CS4067 - Writing Games Analysis – 2011-12
Aims & Objectives:
The primary objective of this module is to define the art and
practice of writing computer games. Students discover how to
analyse Games Discourse and are introduced to Huizingan
and Bogostian definitions of games as a tool for
understanding and critiquing formal descriptions of language,
thought and the process of story creation and revelation.
Students are given a heuristic for investigation that results in
their discovery of a complicated network of similarities,
overlapping and criss-crossings within the structure of an
essentially hypertextualised story. The final objective is that
students learn how a game may resemble a simulation and
unit operation that tries to model a phenomenon by isolating
the essential features of that phenomenon. Ultimately the
students are required to produce their own written
phenomenon.
Topics to cover, include: history and development of games’
story development; character development; discourse
analysis; hypertextual narratology; defining gameplay;
gaming as hermeneutical play; game-states and rule
definitions; iteration, repetition and rapture; Derrida’s
“Structure, Sign and Play”; game criticism and unit
operations, speculation and theory; rules and metarules;
winning conditions; and interactive fiction.
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The module learning outcomes are:
On successful completion of this module, students
should be able to:
1. Perform critical analysis of games.
2. Interpret and understand text.
3. Know the history and development of games' story
development.
4. Understand techniques in character development.
5. Design interactive fiction.
6. Understand the importance of repetition in games
without story development.
They are available at
http://www.csis.ul.ie/coursemodule/CS4067
Also here:
https://sulis.ul.ie/xsl-portal - under “Resources” link
Weeks 1-12
1. Module description, learning outcomes and introduction:
what makes games work or fail? What gives them
meaning? What place do games have in [world] culture?
Do you play? Why? This week’s tasks: your
wordpress.com address to me + How to Guide to opening
a wordpress.com account. Also, explain the difference
between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org accounts.
2. The Basics: defining Ludology and Narratology,
accepting Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1950) +
http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/ (Narratives)
[WC 12/9/11]
3. Games and Learning [WC 19/9/11]
4. War Gaming: Languages and Culture [WC 26/9/11]
5. Unit Operations: Any medium – poetic, literary,
cinematic, computational –can be read as a configurative
system, an arrangement of discrete, interlocking units of
expressive meaning. These general instances of
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procedural expression are unit operations. UOs are
modes of meaning-making that privilege discrete,
disconnected actions over deterministic, progressive
systems. [WC 3/10/11]
6. Guest Lecture: ‘Inside the Gaming Brain.’ In this lecture
Professor William O’Connor - Head of Teaching and
Research in Physiology at UL - will translate cuttingedge neuroscience to answer such questions as how a
gamer’s brain is ‘formed’ and illuminates the brain
processes involved in generating creative games and
using them to get the best from the brain. [WC 10/10/11]
7. Unit Operations 2 [WC 17/10/11]
8. The Art of Videogames – Cf Tavinor [WC 24/10/11]
9. Possible Guest Speakers’ Week: John Maher and James
Patten + (Garry Jackson? Or Joe Griffin on Ethics of
Gameplay) [WC 31/10/11]
10.
Game Spaces [WC 7/11/11]
11.
The Rules of a Game: make them, break them,
remake them [WC 14/11/11].
12.
Presentations in class [WC 21/11/11] .
3 sessions needed:
Mondays - 13:00 - 14:00 LEC –S114
Wednesdays - 11:00 - 13:00 LAB - 2A CS304B – Blog writing
Fridays - 10:00 - 11:00 TUT - S114
Prime Text/s:
1. Unit Operations. An Approach to Videogame Criticism
by Bogost, I. MIT Press, 2008.
2. The Game Design Reader, A Rules of Play Anthology,
edited by Salen, K.& Zimmerman, E. The MIT Press,
2006.
3. The Art of Videogames, by Tavinor, G., The Wiley
Blackwell Press, 2009.
4. Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling by
Crawford, C. New Riders Press, 2004
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5. Ludology, Literary Game Theory by Jordan, W. Word
Press, 2004
6. Digital Storytelling, Miller, C.H. 2008
Additional Readings:
1
Character Development and Storytelling for
Games by Sheldon, L. Muska and Lipman, 2004.
2 Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of
Emotioneering by Freeman, D. New Riders Press,
2003.
3 Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century
Fiction by Glassner, A. A.K. Peters, Ltd, 2004
4. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and
Game by Fruin, N.W. MIT Press, 2004.
Assessment:
Individual Presentation in Class: 20%;
Major Dissertation/ Game proposal/ Analysis/ Paper/
Wikipedia Entry: 60%;
Blog Writings Analysis: 20% (6% writing style; 7% Original
thoughts; 7% Development of analysis, summarising lectures
and Tutorial discussions and continuing the debate).
ASSESSMENT REPEATS [urgh!]
Six essays each 2000 words dealing (chiefly) with an expansion and variation of topics in
lecture series. Capped at C3 grade if not an I grade.
Sites:
Academic:
http://www.digra.org/ Digital Games Research Association
http://seriousgames.org/index2.html The Serious Games
Initiative (Cf. Taxonomy of Games)
http://www.digiplay.info Digiplay initiative with many, many
articles on our area.
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http://educationarcade.com/
http://gamestudies.org/ the international journal of computer
game research
http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/ Writings of Jesper Juul
Another Jesse Schell talk (at ARE2010)
http://augmentedrealityevent.com/2010/08/25/are2010keynote-by-jesse-schell-augmented-reality-will-define-the21st-century/
Symposium on "Art History of Games" in Feb 2010. All the
lectures are available to view (and download) at
http://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/33113/browse?type=ti
tle&submit_browse=Title
Industry:
http://www.gamasutra.com/
http://www.igda.org/
http://www.theesa.com/ The Entertainment Software
Association (Cf Annual Survey)
Others – Favs and Blogs
http://grandtextauto.org/ group blog about computer narrative,
games, poetry, and art.
http://www.avault.com/ The Adrenaline Vault: news, reviews
etc
http://www.gamesradar.com/uk/pc Formerly PC Gamer
http://gamewatch.org/phpBB2/ Forums and usergroups.
http://gamegirladvance.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog
http://www.designersnotebook.com/
http://www.ludology.org/
http://terranova.blogs.com/
http://costik.com/ from Greg Costikyan
http://www.deepfun.com/ from Bernie DeKoven
http://gamedevblog.com/ from Jamie Fristrom
http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/ An insider's
view of the game industry
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http://thegameblog.com/
http://playcube.org/ “Games - Nature's emotional workout
routine”
http://www.interactivestory.net/
http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr12/ Electro-poetics
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html/ What is
the Game of Life? by Paul Callahan
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/index.shtml
http://www.altx.com/ebr/riposte/
Gaming replicates many of the issues that have been the
traditional focus of philosophical aesthetics: definition of art,
the ontology of artworks, the expressive nature of artworks
and our experience of their expressive qualities, the nature of
narrative and interpretation.
Among the questions that interest philosophers when they
come to look at videogames are:
• Can videogames be defined?
• How do videogames sit in respect to earlier forms of art?
• How does the digital medium of videogames have an effect
on their employment of narratives, fictions, and visual art?
• How does the player stand in relation the fictional worlds of
videogames?
• How do videogames appeal to the player’s emotions?
• What is the moral significance of videogaming?
• Can gamers be genuinely morally blamed for what they do
in a fictional world?
• Are videogames genuinely art?
/end
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