?
See:
http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

- The Simms


-----------

March 1

Phase III of Final Project: Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation

* 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

Emerging:

Immersive Reality: majestic
PainStation
Soda Constructor  http://www.sodaplay.com/

NGame: http://www.addictinggames.com/ngame.html

 

 

 

Delivery Systems
Arcade
PC
Mac
On-line
Dedicated systems
Hand held
emerging

 

Readings:
- 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:
Prep for
Phase IV Game Content March 12

 


 

Week 8:

:::::::::::::::::::::::: BREAK:::::::::::::::::::::::

:::::::::::::::::::::::::ENJOY::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


Week 9:

March 12


* Phase IV Game Content

Discuss

Character Development
-
Building Character- An Analysis of Character Creation by Steve Meretzky
- Building Character By Toby Gard
- Motion

- Characters who look line real people:

http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/gallery.asp?cat=character

* Possible Visiting Artist: presentation of both personal and professional work.

 

What is a Game Engine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
List of Game Engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

Unreal: http://www.cliffyb.com/rants/ut-ld-tips.shtml
Torque: http://www.garagegames.com/

Python: http://www.python.org/

XNA: runtime environment http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/328/index.php?cid=GCG_MARK_022007

 

 

* 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

Readings:
project research

Assignments:
Phase V Refinement
__________________

 

March 15 

 

* Phase V Refinement


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 Macedonian he had to be wary of Athenian prejudices?).

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

 

Readings:
Assignments:
prep for Phase VI Further Refinement & Formal Group Presentation

for March 22

 


Week 10:

March 19

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. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
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

• McGonigal—A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play (download pdf, top paper listed at: http://www.avantgame.com/writings.htm)

 

March 22

* Phase VI: Formal Group Presentations


 

Week 11:

 

March 26

meet individually with Prof. Ruiz

Project work and informal critiques on group game which further reflects project progress and testing.

 

* 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

----------

 

March 29

Project Work

::::::::::::::::::::::: Intensive Studio ::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

 

Readings:

personal research bibliography
• Salen/Zimmerman pp. 377-419; 461-489 (Chapters 26 Games as Narrative Play and 28 Games as Social Play)

Assignments:
Phase VII Project Work

 


Week 12:
April 2

::::::::::::::::::::::: Intensive Studio ::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

April 5

Phase VIII Final Project Pre-Reviews & Formal Group Presentation

 

Discuss
*
User evaluation test plan Presentations

Readings: : personal research bibliography

Assignments:
Phase VIII Final Project Pre-Reviews
also if applicable: User Evaluation Testing Summary and Recommendations


Week 13:  
April 9


Phase IX- Perfected Game Festival-Ready Games due

Also due:

* well designed game design document

* project blurb & image page

* project posters

Please ensure that all work is spell checked.

It must be printed and also submitted on labeled CD

-----

REQUIRED Lecture:

April 11- Ed Halter: War and Videogames
Location: West Hall Auditorium
Time:  7:30 PM
Admission:  FREE
 Halter’s multi-media lecture on the historical relationship between the video game industry and the US Military, unveils the deep, dark ways in which our most profitable form of entertainment gets us ready for war.   www.edhalter.com

----------------

April 12

Intensive studio

Assignments:
preparation for Game Festival

 

:::::::::::::::GAME FESTIVAL APRIL 13 & 14::::::::::::::::::


Week 14:

April 16

Post Mortums

--------------

April 19

Post Mortums


 

Week 15

April 23


*
Phase X-  Revised Games Presentations

 Final input for critiques

 

------------

 

April 26

* Phase X-  Revised Games Presentations

 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 16:

 

April 30::::::::::::::::FINAL PROJECT REVIEWS &

 :::::::LAST DAY FOR FINAL PROJECTS SUBMISSION

Formal Review and discussion of all games

 

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

 

 

Discuss the future of games, simulation and upcoming developments.

* The Game Industry

Hyman, The Studio Stance