Experimental Game Design

DETAILS

Game design document templates:

Simple

Elaborate

 

Game design structure template


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 other’s talents


 

Week 1: Jan 26
Personal Game Archaeology
& Look at best works
(not a critique)

Discuss
* overview of course
* creative practice in cross disciplinary collaborations
* review of studio practice & endeavor:
working in class on class work only
* Technical info for studio lab

* drop box info

* What is a game? * definitions.html

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

* G. Frasca - Simulation vs. Narrative: Introduction to Ludology http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm

 

 

* why do people play games?

 

* questionnaire

* Rensselaer Folsom Library Game Research Resources review

 

Experimental Games: Beyond FPS

Innovation Challenge, new interfaces, new paradigms, digital and non digital.

We will embark upon a new experimental study using the world as a site for a new kind of interactive experience that goes beyond the ordinary fps type game.

We will work with interdisciplinary teams of students from Experimental Game Design class to design and then play-test the concept of using a space as theme or location or inspiration for this short study project. Your game can be either physical or digital or combinations of both, but it must create new types of experiences beyond existing paradigms or use parody of fps.

 

Some Extraordinary Ideas:

XML, APIs and Apps for Walking Artists
http://www.walkingtools.net/

The Graveyard
http://tale-of-tales.com/TheGraveyard/
http://tale-of-tales.com/

Spectre
http://www.spectregame.com/index.php

Paper Moon:
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/11/freeware_game_pick_paper_moon.html

Indie Games Blog: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/

 

The Emotiv EPOC uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs. http://www.emotiv.com/

 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/arts/television/07uncharted.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUPAyGWKd6c

Experimental gameplay project - How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days

 

This project is somewhat like a combination of the artists/researchers:

Janet Cardiff’s camera walk pieces
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/ps1.html
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/index.html
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/

Blast Theory’s “Can You see me now” project (which is played on-line and in the physical world) http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html 

modified PK Parkour ("the physical aspect of getting over obstacles in your path as you would in an emergency. You want to move in such a way, with any movement, as to help you gain the most ground on someone or something, whether escaping from it or chasing toward it."),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEeqHj3Nj2c

and other pervasive convergence (or blended reality) genres of games such as in the research of Annika Waern http://www.pervasive-gaming.org/index.php , and  Jane McGonigal http://avantgame.com/McGonigal_THIS_MIGHT_BE_A_GAME_sm.pdf .

 

Collective problem solving in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) as part of distributed campaigns. Possible collective games based on puzzles no individual could solve alone, often use mobile technologies and are solved by teams working together online. Each ARG develops an online community dedicated to solving the puzzles put forth by the game. Storytelling, implementing an analytic system to analyze and simulate the process by which distributed individuals contribute to and shape a collective story.

 

We will experiment with the idea of restructuring the everyday in ways to creatively see and perceive new perceptual opportunities and awareness in everyday surroundings, not so much created by the game experience, but rather revealed by it.  

Augmented Reality Board Games:

ARhrrrr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNu4CluFOcw

Augmented Environment Lab:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AELatGT

PIT Strategy is an Augmented Reality Game that uses a game board, cards to determine your pit strategy, a webcam to look at the board and a screen to show the 3D objects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGsfDDxhFN0&feature=related

Augmented Reality Tower Defense for Nokia N95
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg&feature=relate

Tools:
http://www.artoolworks.com/
https://ar.qualcomm.com/qdevnet/

More information on the AR SDK:
http://developer.qualcomm.com/dev/augmented-reality

PLAY, FASHION, & STYLE, REBELLION:  

toxiclibs is an independent, open source library collection for computational design tasks with Java & Processing
http://www.vimeo.com/6644720

1.0:Promo http://www.vimeo.com/6417194


Blender Dome:
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/papers/blender09/

Whiffle Hurling? Bag Tag? Hey, It's Art
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Actors
and artists in New York City are inventing high-
concept sports that are meant to be both games and art.

Video Library Player:  Arcade Games As Art
Melena
Ryzik reports from the opening of Deluxx Fluxx, an interactive art arcade created by the street artists Faile and Bast, on the Lower East Side.

 

Eva and Franco Mattes: http://www.0100101110101101.org/

Micha Cardenas is a 31-year-old man taking hormones to become a woman. So, it's not surprising perhaps that Cardenas views the boundaries of gender as being somewhat fluid and has questions about what it means to be male and/or female.  

http://ucsdopenstudios.com/2009/artists.php?a=Micha_Cardenas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHEDym1aOZs

http://bang.calit2.net/

 

Wardrip-Fruin, Noah   and Pat Harrigan, Editors. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=9908
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson

How adding fun can change the world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEKAwCoCKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw
http://www.thefuntheory.com/


Aram Bartholl http://www.datenform.de/

Ripsaw model by WoW papercraft blog: http://datenform.de/1heng.html
Jump and Run Shanghai
workshop and public intervention http://datenform.de/jumpnrun.html

 



Pedestrian

Art in Odd Places is taking over 14th Street: That means gold trash, mutilated stuffed animals and weirdo performance artists everywhere. We asked nine of them to explain their WTF creations.

By Jennifer L. Nelson

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Road Kill Stuffed Animals
What it is: Fake roadkill on 14th Street between Broadway and University Place, between Third and Sixth Avenues, and between Ninth and Tenth Avenues

What it means: “Stuffed animals are nostalgic childhood objects,” says artist L Mylott Manning. “Destroying them is an expression of the frustration, anxiety and pain of life.”

 


 

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Ultra-Violet Beauties
What it is: A photo shoot—starring you!—with a special UV filter that reveals what’s going on underneath your skin
What it means: “It’s about people directly confronting their flaws,” says former makeup artist and photog Cara Phillips. “I spent years helping women buy products to hide themselves, and I wanted to expose the flaws that can’t be seen with the human eye.”

 

 


 

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Midas
What it is: Busted, abandoned and otherwise ignored objects painted gold
What it means: “We miss so much of what’s around us,” says co-artist Boris Rasin. “The simple act of putting on a fresh coat of paint in a color you wouldn’t expect lets people see objects as if for the first time. We’re assigning value to things that otherwise have no value.”

 


 

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The Pedestrian Project
What it is: Artists donning custom-made costumes that look like the faceless figures you see on road signs

What it means: “The characters get us to humorously see ourselves through these generics,” says artist and costume designer Yvette Helin. “We all want to be someone and yet we’re more like those icon people than we care to admit.”

 


 

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No Deliveries Today
What it is: Brightly colored boxes continually moved from one location to another; they never make it to their destination, wherever that is

What it means: “The boxes are become a metaphor of displacement and forced social nomadism,” says artist Miryana Todorova, who collaborated on the project with Hatuey Ramos-Fermín. “It points out the changes that render neighborhoods unrecognizable.”

 


 

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Alegrias-
What it is: The artist pulls ski masks over her head (17 masks is her current record), then slowly peels them off.
What it means: “New Yorkers will be forced to consider the many masks and layers of identity we wear and their suffocating quality, as well as the simultaneous desire to be seen and not seen,” says video and performance artist Arielle Falk. “I just hope nobody thinks I’m robbing a bank!”

 


 

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Landscrapers
What it is: Tape frames shapes in the landscape, including bricks, sidewalks, crosswalks and windows

What it means: “How it is, isn’t how it has to be,” says artist and designer Aakash Nihalani. “We need to see the city more playfully.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHGbJ_SbTcQ

http://www.todayandtomorrow.net/2008/10/28/aakash-nihalani/

Elements of Creating the User Experience by Adams & Rollings

1.
Concept
2.
Elaboration: primary Game Play
Interaction model
Camera perspective
Gameplay challenges
3. Tuning

 

Assignments:
Projects: due Feb 2
* If you have not done so already, bring sample of best work to next class
*
FPS / Virtual Violence Paradigm Challenge:
 Design Blitz Playable Prototype Individual Game #1

 

Readings: due Feb 2
* Play as Design by Brenda Laurel Play as Design by Eric Zimmerman
* Ernest Adams Design Philosophy
* Experimental gameplay project - How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days
*create a short, one page, printed reaction paper to each of the above

 


 

Week 2:  Feb 2

* Review FPS / Virtual Violence Paradigm Challenge:Design Blitz Playable Prototype Individual Game #1

 

* Temporary Teams formulate

 

The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence

Dead Rising

Grand Theft Auto

Violent Videogames as Pedagogical Devices
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/are_violent_video_games

Game Over: http://www.vimeo.com/6426372


Drone-Controllers


HudsonSafeEmergencyLanding


* show artists’ work:

- Kathleen Ruiz Bang, Bang (you’re not dead?) multiview
website
-
Gonzalo Frasca Sept 12
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

- Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Paolo Pedercini
http://www.vimeo.com/4750691

 

 - Wafaa Bilal Domestic Tension
Description from an on-line exhibition publication:

Iraqi born Wafaa Bilal has become known for provocative interactive video installations. Many of Bilal's projects over the past few years have addressed the dichotomy of the virtual vs. the real. He attempts to keep in mind the relationship of the viewer to the artwork, with one of his main objectives transforming the normally passive experience of viewing art into an active participation. In Domestic Tension, viewers can log onto the internet to contact, or shoot, Bilal with paintball guns. Bilal's objective is to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, or lack thereof, in the digital age. During the course of the exhibition, Bilal will confine himself to the gallery space. During the installation, people will have 24-hour virtual access to the space via the Internet. They will have the ability to watch Bilal and interact with him through a live web-cam and chat room. Should they choose to do so, viewers will also have the option to shoot Bilal with a paintball gun, transforming the virtual experience into a very physical one. Bilal's self imposed confinement is designed to raise awareness about the life of the Iraqi people and the home confinement they face due to the both the violent and the virtual war they face on a daily basis. This sensational approach to the war is meant to engage people who may not be willing to engage in political dialogue through conventional means. Domestic Tension will depict the suffering of war not through human displays of dramatic emotion, but through engaging people in the sort of playful interactive-video game with which they are familiar.
http://www.youtube.com/mewafaa

 

  

Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: http://arts.rpi.edu/cms/fileaccess.php?fileID=995&w=120&h=90

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal presented a lecture/performance at
West Hall Auditorium, RPI Campus
Mar 5 2008 Second in the series, “Art and Islam: Electronic Representations and Local Communities”. This is what happened:

http://www.wafaabilal.com/html/virtualJ.html

 

 

* Screening of film:  Gamer Revolution

* Discussion of 

- Behavior:

Sublimation



- 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. Huizinga sees play as a free and meaningful activity, carried out for its own sake, spatially and temporally segregated from the requirements of practical life. 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. 

 

 

* Play as a “safe” place to learn unsafe things:

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.

Problematics of Warcraft:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060224/qhong_01.shtml

- Are virtual “violent” games cathartic or desensitizing?

- Screening &  Discussion: An interview with Lt Col. Grossman, author of  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 of interactive '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 on track to supersede movies as the most popular and innovative form of entertainment in the new century.


Media Violence:

THE SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
Theorist -Albert Bandura

 & overview and  The Bobo Doll Experiment

 

US   | January 23, 2010
Simulators Prepare Soldiers for Explosions of War
By JAMES DAO
The Pentagon is trying to harness the high-tech wizardry of the entertainment industry to train soldiers.

Video Gaming Prepares the Brain for Bigger Tasks - Association for Psychological Science http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2010/november-10/video-gaming-prepares-the-brain-for-bigger-tasks.html

Violence and video games: http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2010/mar/vvgeffects

 

Justices Split on Violent Video Games:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590333558912068.html

 

WAR GAMES:
War Games the movie

Chess

Issues & ethics:

osma games nytJanuary 10.htm
www.americasarmy.com (note absence of extreme 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 by  Celia Pierce http://www.cpandfriends.com


 

Violent video games lead to brain activity characteristic of aggression, MSU researcher shows http://news.msu.edu/story/337/

Philosophical ideas in cultural products and the ideological and political factors at play in the formation of new conventions in intellectual enterprise.

June 22, 2010 Grand Theft Auto Is Good for You? Not So Fast...Most evidence suggests ill effects from violent video games By Dara Greenwood   
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=grand-theft-auto-is-good

 

 

Rendition: Guantanamo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition:_Guantanamo

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/01/tech/main5054176.shtml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLf0saVg4fs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR_8fkAmuEc&feature=fvw

Breakaway Games
http://www.breakawayltd.com/about/overview/


Assignments:
Project:
due Feb 16
FPS / Virtual Violence Paradigm Challenge:
 Design Blitz Playable Prototype Group Game #2
Readings: due Feb 9
* From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games by Ed Halter
* Baudrillard and Hollywood: subverting the mechanism of control and The Matrix by Jim Rovira
* The Oxymoron of Virtual Violence, J. Baudrillard
*create a short, one page, printed reaction paper to each of the above

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


 

Week 3: Feb 9

 

* 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

 

 

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

Teams present mini overviews of their working game ideas.

 

 

Comics as cultural barometers

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

 

COMICS: A TOOL OF SUBVERSION?

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

R Crumb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlT4QZchxQw

 

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

 
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

http://www.zeitbrand.de/machiniBlog/WhatIsMachinima.htm

Friedrich Kirschner

 


Paul Marino
http://www.machinima.org/

 

Oblivion Tributé machinima http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DaggeH#p/a

Interactive Machinema Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjqP-DlcPcs&p=E440830E85845B64&index=1&playnext=2

 

 

 

 

Sample1

Sample 2

Sample 3

 

Machinima that Matter: A list of machinima films with a Social / Political Message:
http://www.betterverse.org/2009/07/machinima-that-matter-a-list-of-machinima-films-with-a-social-political-message.html


Game Engines:

Game Engines:
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

Ogre: http://www.ogre3d.org/

Unity 3D: http://unity3d.com/

others

 

* Artists working and hacking with game engines:

Kurt Hentschlager

Workspace Unlimited

 

Assignments: due Feb 16
Project:
*
FPS / Virtual Violence Paradigm Challenge:
 Design Blitz Playable Prototype TEAM Game #2

Readings: due  Feb 16
* Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar
* Origins of FPS by Galloway
*create a short, one page, printed reaction paper for each of the above

 


Week 4:  Feb 16

* Review TEAM FPS/Virtual Violence Paradigm Challenge Design Blitz Playable Prototypes GAME #2

 

FORMULATE PERMANENT TEAMS for Final Projects

 

INNOVATIVE IDEAS IN GAMES

Consider Delivery Systems
Arcade
PC
Mac
On-line
Dedicated systems
Hand held
emerging, other, innovate!


Physically Based Games

Interaction Survey: Cinekid
by Kyle McDonald http://vimeo.com/16215568


Kinect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSV1rXJ0pU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQUajj634Qk

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

Kinect mods:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/technology/22hack.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

http://www.youtube.com/user/okreylos

Open source MS kinect driver
http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=libfreenect.git

 

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/10/we-have-a-winner-open-kinect-drivers-released-winner-will-use-3k-for-more-hacking-plus-an-additional-2k-goes-to-the-eff/

The plot thickens...
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/open-kinect-contest/

and an OSX port http://vimeo.com/16734124

Physically based games facing issues of Obesity, Coronary Heart Disease & Diabetes ErGoGenic Games

Robert Woods Johnson Foundation
http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/pioneer/2010/01/as-we-mentioneda-couple-of-weeks-ago-games-for-health-is-convening-a-half-day-meet-up-in-new-york-city-this-coming-tuesday.html

http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=29171


Eyetoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au4d5anfjnA


DDR
http://www.ddrgame.com/?gclid=CLLE7u7p4oCFR4cgQodbStGqA

ParaparaParadise
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paraparaparadise&search=Search

Wii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73yDRm8KaWY

PlayStation Move
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ybHddDMgM

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

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

POSTMORTEM

Rockband
http://www.rockband.com/games
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmWJNidyqKM

 

PainStation
Edo Stern

Physics and “real world” feel:

Soda Constructor  http://www.sodaplay.com/

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

Crayon Physics


Game Art in public spaces:  
TheStreaming Museum: streamingmuseum.org

 

 

Education and Games:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?ref=magazine

Simulations to test driver reactions: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/technology/09distracted.html?_r=1&hp

Games & Simulation in Instruction:
http://www.seriousgamegroup.com/R347/readings.html

Mashable - College Curriculum Requires Undergrads to Play Video Game “Portal”
http://mashable.com/2010/08/24/portal-college/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz2_NkyTv8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A88YiZdXugA


In-Q-Tel
of Arlington, Virginia, United States is a not-for-profit venture capital firm that invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.[4] started by Gilman Louie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilman_Louie
a video game designer and then ran the CIA venture capital fund
http://www.iqt.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

The Idea Incubator Goes to Campus

Econopocalypse: the Marxist animated whiteboard explanation
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/04/econopocalypse-the-m.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Augmented Reality' on Smartphones Brings Teaching Down to Earth
http://chronicle.com/article/Augmented-Reality-on/65991/?sid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en

 


IPhone Games:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/fashion/05iphone.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=IS%20there%20a%20good%20way%20to%20nail%20down%20a%20steady%20income?&st=cse

Ipad game dev
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/developers-are-in-a-scramble-to-strike-ipad-gold/?scp=1&sq=ipad%20game%20development&st=cse

Fast Company Design: iPad App Lets You Sculpt Virtual Clay, Then Print Out Your Art

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662629/ipad-app-lets-you-create-sculptures-from-virtual-clay-then-print-them-out

Doodle jump http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doodle_Jump
http://vimeo.com/7263306

…………………………………………..

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.seriousgames.com/

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

Social Games that Sway Behavior
With the rise of social networks, game designers are finding new paths to desired outcomes.
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/26413/?p1=Headlines

Teen social network combines game play with live-video chat (TechCrunch)
MyYearbook Introduces Realtime Social Gaming With Video Chat

 


*War*

Velvet Strike: Anne Marie Schleiner
http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/

Gonzalo Frasca Sept 12
http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

Global conflict: Palestine
http://www.globalconflicts.eu/

Peacemaker Game

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

Future Farmers
http://www.futurefarmers.com/

Anti War Game
http://www.antiwargame.org/

War on terror
http://www.terrorbullgames.co.uk/

Rethinking wargames
http://www.furtherfield.org/rcatlow/rethinking_wargames/docs/overview.htm

Maurice Benayoun World Skin (1997) an infinite war zone populated by cutout images that one “photographs” which whites out its subject matter of soldiers, tanks, fighter planes, and other military machines.
http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=16

*Politics*

Antibush game
http://bushgame.com/g1.html

Redistricting game
http://www.redistrictinggame.org/

Hidden agenda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(game)

El Emigrante (direct link)
http://www.addictinggames.com/D78AQSAKQLQWI9/1646.swf


*History*

Balance of Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_%28computer_game%29

Soviet Unterzögersdorf
http://www.monochrom.at/suz-game/

JFK Reloaded
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Reloaded
http://www.io.com/~o_m/jfkaos/jfkaos.htm


*Environment*

Stop disaster
http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/

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

 

* Social Awareness*

3rd world farmer
http://www.3rdworldfarmer.com/

Ayiti
http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html

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

ICED an Immigration game
http://www.icedgame.com/
http://vivirlatino.com/2007/08/06/dont-get-iced.php


Breakthrough: http://breakthrough.tv/

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

 

*Miscellaneous *

Vigilance 0.1
http://www.martinlechevallier.net/vigilance.html

Metapet
http://metapet.net/

Civilization IV Eastwood
http://www.kuda.org/eastwood/index.htm

Disaffected!
http://www.persuasivegames.com/games/game.aspx?game=disaffected

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

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

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

Paolo Pedercini
www.molleindustria.org
YouTube - Molleindustria

 

Assignments:
Project:
Feb 23:
Final Project: Experimental Game Trajectory: Prototype 1 Concepts
working with permanent teams

Deliverables:
First iterations
(you will build on this framework over the course of the semester as your refine and reiterate your game.)

Include
the following:
* concept ideas and sketches
* storyboards
* rough Game Design Document
(see templates here: Simple or Elaborate)
* Game design structure template )
*
list of technical information and methodologies of production: any necessary software, SDKs, and APIs, etc. needed
.


Please remember that your completed game project is an innovative, original, purposeful work which goes beyond conventional style gaming paradigms and shows depth of creative goals, sensitivity to social issues, and quality of interaction. The game must be functional, or at the very least demonstrate some dynamic game play with a high end trailer illustrating the core game play concepts, and it must be accompanied by a completed, (web ready, stand alone) game design document and a well designed poster.

Readings:  reaction papers due Feb 23
 * Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered PlaySpaces by Henry Jenkins
*create a short, one page, printed reaction paper


Week 5:  Feb 23

Teams show Final Project Prototype 1 Concepts

 

Something interesting:
Co-opting and commercialization of GTA

 

Gender


Extreme Volleyball:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOAX

* Dead or Alive Extreme Volleyball (Microsoft Xbox)

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peDgQ64PdQs&feature=related


* Laura Croft
* The Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uht63rvl2g
* The Movie:
Laura Croft film excerpt


*  Genderplay: Successes and Failures in Character Designs for Video games April 16, 2003 posting by Jane

 

Women of GTA:
* http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/graphic-women-of-gta-iv/210696

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6CgDLqo_oc&feature=related

 

* play “Hey Baby” http://www.heybabygame.com/info.php

 

Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/games-for-tweens/


* Genderizing HCI by Justine Cassell

 

* Skins, Patches, and Plug-ins
Does Lara Croft wear fake polygons? http://www.opensorcery.net/lara2.html
Woman in the New Gaming Culture http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_polsky.html

 

Videogame Firms Make a Play for Women
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704882404574463652777885432.html

 

Life follows Game: STYLE   | December 24, 2009
Style:  The Year in Style | Lady Gaga
Michael Buckner/Getty Images
When Lady Gaga makes an appearance, so do her many influences.

And the all-important designer meat dress

* 50 of the top Female Game Characters


Race:

* GTA & Race
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRiD6EFFfUU&feature=related

*Celestine Arnold and Digital Multiculture
http://www.psfk.com/2009/04/video-psfk-conference-nyc-celestine-arnold-and-digital-multiculture.html


Addiction?:

WORLD
  | May 29, 2010
South Korea Expands Aid for Internet Addiction
By CHOE SANG-HUN
The government plans to open rehabilitation centers for adult addicts and expand counseling for students and the unemployed.

Addiction: show film excerpts from Second Skin

- Video Game Addiction No Fun
Compulsive video gaming is a modern-day psychological disorder that experts tell WebMD is becoming more and more popular. http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/video-game-addiction-no-fun

- 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


-----------

Blended Reality & Some Emerging Genres

Collective problem solving in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) as part of distributed campaigns. Possible collective games  based on puzzles no individual could solve alone, often use mobile technologies and are solved by teams working together online. Each ARG develops an online community dedicated to solving the puzzles put forth by the game. Storytelling, implementing an analytic system to analyze and simulate the process by which distributed individuals contribute to and shape a collective story.

 

Immersive Reality:
majestic
Play the News
Documentary Games

Papers on Pervasive Games:
http://www.pervasive-gaming.org/design_space2.php

Pervasive Play & Blended Reality:

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

Augmented Reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

Live action role-playing games
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk2vR8w2sjc



Location Based Mobile Games

Bot Fighters

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

Location based Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_game

Geocaching
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching
* http://www.geocaching.com/about/default.aspx

Can You See Me Now? by Blast Theory
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html


Activating Play
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/EGD_Prof_Ruiz/ACTIVATINGPLAY/newwebsite/index.html

 

Life, Art, Game as one:

The Situationist International: Formed in 1957, the SI was active in Europe through the 1960s and aspired to major social and political transformations. They were a small group of international political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, and the early 20th century European artistic and political avant-garde (people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Situationists

"A moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events."

 

They supported the dialectical unification of art and life. 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.

The situation as a practical manifestation slipped, ultimately, into a series of proposals.

 

The SI stemmed from the radical tradition of Dadaism , a European artistic and literary movement (1916-1923) that scorned conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. They did this as a reaction to the carnage of the First World War, replete with mustard gas (a chemical-warfare gas, blistering the skin and damaging the lungs, often causing blindness and death: introduced by the Germans in World War I), which was a war between the allies (Russia, France, British Empire, Italy, United States, Japan, Rumania, Serbia, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Montenegro) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria) from 1914 to 1918.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadaism


John Heartfield

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/heartfield.html


Hannah Hoch

http://www.yellowbellywebdesign.com/hoch/painters.html

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/davepalmer/cutandpaste/hoch_big2.html

 

Marcel Duchamp

http://www.understandingduchamp.com/

http://www.marcelduchamp.net/today_picture.php

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Some problems with reality: http://videogames.suite101.com/article.cfm/video_game_realism

Sony patent towards real life MATRIX

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

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
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/DISPLAY/39wf/frame.htm

 

Artists as “visionaries”
visualizing the future…..or ?
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/

Futurists The Futurists explored 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 painters —Boccioni, Carrŕ, 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.”

 

 

Other Related Art Games
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]


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://synworld.t0.or.at/level2/gaming_reader/virtuellestars/schleiner.htm

Playskins


Robert Nideffer
Tomb Raider patch [1999]
http://switch.sjsu.edu/CrackingtheMaze/robert.html

 

So simple but so wonderful:
Passage
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hcsoftware/files/Passage/v2/Passage_v2_Windows.exe/download"Passage, created by Jason Rohrer, is an exercise in gaming minimalism. Made for korokomi's gamma 256 competition, It's only five minutes long, it weighs in at less than 500kb, it takes place on a 100x16 field of pixels, and it only requires the arrow keys. "--John Schwartz, EGD Fall 09

 

Exhibits:
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n2/index2.html
http://www.re-load.org/
 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

* 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

 

What went wrong so things can go right:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Intensive studio workshop


Assignment:
due March 2 
Work on Phase I Proposal & Formal Group Presentation

Readings: due March 2
* Adams and Rollings, Creating the User Experience
* Adams and Rollings The Level Design Process
**create a short, one page, printed reaction paper for each

extra credit readings:
* The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content David Rokeby
*Everything But the Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers
by Hal Barwood
* Storytelling in Action by Bob Bates

 


 

Week 6:  March 2

Teams show Phase I Proposal & Formal Group Presentation

 

Character Design

 

 Character Specs

 

Matt Musante emac ‘07

http://mm.twoagainst.com/char

 

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

SPORTS   | July 04, 2009
College Stars Sue Over Likenesses in Video Games
By KATIE THOMAS
Two quarterbacks contend the N.C.A.A. and a video game manufacturer should pay college athletes for using their likenesses in popular electronic games

 

Are we constructing our game characters or are they constructing us?  and
http://hyperdivine.deviantart.com/art/Retribution-Male-Civilian-75371711

 

http://hyperdivine.deviantart.com/art/Realtime-Photo-Realistic-Male-83834185

 

http://hyperdivine.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

http://furipon.deviantart.com/art/3D-Chibi-Yosuke-138169644

 

 

STYLE   | December 24, 2009
Style:  The Year in Style | Lady Gaga
Michael Buckner/Getty Images
When Lady Gaga makes an appearance, so do her many influences.

 

 

Realism in Virtual Characters:

 

Making of La espera by Jorge Suarez

http://www.3dm3.com/forum/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=176

 

http://www.3dtotal.com/galleries/


Realism in 3d: Krishnamurti Martins Costa, aka Antropus

http://www.cgcon.net/public/speaker/speaker.php?id=29&imgId=1

http://www.antropus.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=80&pos=6

http://www.antropus.com/gallery/

http://www.antropus.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=80&pos=6

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=45504

http://www.cgcon.net/public/news/news.php?id=36&page=1

 

 

Sculptris:
http://www.sculptris.com/

 

 

Specular Mapping:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?2210-Specular-map-doesn-t-show-up-on-SSS.&p=69893

 

 

 

Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: paint10.jpg

 

  1. Briefing
    Covers the inception phase, the phase of gathering requirements and analyzing the profile of the work.
  2. Looking for references
    The phase where we’re getting more familiar with the design requirements.
  3. Drawing the character
    We take a look at some basic principles in the corporate design of mascots and draw first sketches of the character.
  4. Coloring the character
    We make the character more vivid and pretty colorful using plain colors, shadows, lighting medium values, lights, reflection and lines coloring.
  5. Designing the logo
    The stage when we design a rather amusing logo which fits to the character.
  6. Final presentation
    We introduce final changes and finish the design combining everything we’ve created so far.

 

http://characterdesignlinks.blogspot.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/media/01disney.html?hp

 

Techniques:

Vector character design:
http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/web-design/learn-a-professional-workflow-for-illustrating-a-comic-style-header-image/

http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/illustrator-tutorial-create-a-gang-of-vector-ninjas

http://pinkzap.com/tutorial/drawing-a-characters-face-in-illustrator/

Digital painting:

http://www.studioqube.com/tutorials/painting/index.html

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/13/drunken-monkey-photoshop-tutorial/#1

 

Comic strip approach: Traditional Drawing, then digital painting Tutorial

Environment painting http://airage.deviantart.com/art/Inside-Environment-Painting-2-29149738

 

 Speed Painting

 

 http://concept-on-mac.deviantart.com/art/Speedpaint-step-by-step-34278775

 

Digital Painting Tutorial by Vitaly Alexius

Clouds http://tutorials.epilogue.net/tutorials/perfect-clouds-in-5-easy-steps

Wet Canvas Digital Painting Overview

 Digital Paint Portrait Techniques

 Concept Art   

A Concept Artist Daniel Dociu

 

Combining photo and digital painting
http://fantasyartdesign.com/free-wallpapers/digital-art.php?best=1&i_i=241&u_i=68&srt=3&count=1

Feng Zhu Design http://www.fengzhudesign.com/tutorials.html

 

 

avatars” – computer generated visual representations of users  – have become a crucial link between users and the digital spaces they navigate. While the term “avatar” reaches back to Hinduist scriptures ca. 200 BC, and the use of player representations in games can be traced to the earliest known games played more than 4.000 years ago, it was only in 1985 that the multi-user domain Habitat introduced the term for user representations in virtual worlds. Today, avatars are used in digital games as well as e-commerce applications, social virtual environments, virtual meetings and conferences, and many more digital spaces and applications.

However, avatars are not just an interface users manipulate to access and act in digital spaces – avatars and their human users form complex relationships. For instance, avatars may represent the users’ own or created identity, users may develop an emotional attachment or parasocial relation to their avatars, or the design or activities of an avatar may infringe rights or develop an economic value.

 

Realism in Rendering:

http://www.cgchannel.com/2010/10/video-is-this-the-future-of-real-time-rendering/


The Uncanny Valley

In 1978, the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori noticed something interesting: The more humanlike his robots became, the more people were attracted to them, but only up to a point. If an android become too realistic and lifelike, suddenly people were repelled and disgusted.
The Uncanny Valley

More on the Uncany Valley


Assignments:

Phase II Reiteration continue addting and reiterating your work and reflect it in your Game Design Document

due March 9
Midterm assessments (please upload all perfected  work to drop box for evaluation)

Readings: personal team research

 


Week 7: March 9

MIDTERM ASSESSMENTS

 

* Students show Phase II Reiteration Informal presentation

 

* Reality Check Studio

Reality check on scope of project, semester schedule for everyone in the group including individual responsibilities and deadlines, more refined game design document, 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.)

 

Discuss

- Genres
Genre and the Video Game
Graphing Taxonomies

 

Taxonomy - the science or technique of classification.

(in Biology - the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms - such as Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.)sample:

Taxonomy of your Brain:
http://www.thebrain.com/?gclid=CM7p6puvgpYCFQgRFQodcSCYEw#-47

ontology
noun1. the branch of metaphysics which studies the nature of being and existence, (what “is”?)
2. (computer science) a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations 

:::::::so…a taxonomy starts somewhere, but where will be entirely bounded by the needs, goals, interests and perceptions of its designer.

To find taxonomies of use to you, you need to first know what your own "needs, goals, interests and perceptions” are in regard to the purpose of your search.

A Taxonomy of Computer Games by Chris Crawford: from "The Art of Computer Game Design", 1982 old classification, but contain the roots of most later classifications:
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

 

Empirical (focused on experience/observation, rather than theory)
Literally any videogame specialized website:
http://gametunnel.com/ (categories on the right of the site)
http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?type=games (use the "All Games" menu below "Most Popular games") http://uk.pc.ign.com/index/games.html (use the "Choose" menu left to "Show Genre" Button)

Ernest Adams & Andrew Rollings, "Ernest Adams & Andrew Rollings on Game Design", New Riders. A well detailed synthesis of such empirical classifications

For a Critical Refinement of Empirical Classifications-
Mark JP Worlf, "Genres and the Videogames", 2000 (42 categories, available online : http://www.robinlionheart.com/gamedev/genres.xhtml)

Alain & Frederic le Diberder, "Qui a peur des jeux vidéos", 1993.

Some New Ideas about Research in Taxonomies of Games:

Jan Klabbers
Principles of Gaming and Simulation
Jesper Juul
* A Multi Dimensional Topology of Games
* The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression

 

 

 

 

Readings: Personal team research

 

Assignments:

Prep for Phase III Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation due March 23

Definitive schedule for entire project which will be used for milestones for further project development, continuation of incorporating critical feedback, game play, polishing and refinement of content, methodology, delivery system, and game design document

 


 

Week 8: Spring Break off

 


Week 9: March 23

Students show Phase III Game Prototype & Formal Group Presentation

Guest Critique by Karthik Bala, CEO/Chief Creative Officer Vicarious Visions Inc.

Player Created Content:

Ideas & Issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content


http://www.gogaminggiant.com/2009/09/18/top-10-usercreated-content-games/


http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_4/22-Player-Created-Content

 

In World of Warcraft the closest to user created content we have are add-ons. But is it time for users to create their own content in WoW?
Is it Time for User Created Content in WoW?


Legal issues in UGC and Virtual Worlds:
User-Generated Content & Virtual Worlds

 

Monitoring User-Created Content:
http://kalibreonline.com/2010/08/05/starcraft-2-blizzard-will-monitor-user-created-content/

 

Why User Generated Content Has Failed to Change The Face of Gaming

 

 

Revenue generating and UGC:

Leveraging the dominant format of user generated content for World of Warcraft players offers the ad instant credibility among the Warcraft community

OTOinsights: "Design Lessons from User Generated Content: An ...

 

 

Visiting Artist/Game Professional:
 Ian Stead from 1st Playable
Assignment: 
prep for Phase IV Game Content Informal presentation due March 30

 


 

Week 10: March 30

 

* Teams present Phase IV Game Content Informal presentation

Previous Rensselaer Student Projects from EGD:
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/%7Eruiz/ExperimentalGameDesignSp04plus/index.html

http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/EGDSpring09finalprojects/index.html

 

http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/EGDFall08finalprojects/index.html


http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~ruiz/EGDSpring08finalprojects/ruiz/index.html

 

Other

The Pervasive nature of Games:

Video Makes the Movie Star (With Help From Adam Sandler)



Readings:
project research

Assignments:
work with your team on
Phase V Refinement & Formal Group Presentation
due April 6

Hooking up assets to game, further development of game play

 


 

Week 11:  April 6

* teams present Phase V Refinement & Formal Group Presentation

VideoGames are Dead??
http://www.koreaittimes.com/story/4706/video-games-are-dead-%E2%80%93-part-2

 

Game Trailers
http://www.gametrailers.com/

Casual Revolution
http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=688

The Beatles Rock Band
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/arts/television/06schi.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/videos/trailer/

Kiri Miller's entry "Just Add Performance" on FlowTV http://flowtv.org/?p=4019     

http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/issue/view/3

 

Push. Play: An Examination of the Gameplay Button

Stephen Griffin PDF

Articles

Buttons, Simplicity, and Natural Interfaces

J R Parker PDF

Because the push button was an inexpensive way to send control signals to a computer from a user or game player, it became the most common aspect...

 

A Visual-Inertial Hybrid Controller Approach to Improving Immersion in 3D Video Games

Alexander Wong PDF

Advances in various areas such as graphics, sound, physics and artificial intelligence have improved the level of player immersion into the gaming...

 

Becoming Machinic Virtuosos: Guitar Hero, Rez, and Multitudinous Aesthetics

Henry Adam Svec PDF

Media scholars Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greg de Peuter view digital play as a complex, conflicted site on the terrain of global capital; although...

 

Guitar Hero: "Not Like Playing Guitar At All"?

Dominic Arsenault PDF

This paper studies the Guitar Hero video game as a simulation. This is done by examining the game controller and the visual interface, and how they...

Interfaces:

Rockband:
http://josh.thegeekmovement.com/Tanenbaum-Bizzocchi-SIGGRAPH09_prepub.pdf

 

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

WEB KATAMARI
http://katamari.namco.com/game/katamari.swf

POSTMORTEM


Readings:
project research

Assignments:
teams prep Phase VI Further Refinement
due April 13

Informal presentation



Week 12:
 April 13

* Teams present Phase VI Further Refinement
informal presentation


Refinement for pre-review and three week trajectory for individual team work with assistance in class.


The Emotional Divide by Lee Sheldon

 

Studio: catch up and intensive work on improving projects

Discussion:


Emotion & Poetics+


Emotion and Games:

*For the past couple of years, Dom has been searching for his wife. He gets word that she was captured in a Locust (the enemy monsters of the game) slave camp. He finds her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9eTN9Kxzco

Noah

 

*Here is the clip that made me cry in Shadow of the Colossus. The best place to start is around the 1:30 point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclbRYmGG9A

Evan

 Emotioneering”: Game Developer magazine cited David Freeman, (a noted film, television, and game industry writer and producer) explaining 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

http://www.xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf

 

Poetics and Aristotle

(Greek philosopher 384-322 B.C.)

  Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: Description: http://www.kyshakes.org/Resources/Images/Aristotle.jpg Aristotle was born in Stagirus, Macedonia, Greece in 384 BC and died at age 62 in 322 BC. He was a student at Plato's Academy and later became one of the greatest philosophers of Ancient Greece. He is one of the fathers of Western Philosophy and  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.

 

In one of his treatises, The Poetics, he outlines the Six Elements Of Drama, based on the Ancient Greek belief that tragedy was the highest form of Drama. This outline has become a guideline for many playwrights throughout history, and is especially emphasized in the works of William Shakespeare.

Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy

“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having
magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;...
in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear,
wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.”  

 

(Catharsis being a purification or purgation of the emotions primarily through art or a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension or an elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it expression)

 

A type of emotional orgasm

 

Aristotle’s Six Elements of Drama

 

  1. PLOT – what happens in a play; the order of events, the story as opposed to the theme; what happens rather than what it means. Inventing and arranging the events that would lead to the conclusion, the manner in which the story was told.
  2. THEME – what the play means as opposed to what happens (plot); the main idea within the play.
  3. CHARACTER – the personality or the part an actor represents in a play; a role played by an actor in a play.
  4. DICTION/LANGUAGE/DIALOGUE – the word choices made by the playwright and the enunciation of the actors delivering the lines.
  5. MUSIC/RHYTHM – by music Aristotle meant the sound, rhythm and melody of the speeches.
  6. SPECTACLE – the visual elements of the production of a play; the scenery, costumes, and special effects in a production.

 

4 kinds of tragedy:

Complex;

Pathetic;

Ethical

Simple

 


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.'

 

"Armchair Arcade" (www.armchairarcade.com).

 

 Matt Barton's 'Treatise on Videogames', in which he applies Aristotle's Poetics to (among others) Space Invaders. http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/223

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."

 

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 clears our souls of eleos (mercy, pity, compassion) and phobos (fear)?

 

For more information on Aristotle: http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/aris.htm

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, unrealized (forms) and ultimate mystical truths through the use of reason.)

Narrative Revisited:
The art of telling a good story…..

Akira Kurosawa  The Tunnel :::: and::::
Excerpts from Ran
The famous Japanese filmmaker uses Shakeapear’s King Lear to tell the story of an old man’s quest for meaning within and incomprehensible, unframed war. To enable the audience to see the clash of armies, Kurosawa silences their clashing armor and the screams of the wounded before he immerses the carnage in music. He imposes a spectacular order on chaos.

 

-Everything But the Words: A Dramatic Writing Primer for Gamers by Hal Barwood
- Storytelling in Action by Bob Bates

 

Readings: team research readings

Assignment:
prep for Phase VII Project Pre-Reviews & Formal Group Presentation
due April 20

 


 

Week 13:  April 20

* teams present Phase VII Project Pre-Reviews & Formal Group Presentation
 
Formal presentation of group work to date which incorporates suggested improvements from individual critique. Additionally fully updated and perfected game design document is printed and formally handed in. 

* User evaluation test plan talk & testing guide

* Craft your User Evaluation Test Plan
Game Theory
History of Game Theory


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

 

Readings: team research readings


Assignment:
prep for Phase VIII Final Project Reviews & Informal presentation due Dec 1 (second to last class)

 


 

Week 14:  April 27
 (second to last class)

Teams present Phase VIII Final Project Reviews & testing results
Informal presentation


Intensive Studio: completing work and incorporating new findings from testing and critical feedback

 

Printing your Poster: Instructions from Nate:

 

The plotter paper is 36 inches wide, but the actual content space is 34 inches. So your document should be 36 wide, but have an inch of whitespace on either side.

 

The minimum height is 24 inches, but I would recommend the same amount of padding there. If your poster is vertical you can of course rotate it to fit into this space for the lowest cost.

 

You should make a PDF. I usually use Illustrator (on the VAST lab if you don't have it), create a document 36" by height + 2", then use File->Place to insert your document. You can then do "Save As" and switch the filetype to PDF.

 

Take the PDF file to the VCC and open it in Acrobat (or Reader? whatever it's called these days). Switch the printer to vcplt or vcpltg for glossy ($0.25 more per foot, not bad for the shiny effect). I think the checkboxes are something like:

 

"Automatically select paper size"

"Allow use of custom sizes"

 

Select both of those and the rulers in the preview should update to be your document's size. Then you should be able to send it.

 

The printout shows up in the rack on the right side of the building, near the glass-enclosed classroom. In general, they will put obviously bad printouts up without saying anything, but you can get a refund if there was a problem on their end by going to the help desk.

 

You should cut your poster out as well so it doesn't have the white border and the little label that they print on it. There is a cutting board in the VAST lab with a meter stick and an xacto knife, but the knife is a little dull. Be careful with your fingers, an xacto knife and my thumb hanging over the edge of the ruler put that thumb in a bandage for weeks. Knives are sharp...


Readings:
team research readings

 

Assignment: due May 4 LAST CLASS
Phase IX- Perfected Game Festival-Ready Games, Formal Group Presentation



 

Week 15: May 4 

 

LAST DAY OF CLASS 

 

Phase IX- Formal Presentations of Perfected Game Festival-Ready Games

All perfected work due this day. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Complete and refine all work on final projects for
Final Completed Game Project:
* submit on a cd or dvd:

 * Your game and all elements including all art, programming files, etc.

* Your game design document in .html format with all relevant files

* Your poster file

* Your project summary in .doc format with summation image

* high quality edited .mov of game play

Also submit:

* Printed posters
* Printed Final Game Design Document

* Printed project summary

* also if applicable: User Evaluation Testing Summary and Recommendations

 

Please ensure that all work is spell checked.

All work must be printed and also submitted on labeled CDs or DVDs 

 

Discuss the future of games, simulation and upcoming developments.

The Game Industry by Hyman, The Studio Stance

 

 


Projects meeting the highest standards are then shown at the Annual Game Festival May 6 & 7th .
questions asked of game entrants have been:

For GameFest more Questions for Game Overview:

 

What is the Genre of the game.
What did the team learn from the project?
Describe your game in one sentence and additionally provide 3 keywords that best describe your game.
What tech was used – XNA, Unity, etc.?
What IDE, if any, was used – Visual Studio?
Any middleware used – what?
What Tools were used? – Maya?
How did you test it your code / game play?
What is the architecture?  Provide a UML diagram, if possible.
What language was used (C#, C++?)?
Were any design patterns utilized?  If so, what?
Did you use source control?  If so, what?
Were any coding standards used?
What key emotions are the music supporting.
What SFX is the most important in the game.