US12A - Computer Games as Art, Culture, and Technology
Discussion Sections, Fall 2008

Overview of this website

This website is built to help students in US12A keep track of relevant course materials, including due dates, discussion handouts and URLs. This isn't meant as a substitute for the official course syllabus at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/syllabus.html - please take a look at it for the most recent information about this course.

Course Syllabus

• http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/syllabus.html.

• In addition, course-related materials can be accessed at http://eee.uci.edu/ (login required)

Tips

• Come to office hours for help with writing or academic questions
• Keep a notebook of all course-related material (notes, assignments, exams, etc.)
• Take notes of readings and prepare one question you have for each reading. Bring this to discussion.
• Writers of all levels can benefit from the Peer Tutor Program and/or the Learning & Academic Resource Center (LARC)
• Absence or tardiness to a lab, discussion, or lecture will result in a loss of participation points. You must attend the discussion section in which you are registered. If you wish to attend another discussion section, you must make an official change through WebReg.

Discussion Notes

Week 1 Discussion - Wednesday October 1st 2008

• THE MAIN POINT: Why are we here?

• THOUGHT: GAMES ARE NOT GAMES

• Quick introductions - what's your name? Why are you interested in this class?

• Before we start really discussing stuff, let's SIGN FORMS! FUN!!!!!

• Review of the purpose of this course - let's look at the syllabus at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/syllabus.html - especially the "The Tao of FIP" and the "What and Why" sections. This is important!

• Discussion of Poole, "Origin of the Species".
  

• Poole Discussion Concepts:
  Related to the Poole reading, is more "realism" better?
  What is realism anyway?
  Also, do videogame genres exist?

• Week 1 Discussion - URLs related to videogame realism:

  • The Simulator (me, 1997): http://www.conceptlab.com/simulator/
    

  • Cockfight Arena (Eddo Stern, 2001): http://www.eddostern.com/cockfight_arena.html
    

  • PainStation (Roman Kirschner, Volker Morawe, Tilman Reiff, 2001-2004): http://www.painstation.de
    

  • Worship (Brody Condon, 2001): http://tmpspace.com/worship.html
    Worship is ritualistic worship performed within the confines of the 3D massively multiplayer online game Anarchy Online for the duration of the exhibition. The player character, now facing outside the screen towards the viewer, repetatively prostrates itself while other online game players continue their attempts to operate normally within the set of rules defined by the game.
    

  • So... is is more "realism" better? What is realism anyway?

  • What about video game genres? Do they really exist?

• But wait... Review of this week's homework at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/homework1.html

• REMEMBER!

  • Fipnic! 5:00-7:00 tonight, Aldrich Park. Who's coming?
  • Homework at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/homework1.html
    • Tomorrow - Read Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play
    • Friday - Upload a photo of you, named in FirstnameLastname.jpg format
    • Next Wed - You need to propose a paper topic! (Start on this right away)
    • Next Wed we're not meeting here - Discussion — Library Orientation meet today at Science Library Interactive Learning Center Classroom 164

• EXTRA STUFF:

• Who is the person standing at the front of the room? Where can he be found?

  • A project I made a while ago:
    
  • Homepage: conceptlab.com - lots of my stuff here if you're interested
  • Office hours: 8am Wed, upstairs in 5069.

Week 2 Discussion - Wednesday, October 8th 2008

• Meet today at the Science Library Interactive Learning Center Room 164. When coming to the Science Library from Aldrich Park, go to the right side of the Science Library courtyard/entry:
  
  
• Cathy Palmer (Head of Education and Outreach at the UC Irvine) will be leading us in a research instruction session that will help your research skills - especially within the context of your paper due next week.
  
  
• NOTE: Garnet will be taking a look at your topic proposals.
• Attendance will be taken today: this will count toward your participation grade.
• For our instruction session, we will be discussing several features found through UCI Libraries
  • ANTPAC and helping identify materials that the library owns, including conference proceedings, books, videos, etc.
  • Expanded Academic ASAP which identifies journal and popular magazine articles on a variety of topics
  • ACD Digital Library - an example of a specialized database
  • She will use Google Scholar to show how to use the UCeLinks tool to link to full text of materials and to emphasize the use of the Web or software VPN when accessing library materials from off-campus

Week 3 Discussion - Wednesday, October 15th 2008

• DISCUSS: What makes Michael Bolton so bad?

• THE MAIN POINT OF TODAY: Today we'll be spending time on making sure you're clear with Paper #1.

• Paper Topics: How to make your topic even better!

  • ACTIVITY: LET'S MAKE THE WORST US12 PAPER TOPIC POSSIBLE!!

  • BRAINSTORM:
    How can a topic be too cliche?
    Too obvious?
    Too general?
    

  • ACTIVITY: SWAP YOUR TOPIC WITH A PARTNER. AFTER YOU LOOK AT THE RUBRIC WRITE FEEDBACK TO THEM.

• Peer Editing the Annotated Bibliographies

  • Work in pairs, with someone you haven't worked with yet this quarter. As you read and comment on each other's work, keep in mind the purpose of the assignment:
    1. a two or three sentence summary, and
    2. an evaluation of the source in terms of the following criteria:
    * Authority — What is the author's credentials and expertise?
    * Reliability — How does the publication venue qualify the article as trustworthy?
    * Credibility — How does the quality, tone, and presentation of evidence in the article make the information believable?
    * Usefulness — How can this source be used in your paper?
    

  • The editor should mark-up the paper. Editors, make sure to write "Edited by" and your name at the top of the page. Each author must turn in the Four Sentence Summaries with the final version of Paper #1.

• But how do we make these topics into actual arguments?

• NEXT WEEK: BRING YOUR THESIS STATEMENTS FOR A THESIS-STATEMENT WORKSHOP... AND CONTEST WITH PRIZES

Week 4 Discussion - October 22nd 2008

• Welcome to "THE THESIS IS RIGHT"... the game show we're going to play right here, today!
  
  The little video above was made just for you... and YES - we have something even better than Butterfinger chocolate bars as prizes... Super Mario Crunchy Candies!
  
  But no game is fun without a penalty. Today's penalty will be a Russian Electro-Shocking Device. For real.
  
  

• How to play THE THESIS IS RIGHT:

  1. Split into groups of 4

  2. Give your thesis statement to somebody else in the group, and then read another person's thesis statement to the group

  3. Decide amongst yourselves which thesis statement is the best in the group. Try to figure out why one is better than the other. It may help to look at my example grading rubric or think of the TOPIC + POSITION because AMPLIFICATION 1, 2, 3 "formula."

  4. Your Host (Garnet) will then have a short discussion about good thesis statements and what people used to pick the "best" one.

  5. Then, working together, take 5 minutes to revise and improve the best thesis statement. This will be your ticket to prizes or potentially painful loss, so make sure it's good!

  6. After revising (and the cue from your host) write your thesis statement on the whiteboard. If you consent to one person on your team being electrically shocked, and eligible for prizes, put a star beside your statement. The statement with the least votes will be shocked by the team with the most votes... beware!!

  7. We will then discuss all the thesis statements and vote for who we think has the best statement and why. As a method of judging, we'll brainstorm how we'd flesh out the best thesis statements into papers.

  8. After tabulating the votes, the winners will be invited to inflict pain on the thesis statement with the least votes. Everybody that brought a thesis statement gets Super Mario Candies!
     

• Next week, we will do a group study session for the midterm. Make sure you bring all of your notes!

Week 5 Discussion - October 29th 2008

• 

  MIDTERM EXAM FORTUNE-TELLING SESSION

• Quick review of test-taking strategies - what have you found that works?

• Let's look at the syllabus and compile a collection of group notes!

• READINGS
  • Poole, The Origin of Species (chapter 2)
    • Game genres are becoming more unified and the idea of a game being a single genre really doesn't apply any more.
    • As technology becomes more powerful, developers combine genres.
    • Spacewars was developed on the PDP-1 by Steve Russel in a neuclear reactor facility
    • Pong, and pong clones resulted in crash of video game industry
    • Splitting up games into genres is an oversimplification on what is going on in a game
  • UCI Policy on Academic Honesty
    • 1. To issue a reprimand to the student with a letter of explanation to the student's file.
      2. To require repetition of the questionable work or examination with a letter of explanation to the student's file.
      3. To reduce the grade to an 'F' or zero, if appropriate, on the questionable work or examination with written notification to the student and a letter of explanation to the student's file.
      4. To assign the student a failing grade in the course or otherwise lower the grade in the course with a letter of explanation to the student's file.
  • Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play [this will for sure be on the midterm]
    • Asks the reader to try to define what a game is
    • The author then shows the dynamic nature of games, and it goes beyond "just picking up the controller and playing" - there are lots of different ways at playing (and playing with) games
    • As people play the game more, people become more familiar with the mechanics and start to play with them (think of warthog jump)
    • Games as emergent systems
    • Lots of different ways to play with the game
    • Player-as-Producer: the player takes the world or gameplay and changes it somehow
    • "Open system games are designed to be manipulated and modified by the people who purchase and play them."
    • Open system games can be thought of like a deck of cards: they can be played in several different ways
    • While discussing players-as-producers, S&Z show a graph on page 540 of how Will Wright (The Sims) sees the organization of the community for The Sims, an "open gameplay system." He sees players as being Tool makers (that create tools, accounting for the least amount of people), object-makers that use the design tools to create game objects (composing slightly more people than the tool makers), webmaters that distribute content by hosting Sims websites, and game players make and use objects in their games. Note that all of these are people in the community: they are all "game players".
    • "When game players become game producers, emergence is multiplied: in addition to the unexpected forms of play that occur inside the game, player-producers create entirely new contexts for play."
    • Open system game: a game that can played in different ways
    • The Sims Family Album feature is given as an example of emergent gameplay. An example is given of Star Wars.
    • Open source software:
      1. Use software as you wish
      2. Be able to manipulate the source code and modify it
      3. Be able to redistribute the code or application
      4. Users of a piece of software must have access to its source code
    • Machinima: Quake movies and other forms of machinima offer a unique space of culturally transoformative play: machinima producers deconstruct the game in order to play with it. Instead of accepting the rules, they challenge and modify them.
    • Playing a game versus playing with a game: Playing a game is playing within the rules, and playing with a game is playing with the rules
    • Gameplay as resistance: resistant strategies. Think of "frag queens".
  • The Hard Science of Making Video Games
    1. Processing Power
    2. Water
    3. Human Faces
    4. Artificial Intelligence
    5. Light and Shadows
    6. Fire
    7. Material Physics
    8. Realistic Movement
    9. True-to-Life Simulation
    10. Motion Capture
  • Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
    • Squash and stretch: is an animation technique that makes objects more convincing by distorting their shapes. This is done to communicate the materiality of the object, the weight/mass of the object, and even the emotional quality of the object.
    • Tweening (in-between frames) can result in a drastically different emotional quality to the animation.
    • Traditional animation techniques can be used by computer animation (and they were, especially with the release of "Luxo Jr.") to communicate an extra emotional quality that was previously lacking in computer animation. In other words, computer animation before Luxo Jr. didn't agreesively integrate techniques that had been used by pencil-and-paper animators. Luxo Jr. was somewhat unique because it used these techniques. The result wasn't an animation that was necessarily more realistic but it was more emotionally convincing.
• LECTURES
  • 9/30 - Krapp - Ping, Pong: the archeology of interaction
    • Ping is a tool used to measure the networking speed between two computers
    • Pong is a game that is tennis-like, is b/w, blocky, etc.
    • People liked the simplicity of Pong
  • 10/2 - Krapp - Action, quest, plan: games as discourse
    • Do not disconnect computer games from other types and histories of media
    • Three principles of games: action (immersion, speed), adventure (decision tree, search), strategy scenario planning)
      
  • 10/7 - Frost - Scratch
    • Possible question: present some code, then lay out what you want to happen, and get the student to debug the code and show how to fix it
    • Forever blocks
  • 10/9 - Krapp - Machinima: playing with games
    • Playing games is following what the programmer or game is laid out to do, but playing with games involves messing around with the rules.
    • Playing a game versus playing with a game: Playing a game is playing within the rules, and playing with a game is playing with the rules
  • 10/14 - Tomlinson - Designing Characters
    • Concept, backstory and key characteristics are important in designing a character
    • Traditional animation (see notes above on Lasseter) - squash and stretch, etc.
    • Traditional animation techniques make things seem more "alive"
  • 10/16 - Tomlinson - Designing characters
    • (notes to be filled in)
  • 10/21 - Frost - Scratch 2
    • (notes to be filled in)
  • 10/23 - Frost - Animation / Programming Languages
    • See Scratch notes above

Week 6 Discussion - November 5th 2008

• THE MAIN THING WE ARE DOING TODAY: Today we are going to learn about topic sentences and will be peer editing our papers

• Before we get started with discussing topic sentences and peer editing papers, let's make sure we're clear on the Paper 1 Prompt - Computer Games and Culture

• Next, topic sentences. Here's proof that you learned about topic sentences in the 2nd Grade:
  
  
  

• QUESTION: Who knows what a topic sentence is? (Write answers on board)

• VIDEO: Let's watch a (slightly strange) video about topic sentences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8W_nSbE7tw

• ACTIVITY: Take your essay and a pen and underline all of your topic sentences. If you don't have topic sentences, underline the sentence in the paragraph that best summarizes the main point of the paragraph. (5 minutes)

• HANDOUT: Hand out & review Peer Editing the first paper

  Peer Editing the first paper draft - US12A 2008
  

  Work in pairs, with someone you haven't worked with yet this quarter. As you read and comment on each other's papers, keep in mind the purpose of the paper: to investigate some aspect of the history of computer games, emphasizing theoretical models or typologies from the literature.

  The editor can mark-up the paper, and will also write comments on the back of this page. Editors, make sure to write "Edited by" and your name at the top of both. Each author must turn in the editor's written comments and the draft along with the final version of the paper.

  Procedure for Editors:
  
  1. Read the paper through once, trying to understand the paper's overall structure and purpose.
  1. Are you able to easily follow the flow of the argument? Does the paper have an introductory paragraph or two which tell the reader what lies ahead, and a conclusion which wraps everything up and restates the major points?
  2. Does the author's topic seem to be the right size for a 1,000 word paper? Is it narrow enough to be fully developed, but broad enough to be interesting?
  2. Now carefully reread the full paper and write answers to these questions:
  1. Is the paper's tone formal, business-like, rational, and convincing?
  2. Is the paper a carefully researched investigation into the connections between some aspect of the history of computer games and contemporary culture?
  3. Look at the paragraphs as individual units. Do they have unity, coherence, and generally support and develop a single idea each?
  4. Are there any mechanical errors (spelling, punctuation, grammar) that interfered with your reading of the paper?
  5. Are the references and citations adequate? Does the paper's references section follow the correct format?
  6. Has the author succeeded in "digging deeply enough to find underlying truths?" If not, where do you suggest further spadework?
  3. Review your comments with the author (and vice versa)

• PEER EDITING: Do Peer Reviews (20 minutes)

• PEER DISCUSSION: Discuss with your peer editor what they thought of your paper (5 minutes)

• NOTE: BE SURE TO INCLUDE ANNOTATIONS FOR EACH ITEM IN YOUR BIBLIOGRAPHY. THIS WILL MAKE UP ONE WHOLE COLUMN ON YOUR FINAL VERSION RUBRIC (17% of your grade). Note that this is not on the draft peer-edited rubric that we are using today.

• REVIEW (if time permits - if not, please carefully review APA formatting on your own time): Overview of what APA bibliographic format is, as described in Writing A to Z, pp 140—153; in particular the example on page 142. You can also find a summary of the APA bibliographic format online at http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c09_o.html. Note that for the purposes of Paper #1, you do not need to have an APA title page, but be sure to follow in-text citation format and list of referneces formatting.

• Hand back graded midterm exams

Week 7 Discussion - November 12th 2008

• Let's Discuss "Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model" by Craig W. Reynolds

  • The article: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~dt/siggraph97-course/cwr87/
  • Let's do a group activity to illustrate Simulated Flocks.
    First, let's have everybody stand up, and let's move the desks to the edges of the room. We are now a flock.
    Next, you can each take one half-step or one full-step each time I clap my hands. Your goal is to be close to this skateboard at the front of the class.
    Lastly, for each step, you need to follow these rules:
    
    1. Collision Avoidance: avoid collisions with nearby flockmates
    2. Velocity Matching: attempt to match velocity with nearby flockmates
    3. Flock Centering: attempt to stay close to nearby flockmates

• What does this look like when it's sped up and implemented in a computer simulation? Take a look:
  

• Paper #1 Tips:

  1. Don't use Wikipedia. Why? (Give Weird Al illustration)
  2. Use a structure:
     1. First paragraph: hook with clear thesis statement: TOPIC is POSITION because AMPLIFICATION 1, 2, and 3.
     2. Second paragraph: define your terms
     3. Third paragraph: describe your project clearly, avoiding jargon
     4. Fourth paragraph: AMPLIFICATION 1
     5. Fifth paragraph: AMPLIFICATION 2
     6. Sixth paragraph: AMPLIFICATION 3
     7. Seventh paragraph: Counterevidence, refuted
     8. Eighth paragraph: Conclusion, with clincher
  3. Make a three-pronged thesis statement.
  4. For your conclusion, try "In conclusion...".
  5. Find sources for all facts, figures and definitions.

Week 8 Discussion - November 19th 2008 - What are Games and Why Do People Play Them?

• Please come to the front and submit your papers. Staple the whole thing together.
  

  Staple together your final version (on top), the draft graded by a TA (below it, with rubric), and the peer-edited draft (below that, with rubric). Do not put this bundle in any sort of cover or binder. Make sure your name is on every page. Hand this bundle to the TA at the start of discussion.

  
  

• Note: Electronic versions submitted after 8:55am will be counted as a late submission for your paper.

• Are there any questions about the papers?

  • Note: Garnet will be grading the papers.
  • Drafts are worth 3%, Final version is worth 14% of your class grade.
  • The paper will be graded with exactly the same rubric as the drafts.
  • Topic proposals don't need to be submitted with the final versions.
  • The annotations count as a bonus toward your "Research and Support" section.
  • Your final version will not have as many editing marks and feedback as your drafts did.
  • Late policy: 10% penalty for work up to 24 hours late, 20% penalty for work 25 to 48 hours late, and later work is not accepted without approval from a professor. All three versions of the paper need to be submitted to be considered on time.
  • Plagiarists will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
  • I will do my best to return your graded papers next week.

• The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford - Chapter One - What is a Game?
  
  

• Question: How do computer games differ from board games, card games, athletic games, and children's games?

• Discuss open systems.

• Discuss the roles of representation, interaction, conflict, and safety.

• The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford - Chapter Two - Why Do People Play Games?
  
  

• (If time permits) Discuss: Fantasy/Exploration, Proving Oneself, Social Lubrication, Exercise, and Need for Acknowledgement

• Remember: Bill gave a huge hint about the final exam during his November 13th lecture on Interactivity... let's discuss what he said about sensory modalities.

Week 9 Discussion - November 26th 2008 - Demos, etc.

• What does TurnItIn look like?

  
  
  
  
  
  

• How to demo: presenting your game projects
  
  
  
  

  1. The thing to notice about the video above: Have somebody present the project that is not doing technical fiddling
  2. If possible, test out the project on the machine it will be demo'd on
  3. Rehearse will all of your team members
  4. Have a back-up in case everything goes wrong
  5. Discussion: any other ideas for presenting a good demo?

• Discussion (and maybe practice) of demo techniques - volunteers?

• Review of last Tomlinson lecture - any guesses for final exam questions?

• Hand back Paper #1 Final Papers
  
  
  Mean: 14.99
  Median: 16.00
  Mode: 18.00
  Maximum: 20.00
  Minimum: 0.00
  Std. deviation: 4.86
  # scores: 81
  

• Happy Thanksgiving!

  
  

---

Week 10 Discussion - Wed December 3rd 2008

• Intro: Secret Project
  
  
  

• As of yesterday, 34 of the students in US12A have completed the fall quarter evaluation - representing 42% of the class. Please do this ASAP if you haven't done it already. The course evaluation can be accessed at https://eee.uci.edu/survey/US12.F08

• FINAL EXAM REVIEW NOTES - LECTURES

• 10/28 - Artificial Intelligence - Frost
  • Four areas of AI research: human thinking, human acting, rational thinking, rational acting.
  • Human thinking: "I think therefore I am". Computer programmers need to understand how humans think in order to replicate it in games.
  • Human acting: Turing Test. This is a question-and-answer game to see if the questioner is actually a computer.
  • Rational thinking: For example: Bob is human, and all humans are mortal, then Bob is mortal. This is an example of how AI is used to put "two things together", or logically conclude things.
  • Rational acting: Use it for economic purposes. $ Use it to try to predict. Finding the best route, etc. - it only matters if you get useful results. If you want to make something that flies, you don't need to exactly re-create a bird.
• 11/4 - (Midterm Post Mortem) Artificial Intelligence - Frost
  • Different uses of AI: NPCs, party members (like in RPGs, for example), the environment (in games) - traps, pathfinding AI (maps / The Sims), natural language processing (but not much progress is being made in this area).
• 11/13 - Interactivity - Tomlinson
  • Voice commands
  • Foot pads
  • vibration
  • social aspects, guilds
  • narrative aspect
  • graphics
  • mutually or reciprocally active
  • requiring input from user, esp 2-way elecronic communication
  • HUMAN MODALITIES
    • Five senses
      • Sight: color, motion, depth
      • Sound: pitch, volume, tempo, timbre, treble, bass, location
      • Touch: contact, pressure, texture, temperature
      • Taste: salty, sweet, bitter, sour
      • Smell: 1000 different receptors
    • balance
      • 3 axes
    • proprioception
      • perception of your internal state
      • joints
      • emotion
      • hunger, etc.
  • MACHINE MODALITIES
  (list machine modalities here)
  • Machine versus human modalities
  • simulations- not for fun, to learn/experiment, focus on detail- accuracy
  • Puzzle- solved vs beat/win- not interactive, accomplishment
  • stories- static, linear, plot twist, suspense
  • toys- palpable, no rules, nonlinear, imagination,
  • games- ALL ^ + competition, safety, representation, interaction, rules, win condition
• 11/18 - Game Design - Frost
  • He went over the Crawford article
  • simulations aren't fun, their purpose is to learn and experiment with a focus on details: specifically to be accurate (as opposed to clarity)
  • puzzle games: you solve them, you don't beat them. They are non-interactive.
  • Stories: static, non-interactive and linear.
  • Sport: physical activity, more humans,
  • Toys: palpable, no specific rules, you are in control, "imagination", experimentation and freedom,
  • Art: non-interactive, no rules
  • Conversation: interactive, fluid rules,
  • Game: competition, safety, representation, interaction, rules, and a win condition
  • Travel/exploration
  • War
• 11/20 - Interactivity - Tomlinson
  • Modalities and Affordance
  • Human <-> Computer <-> Computer <-> Human (with arrows also between human/human)
  • Cooperation versus competitive
  • In-group vs out-group bias (Stanford prison experiment)
  • Who likes pineapple and who doesn't?
  • Certain game design choices can create biases
  • You can cause competition within a game by limited resources, etc.
  • Enabling technologies (snapshots within games to create an album)
  • Anti-social effects of playing video games: desensitization and mimicry of violence
  • Overplaying games and being socially ostracized because of overplaying (gave D&D as an example)
  • Human/machine interaction: are NPCs a facsimilie of human/human interaction?
  • Social Interactivity- instructions, trash talk, cooperative vs. competitive story
  • xbox live
  • In game vs out of game
  • cooperation- communities, knots, pairs (nardi)
  • how to build a team? Common ground?
  • In-group/out-group bias- stanford prison experiment (1971)
  • Ways games build teams:
  • - Loyalty?
  • Competition
  • - Team competitions
  • - Free for all
  • - Score/awards
  • Ways games cause competition?
  • - Different colors, guns
  • - Limited Resource
  • -non-obvious = interesting (trust?)
  • - in groups/ out groups?
• 11/25 Interactivity (but mostly "Tools") - Tomlinson
  • "A Program That You Write"
  • Writing an alternative when you need a tool that doesn't exist.
  • Programming is a hard and slow process, but is powerful.
  • Drawing perfect circles by hand versus by computer
  • Bill was primarily discussing tools this class
  • Definition of a tool: It has an input, manipulates the input, and gives an output.
  • Audacity (audio program) was demo'd and it crashed.
  • Taxonomy of tools: Bill presented "visual / auditory / tactile" as a taxonomy of tools.
  • Some tools are created similarly so you don't have to re-learn them every time
  • For audio and visual stuff: you can create it, capture it, and manipulate it.

• FINAL EXAM REVIEW NOTES - READINGS

• Reynolds, Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model
  • Flocking rules: COLLISION AVOIDANCE, STAY CLOSE TO THE CENTER OF THE FLOCK (STICK TOGETHER), & VELOCITY MATCHING
• Crawford, The Art of Computer Game Design, Chapters 1- 4
  • See question/answer below: "8. In Chapter 1 of The Art of Computer Game Design, Crawford discusses the interactive element of games."
  • Re-read Crawford!!!

• Final Review - Questions from 2006 Final Exam! http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/Fall06-Final.pdf

  Optional: Split up in groups, each take a question and present on it:

  PETER QUESTION - NOT LIKELY TO BE ON 2008 EXAM - 1. Strategy games on the computer have their historical conditions of possibility in risk-reward calculations and military scenario planning. Role playing and adventure games have some historical conditions of possibility in network routing, and in cave exploration as one early implementation of what is possible in translating dungeons and dragons play to the computer. What are some of the historical conditions of the speed and graphic user interfaces that we associate with a typical action game?

  REMEMBER SALEN & ZIMMERMAN - METAGAMING, ETC - 2. Although action games and RPGs or adventure games are different in many ways, both are about exploring computer space. Talk about some ways in which both action games and adventure or role-playing games can be enriched by user-generated content.

  3. Are computer games merely a way for humans to adapt to computer technology? Or is "Spacewar" (for instance) a work of art? Carefully argue one way or another. REMEMBER POOLE'S ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (ALSO, I DON'T THINK WE'VE DISCUSSED ART THIS QUARTER)

  4. What is your favorite game? Explain your choice with concepts from the course. USE CRAWFORD & POOLE (CRAWFORD, CHAPTER 2 - FANTASY/EXPLORATION, PROVING ONESELF, SOCIAL LUBRICATION, EXERCISE, NEED FOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT). POOLE CAN BE USED TO DESCRIBE GENRES, ETC. FLOCKING (CAN BE RE-PHRASED AS AI).

  5. If you wanted to put a picture of your face onto a character in a computer game, describe a set of tools you might use, and how these tools fit together into a production pipeline. (TOMLINSON: INPUT, MANIPULATION, OUTPUT)

  6. Arrange the following tools into a taxonomy where no node has more than two child nodes: Photoshop, a digital camera, Audacity, 3D Studio Max, a microphone, a computer keyboard, an optical scanner and a pencil. The tools should appear on the leaves or fringes of the tree you draw. Please label each node with the characteristic that all of its children share.

  7. Craig Reynolds' paper "Flocks, Herds, and Schools" presents three simple rules for enabling computational agents to exhibit flocking behavior. Please list all three rules. COLLISION AVOIDANCE, STAY CLOSE TO THE CENTER OF THE FLOCK (STICK TOGETHER), & VELOCITY MATCHING.

  8. In Chapter 1 of The Art of Computer Game Design, Crawford discusses the interactive element of games. He shows how interaction distinguishes games from several other pastimes or diversions. Select one of the types of pastimes or diversions Crawford mentions. Analyze its relationship to games, focusing on interactivity. Your short essay should also discuss the role played in game design by the type of pastime or diversion you have selected. (CRAWFORD PASTTIMES: BOARD GAMES, CARD GAMES, ATHLETIC GAMES, CHILDREN'S GAMES, COMPUTER GAMES, ALSO: PUZZLES, STORIES, TOYS.)
  

  Crawford quote on interactivity: "Interaction is important for several reasons. First, it injects a social or interpersonal element into the event. It transforms the challenge of the game from a technical one to an interpersonal one. Solving a cube puzzle is a strictly technical operation; playing chess is an interpersonal operation. In the former, one plays against the logic of the situation; in the latter, one uses the logic of the situation to play against the opponent."
  Note: read "Games versus Puzzles", "Games versus Stories", "Games versus Toys"

• REMEMBER: FINAL EXAM Tuesday December 9th 10:30am - 12:30pm. PSCB 120. NOT 11am! REPEAT AFTER ME: "I WILL NOT SHOW UP AT 11am."

  





---





For more information, consult the official course syllabus at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/US12A/syllabus.html