British Museum Trip

On the course we were offered to go to the British Museum trip, unfortunately I did not attend the trip as I didn't have enough money, but did look at the website and  into some of the exhibits there as we had different readings into them. 

Narrative and games

From the beginning people constantly told stories to one another, using narrative to communicate to each other. This is why a majority of games are narrative driven which then gets the player immersed within the game itself. 


Story: 

• All the elements which end up being depicted
• This is not all the events that happen,  much in a story might be implied ad never explicitly stated.

Plot: 

• The chain of causation - which dictates that these events are somehow linked and are therefore to be depicted in relation to each other.
• This is often linear causation but it does not have to be.

Narrative: 

• The order in which events are revealed. This is certainly not the same as the order in which any real world events may take place.

Cobley argues that:

“Catching a bus, going out with friends, performing mundane tasks at work….none of these come to fruition as stories unless we choose to impose some kind of narrative form on them”  (2002:8)

Where as:

Jenkins argues that this means that aspects of narratives tend to be isolated from the computer gameness of games.  They may be delivered in the form of cut scenes.

This has led to a divergence within the gaming community.

Newman states that the split is between

Ludologists:

Who focus on the narrative elements of introductions and cut-scenes and the relationship these have to the gaming elements of the programmes.  Which may, primarily, be non-narrative.

Naratologists:

Who seek to reduce all elements of the gaming experience to narrative components.  The gaming components as `acting out` aspects of narrative. (2004:91)

Façade is an example of narrative in games. A player controls a character who is then put into a situation and whatever happens is now down to the player themselves, meaning that the outcome of the game is completely different for each player.

Gender and Games

Segregation in the Games Industry



The games industry is made up of a number of specialities including development, production, design, level design, audio design, art and testing (Green et.al.,2007). 
The 2008 Oxford Economics report suggest that the UK games industry has over 9000 employees, the online games magazine, suggests that the percentage of women within the games industry in core creation or developmental roles is around just 6.9%. Recent figures produced by Skillset (2009) found that women represent 4% of the game industry’s workforce, a decrease from 12% in 2006 (Skillset, 2006). 
It would  appear that the industry is losing its battle to increase its appeal to a more diverse workforce.
Both horizontal and vertical gender segregation is claimed to exist within the games industry. Vertical segregation represents the difference in the numbers of women and men in the more senior roles within the industry, example according to Krotoski (2004) only 0.4% of female employees in the UK games industry are in lead, director or management positions, whilst 1.2% of male employees hold these jobs. This suggests that there is horizontal as well as vertical segregation within the industry.



This table shows the percentage of men and women in each job description within the gaming industry.

This tables show that a majority of women in the games industry tend to work in managerial, admin, marketing and public relation roles. And because of this women are lacking in all the other roles therefore have no say or very little voice when it come to content, interaction styles, character representation and reward system which are all involved in games.

Remediation

The Term ‘Remediation’  comes from the work of Bolter and Grusin:-

We call the representation of one medium in another remediation, and we will argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media.  What might seem at first to be an esoteric practice is so widespread that we can identify a spectrum of different ways in which digital media remediate their predecessors.

(2000:45 emph added)

The spectrum of ways new media remediates old media:

Immediacy.

• Media that aspire to a condition of transparency
• The aim is to make the viewer forget they are watching a film by using photo realistic images or immersive virtual reality for example.

Hypermediacy

• Artefacts that are aware of and wish to display their own constructed nature
• They call attention all the time to their own constructed nature by using the world wide web and computer game user interfaces as an example

Remediation can refer to a range of conventions, examples of aesthetic conventions are traded between different media. Photorealism as an example of immediacy is not the preserve of the medium of photography. Hypermediacy is very similar being that its not the aesthetic preserve of the world wide web but is being picked up by tv and newspapers. Remediation is when it takes time for a new medium to develop unique content for example media, games and video. 

New Games Journalism

New Games Journalism is based from Tom Wolfe's style of Journalism which started in the 1960's was known as New Journalism. All Journalism before it focused on the facts whereas New Journalism is centred around the writers experience and personal feelings. New Journalism uses the facts put towards them, then adds personal takes on to it. Unfortunately new Journalism only states the writers experience, so therefore will be biased regardless of others experiences. Normal games journalism takes each bit of a game, like graphics, and gives it a score, New games Journalism talks about these things in the story but never on their own and never scores them.


Examples of these are.
Games Journalism: Ign.com and Gamespot.com
New Games Journalism: zeropunctuation http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

La decima vittima (The 10th Victim)

A 1965 Italian/French international co-production science fiction film directed by Elio Petri. This film is based upon the short story 'Seventh Victim' by Robert Sheckley 1953.

Here is the plot summary from imdb:

A campy futuristic tale where people hunt one another for sport. In this film, Victim and Hunter run around Italy trying to score a kill in front of the movie crews they arranged so they could make commercials from the footage. Written by <jnight@lainet.com> (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059095/plotsummary)

From my understanding of the film:

Its all in Italian so at first for me anyway was hard to get into as I don't enjoy films with subtitles. Once I got into it, I did enjoy the film as it was different from what I usually watch. 

Bibliography

We were asked to do a bibliography in zotero.

Murdock, K (2011). 3ds Max 2012 Bible. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons.


Bauer, P (2010). Photoshop CS5 For Dummies. 10th ed. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.


LeBlanc M. (2006) “Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics”. In Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E., 2006. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, MIT Press.


Jenkins, H. 2006. "Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Space". Salen. K and Zimmermann.E. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. London. 330-363.


Costikyan, G. I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games.


Queiroz, R. & Wiedemann, J., 2004. Animation now!, Taschen.

Games Britannia

Games Britannia is a Documentary Presented by Benjamin Woolley. Woolley explores popular games in Britain from the Iron Age to present day, while exploring cultural and the social history behind different games that are played. Firstly Woolley describes an archaeological dig in which a grave is found with Alea Evangelii (‘Game of the Evangelists’) a member of the Tafl family of games. Tafl games are Germanic and Celtic board games played on checkered or latticed boards. Woolley then talks about Dr. Irving Finkel former curator of the British Museum who explained the possible rules of the game (still not the proper rules as they are not known). The board itself consists of 19x19 squares (shown below), in which one player will have more pieces than the other.

Rules of the game:

·         Black player takes the first turn

·         Players move one piece on a turn

·         If players cannot move a piece they lose a go

Movement

·         Pieces move orthogonally any number of intersections

·         No piece can move onto or through occupied intersection

·         The King is the only piece that can move onto or through the Castle

·         The King is the only piece that can move onto or through Citadels

Capturing a basic piece

·         A piece can only be captured on the enemy’s turn by the enemy piece moved on that turn

·         A piece is captured by an enemy piece when it becomes surrounded on two opposite sides by adjacent enemy pieces

·         The King cannot be one of the pieces used in the capturing of an enemy piece

Capturing the King happens

·         If the King becomes surrounded on all four side by enemy pieces

·         If the King becomes surrounded on three sides by enemy pieces when positioned on the edge of the board game

End of the game

·         The Black player wins the game if the King is captured

·         The White player wins the game if the King sails to a corner

Woolley afterwards goes into investigating other board games which are now our modern games, such as Snakes and Ladders, chess etc. I did enjoy watching this and learning something different that I didn’t know.

Defining Games.

A videogame, by its very name is a game with a ‘video’ element attached.

‘Video’ implies a visual component, or a screen of some kind.

What is a videogame?

Newman asks what constitutes a ‘videogame’ (p.10) but he states that its complicated to explain it as one thing and lists a range of things:

•          Videogames
•          Computer games
•          Interactive environment

Newman also quotes from Frasca (2001a:4) about what a ‘videogame’ is (p.27):

‘any forms of computer-based entertainment software, either textual or image-based, using any electronic platform such as personal computers or consoles and involving one or multiple players in a physical or networked environment’. 

Rules of Play: Salen and Zimmerman.

The chart below summarizes the elements of a game. 

Each Author defines games for particular reasons within specific contexts. 10 out of the 15 elements are shared by more than one author, apart from the rules and goals element. If you look at the table there is no majority agreement on any of the elements. 

Salen and Zimmerman come up with their own definition (p.80) ‘A game is a system in which players engage in a artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in quantifiable outcome.’ Salen and Zimmerman state that their definition resembles Avedon and Sutton-smith but with other authors linked as well. 

In the article they also list their definitions primary ideas and show that whenever they state ‘game’ this is what they mean.

•        System
•          Players
•          Artificial
•          Conflict
•          Rules
•          Quantifiable outcome

Newman Ludus vs Paidea

Paidea: effectively, “play” for pleasure

Ludus: more constrained by rules, with a clear outcome (eg “winning”)

Newman states that Simcity is Paidea, where the player can create cities and Sims at his/her leisure.

Newman also considers different aspects of gameplay and games using 4 terms which Caillois adapts from Huizinga:

·         Agon: Competition

·         Alea: Chance/Randomness

·         Llinx: Movement

·         Mimicry: Simulation, Role-play and make believe.

Gaming Interview.

What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading (or the last fiction book you read)?

The last fiction book I read was Another one bites the dust by Jennifer Rardin.

What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading (or the last non-fiction book you read)?

The last non-fiction book I read was Russell Brand: My Booky Wook.

What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended?

I haven’t been to any live music performances yet, the last live performance I attended was cats at the Norwich theatre.

What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema / online or watched on dvd?

The last dvd I watched was Zombieland.

How often do you read a newspaper? (Which one?)

I don’t often read newspapers but when I do it is sometimes the sun.

How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

8 hours a week.

How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?

3 hours a week.