Download September 3 – What is play, pt. 1

What is play? Pt. I
COM 427
Sept. 3
QUIZ!
1. Salen and Zimmerman propose 3 broad
forms of “play”.
Which of the following is NOT one of these
3 forms?
a) “Game play”
b) “Ludic activities”
c) “Instinctual play”
d) “Being playful”
2. Salen & Zimmerman:
“Play is free movement within a more
_________ structure”
a) transformative
b) rigid
c) neo-classical
d) turbulent
3. For TL Taylor, the notion of play as
“__________” takes into consideration the
full range of social, technological, legal,
cultural and economic relationships
involved in gameplay.
a) twerking
b) assemblage
c) post-modernism
d) ludology
4. “They can stand in and do work for us,
monitoring our play, automating actions,
providing key information, and in general
facilitating a range of both mundane and
complex action.” (Taylor, pp. 333-334)
What is she referring to here?
a) robots
b) gnomes
c) game mods
d) sweatshop workers
5. BONUS!
Of today’s authors (Salen & Zimmerman,
Taylor), which are game designers & which
are sociologists?
a) Salen & Zimmerman: game designers;
Taylor: sociologist
b) Taylor: game designer; Salen &
Zimmerman: sociologists
c) trick question: they’re all psychologists
Order of play
1. Definitions (Salen & Zimmerman)
2. “Assemblage of play”
1. Overview of Final Project Assignment #1:
“Exploration of a Toolset”
Play from design perspective
Play from sociological perspective
Play
What words & concepts do we normally
associate with play?
What words & concepts do we normally view as
opposite to play?
Play
“free movement within a more rigid structure”
does this say anything
about play’s relationship...
to work?
to media?
to education?
“gameplay”
“the formalized interaction that occurs when players
follow the rules of a game” (p. 303)
• non-videogame examples?
• videogame examples?
“ludic activity”
“games, and all of the non-game behaviors we also
think of as ‘playing’: a kitten batting a ball of yarn, two
college students tossing a Frisbee...” (p. 303)
• non-videogame examples?
• videogame examples?
“being playful”
“a spirit of play is injected into some other action”
(p. Salen & Zimmerman, p. 303)
• non-videogame examples?
• videogame examples?
“The Card Game” S. 2 Ep. 24
play as “assemblage”
“While looking at a game as it is presented as a boxed
product may tell us something about the given structure of
the artifact or its imagined player, understanding it as a
lived object—as a playful artifact—comes via an attention
to the assemblage that constructs our actual games and
play” (Taylor, p. 332)
Bogost: What is the argument mounted by
the game’s rules & mechanics?
Galloway: what are the major
‘actions’ that video games entail?
diegetic
machine
operator
non-diegetic
Aarseth: How do games convey meaning?
Salen & Zimmerman: what is play?
Taylor: How is play produced through the relationships between multiple “actors”?
Friends/family
Copyright laws & EULAs
Hardware
Designers
Other (online) players/communities
Groups of 4: What’s the assemblage?
List the “actors”
Major League Gaming Summer Championship, Raleigh, August 2012 –Soul Calibur tournament
LANcouver (gaming event in Vancouver), July 2011 – Tabletop gaming
Playing DS – from http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephers/3085216456/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Playing @ Hill Library – from http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6219/6291517214_edbb741c11_z.jpg
Exploration of a Toolset: 10%
• Hardcopies due at the start of class on September 17.
• Solo assignment: 4-5 page (double-spaced) report, based
on your research of a game development toolset
• Come to us (or email) if you REALLY WANT to use a
modding environment instead of what you were assigned
• This will NOT be the same environment you use for your
final project. This will instead position you as an expert
resource for teams that DO use the environment / toolset
you studied.
Integrated Game Development Environments
Interactive Fiction
1. Inform 7
2. Twine
2D Games
3. Construct 2
4. Adventure Game Studio
5. Fixel
6. Stencyl
Xbox Live Indie
7. XNA
Virtual Board/Card Games
8. LackeyCCG
9. VASSAL engine
10. Game Crafter (Physical Games)
Minor Pay Wall
11. Game Maker
12. Rpg Maker
Heavy Ordinance (To be researched but not used for this class)
13. Unity 3d
14. Unreal Engine
15. Ogre 3d