Author: d3vilsfan_95

In this excerpt, Cara Ellison connects games to live theater, which I think is quite interesting. Having been involved with theater in the past, I began to think back to the times when I was dead in the middle of tech week and there was a lot of work and collaboration happening. When I do work on a show, I usually am in charge of the lights. This position, in particular, requires collaboration with many other “departments” within a production. You have to coordinate with the director so you can understand his/her vision and make it happen and so that you understand the blocking and where the actors will be on stage, you have to coordinate with the set designer/carpenter to make sure you’ll have enough light to cover the whole set, you have to coordinate with the stage manager to make sure there is a clear understanding with the number of cues and where they should be called, the list goes on.

After reading this excerpt, this is what I imagine what it is like to make video games. The illustrators collaborating with the 3D modeling team and the 3D modeling team collaborating with the animation team and the lighting team and the sound team, and so on. For me, this was a very strong analogy and I now have a better understanding of the amount of work and collaboration that goes into making a video game.

Isbister raises an interesting argument in chapter 3 of How Games Move Us. She states that games that involve some sort of physical movement in the real world invokes certain feelings and emotions in players and the people around them, especially in a social setting. I found this to be very interesting, and having thought back to my time playing Wii Sports with my friends many years ago, makes total sense. Whether it was me or one of my friends who was playing, we always were emotionally invested in the game being played (screaming, shouting, and even jumping up and down at certain points). She references figure 3.3 (a picture of a group of people playing a Wii game), and when I looked at it, I was instantly brought back to playing Wii Sports with my friends.

Another example Isbister calls on is that of Microsoft’s Dance Central 2 that utilized the Kinect’s motion-tracking capabilities to determine if players were successfully executing the dance moves outlined on screen. She said that during development, the game initially included a feature that used the camera on the Kinect to put the players on-screen and into the game. It was discovered through playtesting that most players did not like that and were focusing on their awkward movements while learning new moves and not enjoying the game. Because of this, they decided to include avatars that were successfully executing the moves, that way the players could watch and learn the moves more quickly, and also so they would feel more confident. Isbister makes the argument that if the players see these confident avatars dancing along to the song, they will, in turn, feel more confident and enjoy the game more, which I think is is extremely fascinating

Katherine Isbister, at the beginning of chapter 1 of How Games Move Us, compares how games try to create a specific emotional experience to other kinds of media (novels, movies, music…). She uses the example of musicians using a minor key (a specific technique) to evoke a feeling of sadness or anxiety. She also ties this to film directors’ use of close-up shots to create intimacy. Then, she makes the argument that “games differ from other media in one fundamental way: they offer players the chance to influence outcomes through their own efforts.” I completely agree with this statement and don’t have any problems with it. However, next she quotes Sid Meier, the designer for Civilization who says “a [good] game is a series of interesting choices”, and this is where I start to have a bit of an issue. For this argument, I will use the example of Portal 2 (pretty much my favorite game of all time). Portal 2 has a set linear plot that you cannot deviate from. There are no choices to be made that change the game in any way. Going based off of what Isbister and Meier are saying, Portal 2 is not a good game. Not only do I disagree with that, but there is a large community of players that share my view of the game. While, yes, there are “choose your own adventure” type of games and they often are quite good, I think it is unfair to say that, strictly speaking, a “good” game is a series of interesting choices.

In chapter 7, Architects, Sicart beings talking about how games are formed by calling upon the example of rules in sports. He says that when a sporting event starts, that the players, officials and spectators enter a new reality. Having taken the Special Topics class last year, focused around Augmented Reality, this example that Sicart uses reminds me of the types and topics of discussions that took place during that class.

To augment something is to increase in size or number. Therefore, augmented reality is reality that has been added to. The way that players, officials and spectators of sports enter a new reality can be viewed as a form of augmented reality. You are taking the reality of sitting in an arena with upwards of 10,000 or more strangers (depending on the size of the arena and the popularity of the sport) and adding in the element of a competition to that reality. The feeling in the room changes and this multitude of strangers are united by one common interest: wanting their team to win. This feeling becomes most obvious when your team scores and everyone erupts in a cheering mania and all of a sudden you’re high-fiveing and having in-depth conversations with strangers about the play that caused your team to score.

In chapter 4, “Playgrounds”, Sicart revelals that Adventure Playgrounds were developed in Britain after World War II by Lady Allen of Hurtwood. He then explains that Lady Allen saw them as a way for children to reintegrate through play by letting them have a higher degree of freedom than that granted in Victorian playgrounds. She had also saw them as urban renewal projects to help to rehabilitate communities after the war.

In the paragraph before, Sicart said that playgrounds are supervised by adults, potentially interfering with children’s play. This is a bit ironic, that the space that was intended for children to use “freely” is now vey closely monitored and supervised. Is it possible that Lady Allen thought ever thought that the spaces she helped to develop would be so closely monitored in the future?

 

In chapter 5, “Beauty”, Sicart mentions the game “Ninja”. This game involves trying to touch the other players’ hand using quick movements, and only being able to pivot your feet while keeping one foot on the ground at all times. While I do not necessarily agree with Sicart that the game evokes a sense of “beauty”, I would agree that it does trigger an aesthetic response such that it grabs your attention and may cause you to look at the space that the game is being played in in a different light.

Before I begin, for those of you who don’t know me very well, this Joe Strokusz. Those of you who know me, you know of my passion for the devils, so there you go.

This reading was quite interesting and opened up my mind to the concept and notion of the word play. When I think of play I think of many things: video games, board games, sports, music; all pretty obvious. Chapter 2 specifically, Playfulness, is really where my mind began to open up. Sicart uses the example of the animation that happens when you minimize a window on a Mac (for those of you who don’t know, it kinda shrinks down like a genie would go back in its lamp [the effect is called genie, go figure]). I had always thought of that as an aesthetic choice rather than a choice of playfulness, but, hey, I’m here to broaden my horizons and learn, so go me! He also uses the example of linguistic playfulness in the form of puns and jokes. Those of you who know me, you know my stance on that; those of you who don’t, I’m sure you’ll learn quickly enough (I tell horrible jokes and puns all the time).

He then goes on to explain that playfulness is present in activities that do not qualify as play, such as flirting, sex, and work. In an attempt to keep this SFW, I’ll skip over flirting and sex and move right to work. Like the word “play”, “work” is subjective and can have different meanings. In this context, I interpret the word “work” as “your job that you go to, complete or delegate tasks and assignments and get paid for”. Using this definition of “work”, I would argue that work could be an act of “play”. I, for example, get to play all the time at work in Adobe After Effects to create animations and motion graphics for videos. I don’t view that as work, I view it as something that I love doing that I also get paid to do. Do you agree? Can work really also be play?