Experimental Game Design

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 painters —Boccioni, 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

* 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 ht

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

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.