Monday, April 23, 2007

Final Essay: “I Might Be a Game Designer”

Your final essay is due on May 7, our last day of class.

This 2-3 page assignment is a self-reflection, designed to help you translate what we've been doing in class to your ongoing art practice.

Choose any 3 key concepts or insights– new terms, ideas, design principles, or theories that you learned in this class – that best intersect with your own art practice. Discuss how you might use these ideas to develop further work, in any medium or for any platform, in the future.

What will you make in the future that reflects your new expertise in ubiquitous game culture? Do the concepts apply well to other genres of art practice? How will game design influence your work in other media? Which key concepts from the new fields of ubiquitous game design, context-aware play, theories of fun and performance, alternate reality design, or collective intelligence might inspire a different approach to your work as an artist?

Each concept or insight that you discuss should be from a different reading or project home page. In addition to the ubiquitous computing manifestos and context-aware gaming essays and interviews we read in the first half of the semester, you might also consider our more recent texts: Richard Schechner’s performance theory, Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman’s playtesting framework, Raph Koster’s theory of fun, Pierre Levy’s collective intelligence, or William J. Mitchell’s Me++, for example. Or you might wish to quote from the Frank Lantz interview, the Zero Game Manifesto, or the online mission statements of World Without Oil, SF0, or Cruel 2 B Kind.

You may find it helpful to directly quote the readings, although I would also like to see you discuss the concepts in your own words, so that I can see you demonstrating a clear understanding of the material.

Feel free to discuss your own art practice goals and work outside of this class at length here. You don't have to focus on game design, unless you want to. I'm very interested to hear how ideas of gaming might fit in the future with your broader work.

Length: 2 pages minimum, double-spaced, 12 pt font, 1 inch margins.

NO LATE PAPERS ACCEPTED. If you miss class, the paper must be emailed to me by midnight (my first name at avantgame dot com)

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Games as Networks: Me++

In class this week, we'll be discussing the notion of "Me++" - how the individual is extended by network technologies and digital communities to be a part of something bigger.

How does the idea of Me++ relate to ubiquitous gaming, or games in general? Is every game -- even non-digital ones -- a kind of network? Is every player a Me++? Discuss!

Saturday, April 21, 2007

World Without Oil Press

As playground game designers for a World Without Oil, I thought you might like to see a little bit of the press that the alternate reality game has been receiving! (Thanks Patrick for spotting these and adding links in the comments to the earlier post!)

Pitchfork
SF Weekly
Contra Costa Times
CNET