Rants about digital arts, photography and university.

Our team is:

• Marcos
• Michele
• Raphael

Our idea:

A puzzle game with a twist.  The story is still a bit vague, but the idea is that you find yourself in a steampunk-like warehouse with some crazy machine attached to your arm.  As you play with this machine, you find that it can copy and paste material properties. You use this to try and navigate through the maze-like environment.

Some features we plan on implementing:

• Incentive to explore by adding objects around the levels to collect
• Potentially a time limit of some sort to create a sense of urgency and excitement
• A story.

Our planning document can be found here.

So, the last couple responses I wrote by picking and choosing passages that I found interesting and writing about them as I went through the texts. I’ll try to do this one differently, just… commenting in one block in no particular order.

So, I thought the question at hand in the article to be quite interesting. I definitely think I agree with Dr. Kee. I find it almost strange how Dr. Rockwell refuses to think of serious games as games.  I think the thing that struck me the most is when they brought up Flight Simulator.  Sure, it can (and has been) used to help train pilots, but it can be more than just a training mechanism. I used to play that game for hours on end! Not because I wanted to be a pilot, but because I enjoyed the thought and experience of flying.

I think the best way for me to go about reasoning this question is to say that I believe that if there is some element of entertainment, regardless of how small it may be, even the most serious of games can still be considered a game.  September 12th is a good example. It’s not exactly a super-exciting-mega-fun-awesome-game. But there is a form of entertainment behind it. Even if you quickly discard it and start thinking about the message, it still has an element of entertainment.

I also think that the initial question of whether or not a game can be educational isn’t properly phrased. I think any game can be educational in that you’re learning -something- from it. Whether that something applies to what our society, through time, has determined to be worthwhile academic subjects is questionable, but doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.  I think what Dr. Rockwell had in mind when presenting the question is something more along the lines of “Can games be applied to academic subjects?” Or something like that.

On an ending note… I used to love reader rabbit.

As I read through the section comparing traditional media and games, I’m not entirely sure how to react. I believe that traditional media to a certain extent can be simulational. I think they can make you feel like you are living out an event that isn’t part of your reality. Take an IMAX film, for example… It’s not a game, there isn’t any sort of back and forth between the media and the audience, but you can leave the theatre feeling like you flew a fighter jet. Sure, watching a soccer match might not be simulational in teh way that a video game is, but in some other ways, it is.  There are people out there who get so engrossed in the soccer match they’re watching that they feel the emotions that the players on the field do when they are, for example, the victim of a poor call by the ref, or a violent foul. I would say that it’s a different sort of simulation, because with games, the users are engaged in creating the simulation, whereas films and television can only “simulate” a defined series of events. To me, the comparison with watching a soccer match and claiming that this activity doesn’t simulate playing soccer and cannot convey the feeling of a match begs the question: does a video game get any closer? I used to play a lot of soccer and it was an important part of my life, and I can tell you that when playing any one of the FIFA games, I don’t get anything like the sensation of playing real soccer. That’s not to say that I don’t experience anything at all, but I would suggest that they aren’t comparable.

I guess I’m arguing against something somewhat irrelevant, but I just wanted to point out that I believe it was a poorly chosen example. Maybe the idea was to relate this to the actual game of soccer and not the simulation in a video game? Not sure… Anyway…

I like the bit about advergames, because I just saw something today that I would never have expected: a video game by BMW. And… it’s not a videogame that happens to have the BMW logo stamped on it somewhere. It’s actually a 3d, flash-based game that you can play on the BMW website.  It’s pretty pixelated, but really nicely presented, and even with the pixelation, I’d say the art is quite nice.  I’d say that creating that sort of experience, with the attachment that people get to games and trying to get better scores and such, is probably much more effective than sticking an ad in a magazine, as described, with pictures of the newest gizmos and gadgets.

I like the quote that “you never step in the same video game twice.” The beauty behind the simulation in a game is that you can play it over and over and work through it differently.  I also liked the following discussion on simauthors.  The thing is, the text refers to this “simauthor” who creates a world where there are a number of different potential outcomes, but makes it clear that these have their biases.  I like the reference to cutscenes and hard-coding and how the “fate” of the story can be variable. In some games, the outcome is more clearly defined than others.

It’s interesting that the author presents one of the differences between a “narrauthor” and a “simauthor” as a risk in giving away part of the control over the work.  The simauthor, who is essentially the team that creates the game, and potentially more specifically the programmers that write the rules, loses control over the story by creating the game.  Even if the storyline is strictly controlled, by the very nature of it being a game, it can be experienced in different ways and the narrative is changed.

In the section that goes over ludus rules and paidia rules, I feel like I personally associate better with paidia. The author tells us that ludus is the form that more strictly adheres to a single narrative, a win-lose scenario.  Paidia defines rules that are more open ended. They affect the way someone navigates through the game but don’t actually affect the outcome as far as narrative is concerned.  From what I’ve understood, I would say that the idea of Paidia rules are more closely related to game mechanics, whereas the addition of each/any ludus rule more strictly defines the narrative, its outcome and how it is meant to be interpreted.

Once I got to the end, I was glad he said that simulation is merely an alternative to narration and not its replacement, because I think narration is important too, if for no other reason than presenting clear messages with specific origins.  I personally find that the idea of simulation, especially in its ability to open up a story to multiple outcomes is more interesting as a whole, but definitely not enough to entirely steal the stage.

I had forgotten we were supposed to write responses on all these articles! Well. Catching up now.

So. I love the way this article starts. With the little girl yelling at the guy in the arcade. Because when I first read the article, I’d been playing Robot Unicorn Attack right before and I’d had some system notification from windows and gotten surprisingly angry. The little notification noise distracted me briefly and I ended up losing a wish (life). Not like it really matters, but it bugged me. And then made me laugh.

Anyway. I love this kid, Jarish. The fact that he’s not just playing the games but actually looking into how they work is awesome.  It reminds me a bit of the times when I’d mess around with the old Need for Speed files. You could go into the program files and find a file that listed all the properties used by the physics engine. By modifying the file you could change things like the cars’ weights and other stuff. I used to play around with those files and see what would happen if I pushed the settings to the extremes.

I also found it interesting to read about the origins of games. I’d read about space wars before, but never thought much about it as far as the development of games.  It’s interesting to me to think that the first computer game was a two player game, since I keep thinking that creating a two player game for this class would be more difficult than creating a single-player game. To play online we’d have to figure out how to set up some sort of server for it and I remember being a little uncomfortable playing two player games in front of one computer (two people on the keyboard or something) back when I was younger.

I like the line, “Not everyone wants to be around the perfect mirror. Some people dislike what they experience as the precision, the unforgivingness of mathematics.” After the section about Jimmy, who finds his own perfection in the game, by finding that 10 minutes slot where he can play the game perfectly, it’s interesting to consider that some people see only their flaws when they play a video game. And it’s in part because the computer does not make mistakes. The programs run purely on mathematical logic, so 8×8 will always ==64. They know that if something is going wrong for them in the game, it’s due to their own failings, because the game is always doing “the game” right. That particular bit is probably what keeps me thinking the most after reading the article.

Homework this week was to come up with three games. One that would be suitable for young children, one that could be played by pressing one button and one where two players would depend on each other, but would ultimately betray one another.

For the first game, my idea I thought of my cousin’s children. They love building these seemingly random assemblies of legos and calling them spaceships, and running around with them, pretending they’re flying off to distant planets.  Well, I think it would be fun for them if, using a kinect, or similar device, we could scan their spaceships into a video game and have them “actually” fly to distant planets and explore the universe. I think it would be nice to reward them for creativity, say… by giving them points every time they make a new spaceship, and by how different the spaceship is from their previous one.

For the game with the single button, I thought of the fact that when I’m bored or waiting for something (or when I’m over-caffeinated ) I have a tendency to tap my fingers, or feet. I feel like it could be interesting if one used a smartphone and some sort of bluetooth enabled device with a single button and tried to tap your finger or foot along the rhythm of the sounds around you (captured by the smartphone’s mic.).  This means it could be music, or the beeping of a truck in reverse, or other noises. This could be nice in that you could be playing a game without the people around you knowing (maybe the button could be underneath a shoe?) and it would integrate your environment.  I thought a possible reward system would be to play music through headphones. This could also be used to create different levels. So… you have one headphone in one ear, and no music is coming through. Your phone’s microphone is monitoring the environment around you for changes in volume. In your shoe, with a button facing the floor, there is a bluetooth-enabled device wich sends button click info. back to your phone. You tap your foot every time there is a spike in volume around you (something your trying to figure out with your headphone-less ear).  If your foot tap matches up with a spike in volume as detected by your phone, then the music in the one heaphone you have on (which has been playing at zero voume) increases in volume so you can hear it.  To increase the volume to a predetermined desired level, you must consecutively get “good” taps. As you get “good” taps, the game gets harder, because the music gets more distracting.  If you reach a certain percentage of the song being audible while it plays, the next song gets more distracting (for example, moving from a soft-rock song to a heavy-metal song).

Finally, for the last game, I thought a sort of treasure hunt could be interesting. It could be web-based and use GPS. Basically, it would work a bit like geocaching. You’d have to go online to receive the coordinates of your first partial-clue (or maybe a code?) and then go from there.  I think the interesting thing to do would be to start off with two partial-clues (one for each player). When they receive their first partial-clue, they would know that it’s a clue for their teammate, so they’d have to exchange clues (these would have some sort of ID written on them) and go back to the website to authenticate it and make sure they each took the right partial-clue. Upon authentication, they would get the second half. This would keep going until suddenly, they would get to a point where only one of them gets a clue (or maybe they get the same clue?) essentially, they have to help each other out to find clues until they get to a point where they’re on their own and it becomes a race to the finish.

So.

For the first week, we were supposed to find two very different games and find similarities between them.

I chose to use two computer games, but they are very different from one another.  The first is Fallout 3, an awesome game where you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world with elements reminiscent of the first half of the 20th century.  Essentially, the story leads you along a quest to figure out what has happened to your father and the struggle between the people of this wasteland and those with power over it.  There are also side quests which allow you to explore the vast wastelands and improve your abilities.  The game’s mechanisms are quite complex, dealing with karma, in-game physical and mental abilities, the player’s ability to solve puzzles, fighting abilities and more.

The second game I chose is quite radically different, but also fun, and probably more addictive: ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK!!!

Robot unicorn attack is a very simple game. You play as a robot unicorn, moving faster and faster through a purple 2d world of floating islands and rainbows (essentially, the game takes place in the deepest recesses of Lisa Frank’s mind).  The game controls the unicorn’s speed on its own, so the only controls are ‘z’ to jump and ‘x’ to charge. There are three possible ways to die: crash into part of an island, fall below the islands, crash into a giant metal star on the islands (writing this makes it sound even more amazing than it actually is).  To avoid such a “fiery death,” as the game puts it, and preserve your three lives (“wishes,” in the game) you must jump from island to island, using the “charge” control to plow through the metal stars. There are also fairy-like things hanging around the world which give you more points if you jump through them.  The more fairies you jump through and stars you plow through consecutively, the faster you go and the faster your score increases.

Oh. And the soundtrack is… very appropriate? I don’t know how else to put it. I guess you’ll have to play it yourself.

Three similarities between these games:

1. They both have sound tracks that fit the games very well and get you into the right mood to play them.
2. They both reward you for playing longer.  In RUA you get more points the longer you keep going, in F3 your character improves and you learn more about the story.
3. They both involve some kind of violence. In RUA, when you die, your unicorn explodes and on the following screen you see that it has been decapitated. F3 involves killing a lot of stuff, from radiated cockroaches to people and mutants.