New Games Journalism vs Old Games Journalism

Old Games Journalism:

Old games journalism usually contains a highly descriptive article that talks about all the different aspects of the games mechanics and the actual game.

An example of old games journalism would be a game review on a site such as Giantbomb.com.

vs.

New Games Journalism: 

New games journalism usually contains a gamer/persons views, thoughts and experiences of the actual gameplay rather than heavy talk about the games mechanics and components.

An example of new games journalism would be found on peoples personal blogs that contain their opinions and experiences of the actual gameplay and not the mechanics and other elements linked to the game.

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I use both forms of journalism but I would say that I use Old Games Journalism more in order to find out about games through previews before their release and through reviews after their release in order to help me get the right buy.

Semiotics

Notes

Signifier - CAT + Signified - Pet, Animal, Meow.

Physical Characteristics 

Whiskers

Strange Arching Shapes

Hunter

Lazy

Eyes

Stealthy

Agile

Associated with Cats

Cat scans

Fur Balls

Cat Burglars

Witches Cats

Characters

Garfield

Puss in Boots

Silvester

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Signifier - Arbitrarily/ Random, About Context

All Arbitrary?

Indexical, Iconic, Symbolic.

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Indexical Signs - Claim a casual relationship between signifier and signified.

Iconic Signs - Look or resemble the person.

Symbolic Signs - The relationship to the creature is established by convention.

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Constraint 

Highly Constrained - Realistic

Highly Unconstrained - Unrealistic

Convention |——————————-| Constraint

Remediation

 Remediation is the incorporation or representation of one medium in another medium.

Immediacy:

Media that aspire to a condition of transparency.

The aim is to make the viewer forget that they are watching a movies (getting drawn into the experience.

Immmersive Virtual Reality.

Photo Realistic Images.

Hypermediacy:

Artefacts that are aware of and wish to display their own constructed nature.

They call attention to their own constructed nature all the time.

WWW

Video Game Huds

An example of Remediation is taking Scrabble as a board game medium and converting/making it into a digital version of Scrabble.

Scrabble as a board game.

Digital version of Scrabble.

Narrative & Games

Narrative in Games can be used in different ways such as:

During a cutscene (through video and voice)

As you play the game.

Character interaction.

Narrative (Voice over)

Audio logs / Collectibles.

To introduce a Level, Character or Setting.

Affect gameplay in games with multiple choices/paths.

To further the games storyline.

A great example of narration is found in Bastion through the character Rucks. He is used extremely well to narrate as you go through the game. The pacing is spot on and well executed and contributes to the games charm. 

Another great use of narrative is in the Bioshock games through the use of audio logs. Every time you find an audio log it gives you information about certain characters linked to the story both past and present. As you collect more and more audio logs you learn more and more about the characters characteristics, traits and personal stories. 

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Narration is also used in multiplayer games such as:

Sports Games (the commentators)

Call of Duty (the announcer for the scores and killstreaks)

Max Payne (short announcement of the game mission objective)

Titanfall (Narrative that gets the single player and multiplayer knit together)

Gender & Games

Gender in video games, game studios, the games media and gamers is slowly but surely balancing out.

These days you have the Ladies more and more present when it comes to video games in:

Game Studios/ Jobs

Amy Hennig (Was creative director on the Uncharted Games)

Jade Raymond (Managing Director of Ubisofts Montreal Studio)

Carol Shaw ( First female video game designer)

Kellee Santiago ( Braid, Dear Esther, Gone Home to name a few.)

Julie Uhrman (CEO & Founder of Ouya)

Games Media

Carolyn Petit (Gamespot)

Andrea Rene (Escapist News)

Naomi Kyle (IGN)

Audrey Drake (IGN)

Zorine Te (Gamespot AU)

Games

Lara Croft ( Tomb Raider)

Princess Peach (Mario Games)

Samus Aran (Metroid Games)

Princess Zelda (Zelda Games)

Alyx Vance (Half Life Games)

Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark Games)

Jill Valentine (Resident Evil Games)

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Professional Gaming

More and more ladies are becoming professional gamers and competing for pro teams such as the fragdolls, its great to see that happening.

Games Britannia - “Joystick Generation”

In the final part of “Games Britannia” Benjamin Woolley talks about video games rather than board games that were talked about in the first and second parts of “Games Britannia”.

Benjamin Woolley talked about the evolutions of computer games.

Computer Games talked about:

Elite

Black & White

Tomb Raider

Wipeout

Grand Theft Auto

Little Big Planet

World of Warcraft

Multi User Dungeons (MUDS)

Benjamin Woolley also talked about the creation of Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) and The Games Workshop in the 1970s.

Pervasive Games Workshop

Pervasive Games Workshop

The first part of the lecture was a QR code treasure hunt organised by the module lecturer. The QR codes during this treasure hunt contained pictures, videos, sounds, and written riddles.

The second part of the lecture we were tasked to come up ways to use QR codes.

Here are my ideas that would be helpful on the University Campus.

• Trivia Quiz about the University and Ipswich.
• Map with important buildings/ locations on campus.
• Room Locater/ Map.
• QR Code for Course Handbook.
• List of Support Staff Locations.
• Arts Showcase.
• Link to Waterfront Games.
• Interviews of Graduates/ Alumni.
• Harvard Referencing Guide.
• Fire Alarm Locations/ Emergency Exit map.
• Emergency Service Numbers.
• Timetable QR Code.

La Decima Vittima

I missed the lecture so I unfortunately missed the screening of “La Decima Vittima”. I plan on getting hold of “La Decima Vittima” and watching it at some point.

Tweaking Ancient Games

We were tasked to tweak/ iterate an ancient board game and in the process make more it’s suitable for modern days.

I decided to tweak the ancient game Duodecim Scripta and these are the iteration ideas I came up with.

Iteration One: Instead of each player having six game pieces of the same size, it would be a nice mix if each player could have six different sized game pieces and instead of having the ability to merge pieces together like you can in the non-modified ‘Duodecim Scripta’ you had six pieces all the time and used the pieces sizes to knock out opponents pieces, so for example of one player had the biggest game piece and landed on the other players smallest game piece that would get knocked out of the game board. Having different sized pieces would also require some tactics and a bit of a gambling as you would need to look closely at the board to see where your opponents pieces are placed and which ones to determine which and when your various sized pieces should be moved.

Iteration Two: Instead of having to roll from one to six to get the players pieces into the middle rows players should start with all the pieces already on the middle row then players must first roll a one to get the first piece out and onto the board and the same for the rest of the numbers going up from one to six. The catch is the players will probably roll the dice over and over again maxing the chance factor that’s already there even more.


Iteration Three: Taking some of the squares and transforming them into no go trap squares that send you back to the beginning or squares that give you an extra roll of the dice as well as a square that sends your opponent backwards and a square that sends your opponent forwards.

Iteration Four: Only being allowed one piece on the board at a time each and having to reach the end of the board before being able to enter a new game piece on to the board, this would slow down the game pace.

Iteration Five: A mix of iterations three and four with all the trap and bonus squares and the lone game piece on the board at a single time would create some pretty tense situations it would probably slow down the game a bit both players would be focused on their single game piece.

Iteration Six: Making Duodecim a two team game with two players on each team with slightly different coloured pieces than their teammate. There would be one black player and one white player going from top right to bottom right and the other black and white players would be fighting it out going from top left to bottom left, this would mean the teams would crisscross and could potentially knock each other off the game board.

Iteration Seven: Taking the game board and extending the rows from six squares to twelve squares and adding one twelve sided dice in or two six sided dices in as well as adding in my iteration five in with more trap and bonus squares that could make the game random as well as tactical. With twelve squares at the start each player could have twelve pieces or split into two teams of two with six game pieces each.

British Museum Trip

British Museum Trip

I was supposed to go to the British Museum to look at the ancient board games collection they had but the trip got cancelled because not enough people in the class bought coach tickets. 

I was pretty disappointed not being able to go as the British Museum is supposed an amazing and informative place.

Going Cardboard

1978 - German Press & Game Makers create the “Spiel des Jahres” (translated in English Game of the Year) award for excellence in board game design.

Settlers of Catan was the board game that showed the variety of board game genres that could be achieved in Europe, mainly Germany and that opened the flood gates in the United States.

Some of the board games talked about in Going Cardboard are ‘Settlers of Catan’, ‘Dominion’.

It was incredible to see that some people totally live and breathe with every area of board games from creating, playing and collecting them.

I was amazed that people collect board games and amass collections of over 1000 board games in certain cases.

Games Britannia - “Monopolies & Mergers”

My Notes

Education to the masses / hard opposition.

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Mansion of Happiness first successful game in the United States.

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Milton Bradley - Checkered Game of Life 

Element of Choice

1860

Success selling game during civil war, mini versions for soldiers.

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1 of the first transatlantic calls secured deal for Monopoly.

Mayfair Hotel hosted the first UK Monopoly championship.

Monopoly - Speed Dice, Adaptable, Negotiate and careful planning of money balance.

Colditz Escapees used Monopoly to conceal maps.

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Cluedo started of more as a card game than a board game but later versions were board based.

Came out at the right time and became a huge success.

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Scrabble was the first word game with counters placed on specific squares on the game board.

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Trivial Pursuit - Skimming knowledge without pounding its depths.

Trivial Pursuit was featured in an “Only Fools and Horses’ episode.

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Dungeons and Dragons  incorporated ideas from games like monopoly.

20 Million players worldwide.

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War on Terror the board game had an overtly political theme that brought satire into games.

Bibliography Task

Lewis Pulsipher 2012, "Game Design: How to create Video and Tabletop games, Start to Finish”.

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Castillo, T and Novak, (2008) 'Environmental Art: creating the illusion of life' T. C.  J. N. Game Level Design. Clifton Park, New York, pp 147 - 185.

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Schell, J., 2008. The Art of Games Design:A Book of Lenses. Morgan Kaufmann.

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Parsons, S., 2010. Critical Play: Radical Game Design. The Knowledge Engineering Review 25,353–354.

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Alvisi, A, (2006), “The economics of digital games” in Rutter, J. and Bryce, J. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, Page 58.

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Robertson, J & Howells, C. 2008, "Computer Games Design: Opportunities for successful learning", Computer & Education, vol 50, no. 2, pp. 559-578.

Games Britannia - “Dicing with Destiny’

Just watched the first part of the BBC series Games Britannia called Dicing with Destiny presented by historian Benjamin Woolley. (picture below) 

It was the first time I heard of the game Nine Men’s Morris that has been around since the ancient egyptian period. It was very popular during the reign of the roman empire as a form of entertainment and fun. The layout of the board with no game pieces on it. (picture below) 

Woolley also talked about the Snakes and Ladders, the Royal Game of Goose which has multiple variations that use exploration, colonies and religion as themes for the game. Woolley also talked about Chess and its origins and I was surprised to find out that chess originated in India not in Russia like I thought it was.

I was amazed to find out that in 18th and early 19th century the “Dice” was considered evil and that is why tops were used instead.

Caillois’s Terminology

Paidea: "Physical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objective" (modified meaning by Frasca, Newman, p.19-20). 

The sole reason of play is to entertain or to give the player a pleasureable experience.

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Ludus: "Activity organized under a system of rules that defines a victory or a defeat, a gain or a loss" (Frasca 1999, Newman, 2004). 

A game constrained by rules and a clear win goal.

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Agon: Competition.

Alea: Chance or randomness.

Ilinx: Movement.

Mimicry: Simulation, role-play, fantasy.

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Paidea:

Agon - Counterstrike Source

Alea - Minecraft

Ilinx - Sims 3

Mimicry - Diablo 3

Ludus:

Agon - Fifa 14

Alea - Monopoly

llinx - Metal Gear Solid 4

Mimicry - Gran Turismo