Components of Retro Games: Segmentation

    It was quite interesting to have a lecture earlier in the week regarding how gaming had developed and advanced in a transition between boardgames and videogames. However even though technology had introduced a tonne of new possibilities in terms of mechanics as well as aesthetics, I think a lot of the concepts remained the same but were just allowed to be explored further with the arrival of videogaming. There was a quote that was used during the lecture which sums this up quite nicely from Zegal saying "Classic arcade games are the ‘primordial soup’ from which many of the future conventions of games design were proposed". This would explain why we've been urged to play boardgames (I suppose retro games would also help), in order to understand basic mechanics and ideas, which are then layered up in 'aesthetic' clothing by modern videogames, obscuring some of the core elements which compose them. I was thinking about this after the lecture and wondered if videogaming would ever get to a stage where it was so far away from boardgames that the study of them would eventually become irrelevant and games design students would be looking at the games we consider modern now in order to educate themselves, however I cant see this being the case (not in the near future anyway).
    One of the design elements that was talked about in the lecture was 'segmentation' in retro videogames. This was dissected into a few subcategories like challenge segmentation, level and wave and spatial segmentation. Wave segmentation being a good example of a mechanic born from videogames. Before the arrival of these retro games waves in videogaming was unheard of, however I don't think it would be too difficult to implement a wave mechanic into a boardgame, for example perhaps after a certain amount of player turns or if a player progresses to a certain point in a game new challenges are introduced. Wave's being similar but not the same as level segmentation, in which certain aspects of the game are reset i.e. shield/health bars. From experience waves tend to just throw more challenges at a player, making it into more of a game of 'survival', whereas generally speaking levels tend to advance narratives and almost create chapters of the game.
    Spatial segmentation was basically something that related to aesthetics and to my knowledge doesn't affect game mechanics. This would be where a player can move through the game visually, which is something that modern videogames rarely go without however in various retro games like pong, environments are static. I was going to use Frogger as an example but I'm not sure that it wouldn't be debatable, as even though the background always stays the same, the layout of the obstacles and 'spaces' used to get to the other side of the river change, so essentially there is a spatial movement during the game.
    Challenge segmentation was also mentioned during the lecture, which links in to difficulty and creating new obstacles that differ from the last. I think this again is something that videogaming brought about, creating challenges using time limits, difficulty settings, checkpoints etc. Boss battles were also mentioned during the lecture and the Dungeons and Dragons boardgame sprung to mind, which was initially a thought in response to boss' being introduced with the arrival of videogames although upon further thought it also has spatial and level segmentation. So I did a quick bit of internet research just trying to find out when D&D was created and according to Wikipedia (so i may be wrong...) it was invented in 1974, a few years before games like Pacman (1980) and Asteroids (1979) were released. So if my research is right, then videogames may not have been the first emergence of challenge/spatial/level/wave segmentation, Dungeons & Dragons has all of these (albeit dependent on a dungeon master), however nowadays they are features you would find most commonly videogames.
    So that's a brief overview of some of the topics we looked at during the presentation.

    For my retro game review I'm hoping to look at Frogger (1981) mainly because it's a game I'm fairly familiar with and also it's mechanics are fairly basic but with a few added extra's like the time cap between levels and bonus points/extra lives, which would make it more interesting to write about.

Also whilst I was doing some research I came across this on Youtube which was pretty cool, give this a watch if you've got five minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mu5B-YZU8

Harvard Referencing

    Last week we were given the task to create a small bibliography composed of two books, two articles and two contributions to a book. This is in preparation for any future writings we may do, enabling us to correctly reference resources from which we may use information i.e. quotations. This is essentially to give credit to any respective authors' who's work you are using in your own.

For the sake of me remembering here's the breakdown of Harvard referencing...

...a book:  

Author – surname, followed by initial(s) 

Date of that edition  (in brackets)

Title of the book, underlined and followed by a full stop  

Edition of the book  if given (other than the first), followed by a full stop

The place of publication followed by a colon

The publisher’s name followed by a full stop

...an article:

Author – surname, initial(s) 

Year of publication (in brackets) 

Title of article, followed by a full stop.   If the article has a subtitle, it is separated from the main title by a colon   Do not underline the title 

Title of the journal underlined 

Volume number followed by a space 

Part number in brackets followed by a space 

Page numbers followed by a full stop  Use p. for a one page article or pp. for a range of pages

...contributions to books:
Author Surname, Initial., [Subsequent author(s)]
The full title of the article, with inverted commas
Editor Surname, Initial., [Subsequent editor(s),]
Year of Publication
Full title of the containing work: italicised to indicate it is the title.
City of publication: Publisher. page span of the work cited. 

So here's my attempt at a bibliography:

Books:

Van der Spuy, R. (2009) Foundation game design with Flash. Berkeley (Ca.): Friends of ED.

Griffith, C. (2009) Real-world Flash game development: How to follow best practives and keep your sanity. Oxford: Focal Press.

Articles:

Dickey, M. (2004) Game design and learning: a conjectural analysis of how massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPGs) foster intrinsic motivation. Educational Technology Research & Development Vol. 55 Issue 3, pp 253-273.

Gros, B. (2007) Digital Games in Education: The Design of Games-Based Learning Environments. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Vol. 40 Issue 1, pp23-38.

Contributions to a book:

Rettburg, S., World of Warcraft As a Playground for Feminism, Corneliussen, H. G., Rettberg, J. W., (2008) Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, Cambridge (Mass.) : MIT Press, pp 19-39

Herman, L., Company Profile: Atari, Wolf, M. J .P., (2007) The Video Game Explosion: A History from Pong to Playstation and Beyond, Westport : London : Greenwood Press, pp 59- 63

Photoshop Excercise 2

Just had another play around in Photoshop today again using shape tools, colours, brushes and different opacity's as a development of what we did last week. I tried applying some of the techniques Phil explained to us to recreate the Facebook icon used on my iPhone as it uses some basic shading and gradients. Here's what I came up with:

Mine:

Original:

 

 It's not identical however I was pretty pleased with the outcome.

AF Group Progress cont.

    Had another meeting with my group today where we started to address some of the real grey areas of our game before we got too far in. Our main issue at the moment is the objective aspect of our game. The problem we're having is that the main focus of the game is to match the right animals to their environments, however we decided that simply dragging animals onto a background for six levels may get repetitive so we are currently trying to implement different objectives per level. This is only an aesthetic issue of our game however trying to create objectives that don't dilute the main purpose of the game was proving tricky.
    The idea that we've been running with throughout the concept stages is the 'Igloo' example, for our Antarctica level we are thinking about using the objective 'Help build the igloo' and the player would still have to select from the eight possible animals the three correct animals that go with the environment. However there's a problem with that...now the player may be confused as to whether they are picking animals that belong in the Antarctica or whether they're choosing animals that may be best at building. So at current our best solution is to really emphasise the former, by having instructions at the beginning of the game and also perhaps a quick reminder from Mickey/Mandy at the beginning of the level saying "Remember to pick animals that can cope in this environment!". Again this is only an issue that effects aesthetics although if it begins to jeapordise the whole purpose of the game it could become a problem.
    Our other nemesis in having a stress free and smooth design process is what happens when the player places the animals on screen?
    This is a pretty graphics heavy project so any chances to reduce work regarding vectorising and animating that don't detract too heavily from the game experience we are taking. We've got twenty-six different animals to design and vectorise, as well as environments, layouts, Mickey and Mandy, the bonus level as well as things like pre-level stills giving information etc. Players drag animals out of the animal library and place them on the environment. However this evokes certain questions like: What happens if the animal is the right/wrong choice? Do they run off screen? Or just vanish? Are they going to be animated or static? Are they going to be designed to fit around the level objective? For example will the penguin be holding an igloo block when he is dropped on screen or will he just be 'there'?...
    All these contribute towards the amount of vectorising/animating that we are going to have to do, which is a fair bit anyway. Steve solved the 'What happens if the animal is the wrong choice?' dilemma fairly simply earlier by having Mickey's net/bag being thrown over the animal after being placed on screen followed by a remark telling the player to try again. The bag would cover the animal and then get pulled off screen, like a magicians trick covering the penny with the handkerchief sort of thing... This way we can just have one animation which can be applied to any wrong answer as a template, which will save us a lot of time having to animate every animal if they are the wrong choice.
   We are still addressing the 'right animation' issue at the moment but it's early days so I'm not pulling my hair out quite yet. Today's session was really beneficial just because we started to actually sort out any potential problems, I think sometimes the temptation is to brush them off under the carpet so today was pretty constructive.

Animal Frenzy Group Progress

    I haven't really documented our group progress up to this stage so here's a rundown on our efforts so far.

    We began by expanding on what Nic and Rob had already produced for the Animal Frenzy game concept. We started looking at possible gameplay mechanics, thinking about the 'drag and drop' aspect of the game and how that might work. We came up with ideas relating to what happens when the player pulls an animal out of the animal library and how they could be placed and animated on screen depending on whether it was the correct animal or not, for example if the player picked the penguin in the Antarctica environment, when dropped he would place a section of an igloo down, whereas if a lion was chosen then he could run of screen/tunnel off etc. We thought that the objective aspect (such as 'Help the animals build the igloo') was a fairly important aspect of the game as just added a slight narrative and purpose to the game, in that you (the player) are traveling the world helping the animals.
    We also decided to include a bonus level after completing the first 5/6 levels, which could include moving a net along the bottom of the screen in order to catch falling animals, just to act as a reward for completing the main game. We also thought about varying the difficulty of the bonus round depending on how well the player did during the game, for example if they got the answer right first time on a level then that would increase the net size, making it easier to catch the animals.
    Dan produced a few sample vectors of possible animal designs in keeping with the research and referencing that we had done on our group discussion page on Wolsey. We looked at a few existing cartoon animal designs (the links to which are on Wolsey) as a means of communicating to each other what kind of styles we had in mind. I was thinking of styles along these lines, which I then suggested to the group:

http://www.heroturko.org/vectors/2220-cartoon-animals.html
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-9614223-cartoon-safari-animals.php
http://www.vromansbookstore.com/life-on-farm 

    We also began thinking about possible environments, creating an initial list of areas around the world to which the player could be visiting, we were aiming to keep it quite varied in terms of environment to give implement some variety. Again we used a few websites to do some research into what types of animals live where, here are two that Nic linked during discussions:

http://www.animalsoftheworld.ecsd.net/
http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/map.html

    After having another look at the national curriculum for KS1, we found that 'care for the environment' was something that we hadn't addressed in too much depth. So we came up with the idea to have litter or some form of pollution on each level that the player would have to find as an optional objective. We decided that this also could contribute towards the bonus round again, so if the player found all bits of litter then the animals would fall slower/bigger net etc.

     We also began experimenting with different layouts that would support what we were trying to achieve, we agreed that the visual elements of the game were fairly essential so we were trying to maximize the environment space and keep interface elements such as the animal library, help text and any other relevant information at a minimum. We each contributed different ideas and finally settled on a basic layout which I knocked up quickly. As shown on the example below, we are thinking about having the animal icons along the bottom which the player would drag out and drop onto the environment area, as well as Mickey and Mandy figures in the bottom right which upon hovering over would give help like the current objective or telling the player when they have done something wrong/right.

    The next image was a basic concept that we had had regarding interactive environment objects, the player would hover over an object and a popup information box would appear or Mandy/Mickey would say something about it. I used colour to highlight the object the text was referring to although upon discussion we decided that perhaps creating a border around the object would be better.

   
    By this time the foundations of the Animal Frenzy game were pretty much made, we had settled on environments and the basic objectives as well as graphical styles. So today we met up and just finalised some of these ideas by establishing colour schemes, definite environments, animals and interactive environmental details, the list of which I posted on our discussion board.
    So now we are at a stage where we are just developing the core features of our game, like beginning to create graphical assets and discussing how we can go about achieving some of the more script heavy aspects of our game.

    And that's it! Any further discussions had/progress made we will posting on a group blog although I will be updating this blog as well on a less regular basis.

My First Risk Experience

    Ok today I decided to head out to the nearest toy shop and grab a copy of Risk. I've always heard amazing stories of games lasting hours on end and friends becoming foes over, what seemed from an outside perspective as petty. I gathered a few willing chums along with a substantial supply of beer to last the duration and unknowingly prepared myself for the most intense four and a half hours of hardcore boardgaming action that I've experienced in my naive nineteen yearlong life.
    We spent a good hour just attempting to play the game correctly, frequently referring to the manual in confusion, I'm pretty sure that we didn't start the way we were meant to although we carried on anyway. In case you haven't played Risk before the main objective is to dominate over your enemies to conquer the various divided sections of the globe, using 'troops' to attack and defend your territories, whilst strategically attempting to read opponents' moves and plan your route to victory. The version we had had an alternative method of winning in which a player has to achieve three main objectives, for example 'Control 11 cities' or 'Control 2 enemy capitals', although I'm not actually sure whether this is the same in traditional Risk. 
    From our understanding we each rolled the dice to decide who gets first pick over which territory to place their capitals in, again I'm not sure if this was right but after an hour of deciphering the manual we just wanted to get invading so we cracked on. I placed my base in South Africa, a pretty central position, which in hindsight was a bad move... 

    We each began slowly expanding our empires throughout the globe watching each others movements, I started creating hypothetical situations in my head in which I ripped through Asia and South/North America around into Europe before launching my final assault on the somewhat 'tucked away' Australia....unfortunately reality had other plans. 
    Driven by a lust for power and a new found hatred for my friends turned enemies, I began taking Africa...Central through to East and North, whilst sending a troop or two to sit on Egypt and Madagascar. Things were going fairly smoothly up to this point, I'd managed to comfortably settle myself in my continent, picking up a troop bonus card along the way, I was feeling pretty optimistic, I'd even managed to slip a few compliments to Jack who was building up his territories in Australia about the size of his army in an attempt to create an early alliance, "Pretty big army you got there Jack..."
"Cheers Tom, your's is pretty impressive too."
"Thanks very much..."

    However without me realising the Brazilians had managed to blitz through America and were over in Greenland putting their feet up and tucking into a plate of freshly grilled whale steaks, getting ready to skip over to Iceland. It's probably worth mentioning that the more territories that are in your possession the more troops you recruit on your turns, which turns Risk into a game where having momentum helps. Australia was somehow starting to look pretty crammed with troops as well, however I wasn't worried, as after all I assumed they were on my side... 
    Out of nowhere the Brazilian's had flown across the South Atlantic and were arrogantly setting up their deck chairs on the coast of my North Africa. War had begun. At the same time the Japanese had begun a tiny invasion on China, trying to force back the Australians into Indonesia whilst the Russians were sitting, waiting impartially trying not to piss anyone off.
    I realised that I had to defend myself or risk being trapped in my own continent. The attack and defend system in Risk works like this, the attacking player rolls the same amount dice equivalent to the amount of troops he/she's using to attack (a maximum of three), the defending side does the same (although with a maximum of 2), the highest rolls on each the attacking and defending dice compare, the lowest loses and thus a troop from the defeated team is discarded, as with the other two remaining dices as well (or so we played it). I was annihilated humiliatingly and my fears became reality as my board space became smaller. Again, due to my lack of attention the Russians had snuck through into Southern Europe and were poised for a hefty attack on my Egypt, I was heavily outnumbered and prepared for the worst. They attacked, rolling three dice each showing decent scoring numbers but I struck back with a six roll on my single dice. This happened consecutively for about three turns, each time my single troop marker fighting off the Europeans, overcoming the odds and surviving, it was a one marker army, so I named that particular marker Rambo.
    Meanwhile Asia was becoming swarmed with black and green markers, South and North America were covered in red and yet I was stuck in Africa just trying to keep hold of my borders...then my empire began to crumble. The Brazilians had once again turned their greedy eyes to my shores and were back in the north, Rambo valiantly fought off another attack from the Europeans until he was eventually defeated. 

    I here faced two options, I could flee into the Middle East with the few troops I had left or create a defiant final stand in Madagascar, I chose the latter (mainly because I was running out of beer and we had reached the 4 hour mark so I started to feel pretty reckless). The Australians who i previously thought allies had dropped a few troops into South Africa, now splitting my army, I slipped Jack a look of disgust and disappointment. The original Europeans and Japanese had now been totally wiped out and were now occupied by the Americans. Black and red troops now dominated the board and I had to sit and watch on my little island as they closed in around me. In a desperate attempt I tried dropping a few bonus troops into the heart of Australia, however I was knocked aside by superior numbers.
    I think again luck was on my side for a turn or two and I defended Madagascar from the reds, however inevitably I was eventually out rolled and was forced to leave the game. Shortly after the reds and blacks settled on a truce and the game was ended, the board split it two. 

    I'm not sure how we managed to play for four and a half hours without realising but we did and surprisingly my enthusiasm didn't begin to dwindle as much as it would with other boardgames, even video games. On a more academic note thinking about the articles I've looked at recently, I'd say the Movement Impetus/pacing aspect of Risk was pretty much spot on, players are constantly forced to make significant decisions as the state of play is constantly changing, I think this is actually the strongest part about the game, along with the intense competition and conflict factors.
    This was my first go at Risk and it most probably won't be my last and I think whenever I here or see the word 'Madagascar' (or Rambo) I'll be reminded of my feeble efforts of global domination....

Here's a link to Jack's blog if you want his version of events... http://jstal.blogspot.com/

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man | Video on TED.com

I'm not an ad man however this is still pretty good, worth a watch!

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man | Video on TED.com

Light/Shadow Photoshop Excercise

    Yesterday we had a lecture on creating 3D shapes in Photoshop using some simple techniques. There were a few small tricks that were worth remembering like using complementary colours to create shadows as opposed to black/greys and creating a small area around the perimeter of the shape to create an environmental glow effect. I'd played around in Photoshop before using basic tools like the pen tool, messing around with opacity's to create shades etc. although it was nice to be able to learn a few methods which were effective if used properly. I spent 20 minutes this morning just to give it another go and I came up with the picture below. I was feeling adventurous so I tried creating a kind of over shadow effect on the smaller ball, it doesn't quite look right although I'm sure time, trial and error will help me improve! (Also I'm not sure why but depending on the angle that you look at this, there's a weird glow around the edge of the spheres, I'm doing this on a laptop so I have to tilt my screen back to see it normally or stand back a bit...)

Doug Church on Game Tools/Venturelli's Article on Casual Gaming

    I recently read the article by Doug Church regarding how games differ from books and film and what he considers the tools (or 'Formal Abstract Design Tools, FADT's) used to create games are. I'd actually never really considered how much games compare to either of these media so this article was pretty interesting. Again we had to condense the article into a less wordy nut shell, taking note of the key tools that Church mentioned. So, here are the tools that I found (in bold):

- Control: to allow player expression
- Low/High level Goals: to get players invested and involved to create intention
     There was a quote which I took out of the article to better explain intention...
"...making an implementable plan of ones own creation in response to the current situation in the game world and ones own understanding of the game play options..."
    And as a side note I mentioned Perceivable Consequence : a reaction from the game world to a players actions
- Visible Feedback: Allows players to learn and adapt to shape their play style (which naturally creates a form of learning curve)
- Cooperation, conflict and confusion: I think this was generally talking about adventure games however I think that they can be transferred into other games
- Punishment and Reward

    I don't think there's much to dispute with Church's toolbox, these elements I think it's safe to say are fairly exclusive to games. We also looked at Venturelli's article about the 'space of possibility and pacing in casual game design'. A term was used in the article which I'd never heard before, 'Movement Impetus', which I believe essentially meant a players motivation to continue playing a game, Venturelli linked this in with 'space of possibility', which made reference to the 'pacing' of a game or tempo in which a player has to make significant decisions in order to advance. He touched upon creating small/large spaces of possibility, larger 'spaces' possibly diluting the movement impetus element within a game due to boredom for example on behalf of the player and smaller spaces, increasing tempo however allowing the player to establish play patterns and create methods for overcoming the struggles that a game presents, thus again causing a game to become less stimulating. I read in one of the previous articles, the author I've forgotten now, I'll come back and change this if I ever remember, that the more a designer wishes to create an experience for a player by attempting to control it, he/she is progressively hindering the room for possibility and consequently defeating the point in what they're trying to do, which I thought was a point worth remembering!
    Venturelli moved on to urge that balance is essential, creating a system in which a player has a chance to explore a game however not for too long by presenting them with something new, to prevent 'perceivable patterns' , which I suppose thinking back is what Church was talking about when he mentioned 'confusion'.
    Venturelli also mentioned 'Arches of Pacing', involving an upper and lower arch. Upper I believe referred to long term goals and the longevity of a game in terms of player interest, the lower arch consisting of Movement Impetus, Tension, Threat and Tempo, which sort of all backs up what Church was saying previously.
    The final point on my list was the 'Pick up and Play' aspect of a game, meaning how quickly a player can sit down, learn the rules and play comfortably before it becomes a chore and they lose interest, I think the last time I experienced getting frustrated at a game before I even made my first move was attempting to play Dungeons and Dragons years ago, sitting down to read the instruction manual only to find myself half an hour later sitting there with a blank expression on face with small plastic goblins and board tiles scattered everywhere, perhaps it's about time to give it another go...
   In conclusion I think the tools that Church and Venturelli mentioned are all pretty essential, if not worth remembering in the future in my quest to make badass games.

Mickey Concept!

 Possible concept for Animal Frenzy's Mickey? 

maybe not...

Costikyan's I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary

    A few weeks ago we looked at Costikyan's article and his statement that a game is "...an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal". I really liked this article, it broke down the statement into the factors from which it's composed, like interactive, structure, struggle, goals, endogenous meaning and quite clearly explained through his thought processes and references how he came to his conclusion.
    We had to boil the article down into brief bullet points so I'll quickly regurgitate the summary of my notes...

Interaction - A player's(') interaction with a game changes the game's 'state', puzzles and games will always be present together.

Goals - Gives an incentive to the struggle, objectives shape player behaviour and choices, needs to be a chance of failure as well as success.

Struggle - Without competition/struggle there's no sense of satisfaction/achievement, difficulty needs to be in keeping with a player's(') ability level.

Structure - Mutual player agreement that a game's rules/goals bear significance creates a structure. A games structure shapes player behaviour, it doesn't determine it therefore players have freedom to choose what they can do with the rules.

Endogenous Meaning - Factors that only have relevance within a game.

I pretty much agreed with all the points that Costikyan was making although whilst reading the section on endogenous meaning I began wondering if online gambling games could still be considered games, despite the fact that they don't conform to the endogenous meaning part of Costikyan's definition of a game, seeing as players benefit in real life from playing. I'm pretty sure that online gambling games wouldn't fall into the puzzle category, although I'm not entirely sure that they are considered games at all as there's no real struggle either. That was my only real query with the article, so if anyone can explain that to me that would be cool. I also found it interesting that the elements of a game that Costikyan was bringing up all seemed to tie together in some way, for example a struggle is required to create a goal of some kind and the struggle is determined by how the player interacts with the game's structure, which I thought was quite a nice thought.

KS1 Game Group Developments

    Earlier we were given the task of removing the 'quiz' aspect of our educational game concepts, which means taking out the 'get asked a question and pick the right answer' element. At first I thought that we would find a solution, however one that wouldn't be better than what we already had. Althought after not long at all ideas began arising that were beginning to seem more effective than our current concept. We began thinking about aspects like narrative and ideas that involved some exploration of the game as opposed to simple instructions. It was in relation to the Marcos Venturelli's article about casual game design, talking about pattern and creating a 'space of possibility', which we found actually easier to create once we removed the quiz/question and answer restriction on our game. It's hard to explain accurately in words how our game concept works but as soon as we begin uploading assets and start having group discussions I'll make reference to give a better idea of progress.

Initial Concept Sketches

Here are the sketches that I was hoping to show on the concept presentation that frustratingly wouldn't show.

 

Hopefully they explain what I was talking about during the presentation about layout. Just to recap, similarly to the few examples I showed, I ideally would like to keep the game fairly vibrant for aesthetic reasons, I may knock the background back a bit in terms of colour perhaps to distract less from the target board, chips and other relevant information on screen. I'm not entirely happy with the colour scheme on the target board, I think i could make them fit the theme a bit better. I've thought about how the Unibet tab which is currently on the sportswheel game could be placed, perhaps down in the bottom right. This was basically a test of possible colours that could be used and layout, if you've got any feedback just whack a comment up, any suggestions positive or negative would be appreciated.

Sculpture Workshop Review

    Just back from the sculpture workshop with a renewed feeling of energy and enthusiasm. It wasn't as such a hands on session as I would have expected from an event named 'Sculpture', it was more of a learning and thought provocation session on creativity and 'making a difference', which was the focal point of the session.    Roger spoke about how communication is one of a maker/designer's most essential tools and I think that that bore alot of relevance to me, especially as we're just going into the teamwork stages of the year. He also touched upon an aspect of design that I had never really thought about before, he said that we were 'working in an era of sustainability'. He was relating back to the early years of the century, when things were made to survive and to serve their function for long periods of time as well as the era that I think we are just beginning to leave, where waste and disregard for making things last played a fairly big role in society. Now sustainability and preservation are beginning to emerge again, I thought that was quite a nice thought. It also made me think how perhaps that could be translated into the gaming industry, perhaps in the form of indie games that are now more than ever taking peoples interest, spending little resources to create games that sometimes either last or in other cases don't. I can testify for this, recently spending more time on iPhone apps than on console games (Angry Birds is a good example of a game offering longevity).
    Actually it was quite weird how alot of the points Roger was making were relevant to me at the moment. He told us that he always kept string, a toffee, a penny and a penknife on him. It was a point he was making to support the idea that to create, you don't always need technology or the latest software to create a decent end product (and also about life's essential components). Which made me think back to the 'Make a game in 15 minutes' excercise I did a few weeks ago, again simply using pen, paper, dice and a few counters. I think that suggests that no good final product was miraculously created without any design/thought process or journey, which is something that I have been hearing quite alot over the last few years now and more than agree with.
     He also talked about the 'Hierarchy of Human Needs' in relation to creating for a client or the market. This hierarchy took form as a ladder ordered like this...

Self Fulfilment
Self Expression
Belonging
Security, Warmth and Shelter
Physiological Needs, Hunger and Thirst


...Self fulfilment being last on the hierarchy. I dont think all the parts of this hierarchy can be thought of from a game creation perspective, I would probably say that games fell on 'Belonging', in that games often influence grouping and social interactivity to create a sense of community. All the points Roger made were to support the idea of using basic tools and other aspects like the senses, sight, hearing, touch etc. as a means of creating and how they act as a type of cone to put your creative ice cream on (it's an amazing metaphor I know).
    The session was ended with a quick experiment. Three volunteers were asked to peel a banana half way, they all did so using the same method. Roger then continued to explain that research suggested that the typical way of peeling a banana (holding the banana and peeling it using the small stalk at the top) wasn't the most efficient way of doing so. He then explained that after studying apes, researchers discovered that by holding the banana by the stalk and peeling it from the bottom (as apes did) was easier and also allowed for the stalk to be used as a sort of handle. I've made it sound like a bit of a pointless task but it was show that to understand the context for which you're designing, its always worth looking at the roots of the subject in order to better understand the 'thing' that you are designing/designing for, which I think might be worth me bearing inmind in the future.
    Roger left us with a few points which are worth considering when creating and with which I'll end the post with:

What's your inspiration?
Simple or ornate approach? Or both?
Take hold of your projects.
'Measure twice, cut once' (however I think that the iterative design method might suggest otherwise)
Beware of the unexpected.
Reflect.

Thoughts On The Iterative Design Method

     I thought yesterday's session spent going over our board games and iterating the design/implement/playtest/evaluate proccess was really worthwhile. I only managed to go through the proccess twice although I started to see the benefits of being methodical in my working proccess to improve my game. It was quite frustrating at times however, being given feedback on an aspect of your game that previously you hadn't really thought about and hafting to abandon the ideas you had for the mean time. I think this way of working suits me quite well as at times I begin thinking about an idea which progressively (I think) turns into a better one and I tend to get carried away, by having the feedback from other people and being given different perspectives on how my game could be improved you, instantly new ideas start blossoming although this time theres reason for it, not just "It would be cool if...". Even though we were only working on basic paper based, simple games, I can see how this method could be a decent template in the games industry, as well as others perhaps.
     I've taken my game with me so that if i get the chance I could possibly start adding a few of the old ideas I had and then run them through the iterative design proccess. It's a good feeling when the work you put into a project starts showing positive results pretty quickly, which I think this way of working helps quite alot in doing so, even if the changes you've made dont work, that still contributes towards the final outcome in a sense that you know not what to do.
    In conclusion I came out of the session feeling pretty enthusiastic and I'm looking forward to using the methods I learnt in other assignments set.

Paidea vs Ludus

    When considering a game that would be catogorised as 'Paidea', I instantly begin thinking about all the RPG and simulator games I've ever played, however I think an interesting choice would be World of Warcraft.
    Thinking about the 'Agon' or competition aspect of the MMORPG, there are plenty of ways in which it influences the competition or conflict. The most obvious way in which it does this is the Player vs. Player aspect, players have the choice to engage eachother throughout the world or in specified PvP areas (or battlegrounds). However it being an MMO, there's always other forms of competition, for example rivalry between guilds to see who can conquer the latest dungeon or gain the newest title, this type of competition also extends between friends playing the game to see who can get the best weapon or coolest looking armour. I think 'Alea' factors within an MMO are always present, players are always running into new players which naturally always changes their experience, one player could quite happily skip about questing and killing in an area, looting and making gold then the next minute they could be tearing the walls down because they've been getting killed by another player who's had a bad day and feels the need to punish the lowly levels, I think the presence of different players within a game always leaves the experience down to chance, a game stays the same it's the players and the people you play with that make the game enjoyable.
    With regards to movement, the world is so vast, players practically have complete freedom to move wherever they want which I think again supports the 'Paidea' aspect of the game, giving users complete liberation of movement and leaving it down to them to explore the game as they please, as opposed to linear, paths which don't leave alot of room for player expression. It being an RPG 'Mimicry' is fairly consistant throughout the game, users choice between male/female, Horde/Alliance, big/small, red/blue all contribute towards the 'make-believe' of the world that players inhabit. Sometimes I think players take the fantasy aspect too far and can get completely immursed within the world they've created for their avatar and can easily waste hours or even days away sat improving their character and exploring this new exciting world. I've heard stories about a few people across the globe that have seriously damaged their health through fatigue and in some cases died, forgetting to eat or sleep due to the fact that they have almost completely abandoned reality and lost themselves in a game. I think a player dieing due to reasons influenced by the content of a game might make a good arguement against Costikyan's arguement about games and endogenous meanings...
    The good thing about World of Warcraft is that it can be considered both 'paidea' and 'ludus', which I think is what Gonzalo Frasca mentions about ludus and paidea not necessarily hafting to be seperate, the goals are there although it's up to the user whether or not they want to achieve them or not.
    Seeing as the last few paragraphs are about a form of RPG I think as a comparison I should use another RPG to refer to 'Ludus'. Dragon Age: Origins, another knights and orcs type of game. In terms of theme, it doesn't differ tremendously from WoW, it has different zones to explore with different monsters and ghouls to overcome as well as different NPC's to interact with which differ depending on which choices you make, however it isn't an MMO. I feel that there is a much stronger 'paidea' presense within a game depending on whether it allows interaction between other real players, I dont' just mean MMORPG's like WoW or Everquest, or even games like Call of Duty 4/5/6, Unreal Tournament (specifically the online modes), even board game experiences can change all depending on the people who you're playing the game with. However with single player games like Dragon Age or Dead Space or Super Mario for the N64, there is alot more of a chance that players play the game with the intention of completing it, I'm yet to meet a game player who plays Super Mario purely becuase they enjoy jumping on the heads of mushrooms or to hear his cheerful 'Uh-hoo!' when he jumps.
    I'm not sure how far I can stretch the definition of 'agon' (competition) here, DAO has various obstacles in the form of quests and enemies that the player has to overcome in order to progress if that can be considered competition, competing for survival in order to explore the next zone or finish a quest, even though this may not be as exciting or intense as competing against real players, which is typically what I think of when considering competition from a games perspective.
    I don't think that there are too many random or chance factors (alea) of DAO, apart from again the players interaction with the game and how this would create a different experience each time depending on the choices they make, something that the game has in abundance; different paths to take to lead them to the final boss fight, however chance isn't as major an aspect of DAO as for example Monopoly. Thinking within the videogame genre of games, I bought a game recently for a fiver, mainly because of the price but also I'm intrigued to find out why they've been reduced that low in the first place. The game was call Circle of Doom, it said it was an RPG however I didn't play it long enough to find out as the first couple of levels bored me half to death as I spent my whole time running forward and hitting the attack button over and over, I later found out that on average it got about 2/10 from various reviews, which had I known I may not have bought it. The game in my opinion was terrible, however one feature that did impress me was it's ability to randomly generate maps (which I think was one of the back cover features that influenced me to buy it), each playthrough of a level would change it's layout. That is the only real 'random' element in a non multiplayer videogame that I've played and it would have worked well had the other elements of the game been better.
    Back to Dragon Age, movement (ilinx) is effected mainly by the current quest the player is on, they can decide which direction they want to head first only being hindered by random battle encounters and other monsters along the way. There are restrictions to how far a player can go, alot more so than WoW, however not so much that I felt like my path was laid out before me.
    The mimicry or 'make-believe' of Dragon Age I feel was well thought out and in-depth, it had a strong narrative which was easily embraceable, which in any RPG is important. The character customisation feature (similarly to WoW) helps the player buy into the fictional setting in which they are thrown into. Another good feature of DAO is that there are different races to choose between as a starting point for the game, which also changed the game later on, for example playing as a human won't give you as many dialogue options as playing as an elf when talking to another elf, which also gives the game a lot of 'replayability'.
    I think that 'Padiea' and 'Ludus' are both aspects of video games that either can or can't be present, although it obviously it helps to have one of the two. There are games that support Padiea like SimCity or World Of Warcraft and games that support Ludus like Dragon Age: Origins or the Metal Gear Solid series (Metal Gear Solid 1 being one of my favourite games to date), both have their benefits although it all boils down to the type of player you are, some play games for the challenge and the thrill of beating the obstacles the designers have placed in front of you and some play for more leisurely reasons, perhaps just to log into a game for the social community. Either way despite whether a game is considered Ludus or Paidea, player self expression and interpretation should be permitted in any game.
   
 

BBC Bitesize Maths Game Analysis

     As an educational game for KS1 level the game served its purpose to basically teach children how to identify different shapes, however after testing the game against our abbreviated Costikyan catagories we found that there was alot of room for improvement.
     The interaction aspect of the game was minimal, the user could choose between 3 shapes as a response to a question, one of which would be correct. Wrong and right answers would be indicated by different animations. However as an educational game for a KS1 demographic this was not enough. We established that there was no incentive for getting the answer right, in fact some said that the animation once getting the answer wrong was more exciting than getting it right, which for a KS1 audience was a flaw. After selecting a shape and getting it wrong/right, the game's state never changed, wrong answers were acknowledged by a small pop-up sayign so and right answers simply moved you closer to getting 5/5.
     Once the user achieved 5/5 there was no reward apart from a sense of satisfaction, which again for a KS1 user, I don't think is enough. Perhaps if a point scoring/achievement system was implemented to give the user a reason for getting 5/5 or even getting the answer right at all, the user would have a reason for trying, perhaps if by getting 5/5 you unlock a small minigame.
    With regards to struggle within the game, there essentially was none, if anything the main obstacle was the possibility of picking one of two wrong answers. There were different difficulty level options, which was most probably one of the only aspects of the game that was fitting with Costikyan's article regarding 'tuning the challenge' to match the player's ability. I think if the possibilty of failing the game was present then again the incentive to get the answers right first time would be more important to players, which would also avoid the player simply guessing.
    The structure of the game is basic in terms of you can progress towards gaining 5/5, the player has minimal options and almost no freedom.
    I think that the best aspect of this game is that it benefits the userin real life and educates the player, fair enough this is done badly but it still works. Regardless of the fact that there's no incentive and no challenge, the user will still learn in the proccess.
    There is alot to change about this game for the better however as a learning tool it does it's job.
   
Link to game:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/shapes/index.shtml