Week 16 Remediation

Remediation is a term that comes from 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)

Remediation can refer to a range of conventions, a example of aesthetic conventions being constantly traded between different media.

Video Gaming and Film

Bittanti looked at the history of video games in film and said there is a convergence taking place. He claimed there are new films that remediate, comment and quote video games. These films are in their genre called, Technoludic Films.

Technoludic Film as Commentary

Bittanti said that video games are subordinated to the film. Films are used to critique other mediums like video games. Among the films that exemplify this are The Lawnmower Man (1991) eXistenZ (1999) The Matrix Trilogy(1999ff)

Technoludic Film as Quotation

Video games appear in films as illustrative purposes. There are no central themes of the film but form in fictional worlds as the film is attempting to create. Films that exemplify this approach are Blade Runner (1982) Clockers (1997) a modern example of this sort of film would be Inception (2010).

Technoludic Film as remediation (1) adaption

Brittanti uses remediation as a direct adaption of computer games as a source text for a film not a theme. They are normally translations of a successful game, yet the films have often been critiqued for a poor quality of scripting and acting Films that exemplify this approach are Super Mario Brothers (1993) and Lara Croft : Tomb Raider (2001) Dead or Alive (2006)

Technoludic Film as Remediation (2) adaption

We have seen that there is a broader conception of remediation which is about the incorporation of aesthetic and narrative codes from one form of media into another.There are various films that embody into narratives/style some conventions that you would usually find with video games. Films Groundhog Day (1993) Toy Story (1995) Run Lola Run (1998) 

Week 15 Narrative and Games

Narrative

Narrative is part of a closely related triumvirate of elements:

Story	All the elements which end up being depicted This is not all the events that happen, much in a story might be implied and 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.

Events can be revealed in many ways.  Even within traditional media
such as film they can be revealed:

First Hand: Showing – Acted out by individuals in real time, in the correct chronological order, or in flashback.

Second Hand: Revealed by characters who were either directly involved in the event or not.  In chronological order or not.

In Games these devices are obviously available but other ways of revealing events are used.  An example here is the use of scrolls or books, these may provide story, imply plot, or drive the narrative forward.

•          Narrative flows under the direction of the author.

•          Interactivity is about providing the player with the motive power to act.

•          Remember Games Ordering, Do, Show, Tell.

Story	Game
Divergence makes for a less satisfactory story	Restriction makes for a less satisfactory game

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.

Not all games tell stories: Tetris, the desire to remove clutter and clear space, the ability to arrange the blocks with speed to get the satisfaction of getting a new high score.

Environmental Storytelling: For Jenkins a better comparison for game narrative is not literature but amusement parks.  This is because amusement parks don’t reproduce the literal work / or the film but instead they provide a set of rules giving a structure and meaning to the experience.

Week 14 Gender in Games

One of the most straightforward arguments is that it is because women are

Under-represented within the games design industry that they find themselves

Stereotyped when they play games.  There are 3 categories that how women are represented in games:

The Helpless Female - The Damsel in Distress is the classic fairy story princess who’s task is to wait to be rescued.

Sex Kittens - This set of representations are very broad they cover examples of sexual activity specifically aimed at a male audience. Mainstream games that have voluptuous female characters that engage in activities that are designed to solidify / satisfy male heterosexual desires

Girl Power Figures – For those women called Action Babes, who although they are sexualised are able to handle weapons with style and panache

Games are not the only form of media that represent women in these ways, Film, Tv, Advertising etc.

The work force in the gaming industry is mainly populated by men. The percentage of men and women in each job description within the gaming industry.

	Males %	Females %
Ops/IT/HR	53%	47%
Writing	70%	30%
Mkt/PR/Sales	75%	25%
Production	79%	21%
QA	87%	13%
Eecutive	88%	12%
Visual Arts	89%	11%
Design	90%	10%
Audio	90%	10%
Programming	95%	5%

73% of the British population plays games. As can be expected the percentage is higher among young people but even so more than a third of every age group plays. The difference between men and women is mainly seen in the choice of platform and number of hours spent.

The United Kingdom is crazy about console games. This accounts for men as well as women. Playing online on game portals is also very popular with women, especially in the age groups 20-34, 35-49 and over 50 where they outnumber the men.

Week 12 Games Britania Part 2 and Part 3

                The second part of the three part series Woolley traces the surprising political and social impact that board games have had in Britain over the last 200 years. It was the British who developed the idea of the board game as an instrument of moral instruction and exported it to America. There, it was adapted to promote the American Dream of free enterprise and economic success. In this episode Woolley went back through the past of the war days talking about the board games Cluedo, Scrabble and Monopoly are the British family favourite games to date. In today’s day board games have evolved dramatically to include such things like fantasy role playing games for example Dungeons and Dragons which is an American invention. The British still continue in producing niche political games like War on Terror.

                In the final part of the series Woolley explores the journey that games have undergone from the board to screen and the reflection on how rapidly its changing the history of modern Britain. The big British years of the 90’s introduced characters like Lara Croft to the world beyond video games and they were propelled into the internet age and she was put into films as well.  The investigation that Woolley undertook investigations to the present day where he found where he talks about GTA4 and how it requires you to shoot and survive but to also make the moral choice that have a visible effect in the game. 

Week 10 La Decimal Vittima

Week 10 blog task to post brief comments and thoughts on La Decimal Vittima.

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.

To judge this film by "today's standards" misses the point--what are we comparing it to? Armageddon? Scream 3? This was the European 60s vision of the 'future'-- and why didn't it turn out that way? An odd, cheeky little plot mixing romance, light sci-fi and gunplay is underscored by dazzling visuals in a similar style to The Prisoner series, or Alphaville (if it were in colour). Piero Piccioni's score is pure 'Jazz 2001', and is available as an import reissue. It all depends on what you're after, but personally I wish the WORLD LOOKED like this movie and that men's and women's fashion reflected this film's 'in the future, people will dress like this' style.

This film is a comedy because it over exaggerates and stereotypes is certain parts, but at the same time is interesting and fun to watch. Within the film the main theme of the movie is set out and shown to be a game and the solution for the problem in the film is violence.

Week 15 Scott Kim “What is a Puzzle” T.Fullerton (2008)

Scott Kim “What is a Puzzle” T.Fullerton (2008)

What is a puzzle?

The Random house Dictonary defines a puzzle as a toy or other contrivance designed to amuse by-pre-senting difficulties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort. A humorous insightful definition is a simple task with a bad user interface.  An example of this is twisting the faces of a Rubik’s Cube is a deliberately bad user interface for the simple task of turning all the faces solid colours.

Is it Fun?

There are several thinks that make a puzzle fun:

·         Novel: Puzzles are a form of play and play starts by suspending the rules of everyday life, giving you permission to do things that aren’t practical

·         Not too easy but not too hard: Puzzles that are too easy are disappointing but puzzles that are too hard are discouraging. Nonetheless, the perceived lack of difficulty helps keeps you interested.

·         Tricky: to solve this puzzle, you must change how you interpret the picture.

Puzzles versus Games

Some game designers categorize puzzles as a subspecies of games. Chris Crawford distinguishes four types of play activities, ranging from most to least interactive.

·         Games are rule based systems in which the goal is for one player to win. They involve opposing players who acknowledge and respond to one another’s actions. The difference between games and puzzles has little to do with mechanics: we can easily turn many puzzles and athletic challenges into games and vice versa.

·         Puzzles are rule based systems like games but the goal is to find a solution, not only to beat an opponent. Unlike games, puzzles have little replay value/

·         Toys are manipulated like puzzles but there is no fixed goal.

·         Stories involve fantast play, like toys, but they cannot be changed or manipulated

For example with computer entertainment software:

·         Quake is a game that includes some puzzles.

·         The Incredible Machine is a series of puzzles that includes a toy like construction set building puzzles.

·         SimCity is a toy that players make more puzzle-like by setting their own goals.

·         Myst is a story that happens to be told partly through puzzles 

Week 14 Mike Stout - Learning From the Masters: Level Design in The Legend of Zelda

Levelflow:

·         Where the player is, where they are going, how do they get their

·         The pathway from start to finish  - it felt non-linear but actually it was not (or mostly) critical and optional paths

·         The Path from start to finish is the critical path

Intensity ramping:

·         The way in which difficulty can increase through a level

·         The relationship between the familiar and the new

·         In the critical the player must have the intensity to master this – more efficient /effective to defeat enemies

Variety:

·         Never repeat the same encounter twice – numbers if enemies, types of enemies and room layouts

Training:

·         If you want the player to progress you must allow them to develop the skills to do so.

Week 13 Building a Simple Level - Ed Bryne "Game Level Design" 2005

This week reading was to read Ed Bryne Building a Simple level. The task was to find out what the key lessons for level designs are.

There were four key subheadings in the reading that you need to follow in order to design a game level, they are: 

• 1.       Level Design Building Blocks
• 2.       What About Story?
• 3.       Putting It All Together
• 4.       Summary

Level Design Building Blocks: The basic elements of a level are:

·         Concept

·         Environment to exist in

·         Beginning

·         Ending

·         Goal

·         Challenge to overcome

·         Reward

·         Way of handling failure

The writer gives an example of Tetris and how these building blocks are used:

·         Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level

·         Environment to exist in : The active play area

·         Beginning : An empty screen and the score of 0

·         Ending : The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success) or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure)

·         Goal : create line to overcome the level

·         Challenge to overcome between the player and the goal : The speed of descent, the type of the blocks and the number of line needed

·         Reward : the player moves to the next level or receives an animation

·         Way of handling failure : the game must be started from the beginning

What About Story: The writer explains that not all games have the need for a story so it is not a fundamental element to have a story for a game for example many big games not have any kind of narrative elements fuck as Tetris.

Putting It Together: The writer used a simple level to demonstrate how the elements work together.

Concept- The game used is Clownhunt, it is a game where you control Crispy who is a clown desperately trying to escape a maniacal ringmaster.  The Controls in the game are simple the player can move Crispy the clown left and right and make him also jump while he is moving to leap onto small obstacles and to avoid small enemies that can pass underneath.

Environment- Clownhunt is set in a circus so all elements should be thematic if possible. Colourful backdrops and cartoony graphics should be present in the environment.  They become important as humorous elements to offset the grim theme of the game. In the game there is no HUD to interfere with the environment because the game doesn’t require the player to keep track of lives, energy or other game metrics.

Beginning- Clownhunt always begins with the player on the left edge of the screen.

Ending - We need the exit to be far enough away from the entrance to make sure the player can’t reach it without overcoming some kind of challenge or obstacle.

Goal – The goal of every level in Clownhunt is the game – reach the exit.

Challenge – This is key to the player actually having fun in the level. You need to make sure the challenge is thematic, that is doesn’t strike the player as being out of place or goofy for the kind of game they are playing:

·         We need a way for the player to gain height to reach the exit

·         It is immediately recognizable by most players

·         How it works is apparent just by looking at it, so we don’t need to explain to the player how to use it

Determining the Challenge Mechanics - The best gameplay mechanics are those that need no explanation, allowing the player to simply work out to interact with them from his own observations that makes players feel clever and allows the designer to stay out of the picture while they play.

Reward – With this game the reward of it is that from completing the level you get access to the next level and the second reward will be a short victory animation.

Failure - The last critical part of the design is what to do when the player fails the challenge, luckily all of this is handled inherently. Don’t have heath so that it won’t end because of time. Don’t have a health bar so wont falling from height won’t end the level.  You should only set the players back or force them to reload or transporting them in a neutral and safe position. This is the most important rules in level design.