Quick introductions - what's your name? Why are you interested in this class?
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 junk there
- Office hours: Wednesday 1:30pm - 3:30pm - Office: CalIT2, Room 4300.82 (Building 325 on the map)
What should you know at the end of this class?
US 12A is part of UCI's First-Year Integrated Program.
Throughout the year we will be investigating computer games as artistic,
cultural, and technological phenomena.
An important theme of this course is collaboration.
All but the simplest computer games are created by more than one person,
and when we study a computer game we participate in a dialogue or
negotiated process of sorts that includes the creators of the game,
other players, society at large, and ourselves.
We want to promote a collaborative spirit throughout the course,
while being aware of the need for each student to master the
material individually and to receive a grade based on his or her own performance.
At the conclusion of US 12ABC, you will be able to:
Because US 12ABC satisfies part of your lower-division writing requirement, in each quarter you will be writing research-based, college-level papers. You will learn to:
- summarize and respond critically to an argument made by another writer;
- formulate an argument of your own and explore it fully;
- construct an annotated bibliography that identifies and summarizes at least six sources possibly useful to a research question you pose about a topic;
- compose a coherent essay that demonstrates critical thinking, analyzes sources, and considers multiple perspectives;
- convey your thesis and integrate your research and your arguments in fluent, well-organized sentences and paragraphs;
- draw substantive, evaluative conclusions in response to a thesis you put forth.
An essential component of being a good writer is understanding the multi-stage process of composing written work. In US 12ABC you will learn to:
- propose, plan, and undertake a research project that involves a number of writing activities;
- develop strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading an essay;
- be an effective peer review editor, and to receive and integrate peer review comments into your writing;
- format an essay in a discipline-appropriate style;
- compose a grammatically correct, proofread and edited final draft.
Review of Diagnostic Writing Assignment - any questions? (Purpose of this writing, EEE, DropBox, etc.) It's due at 8pm tonight.
Week 1 Discussion Concept: 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 (Nobody, 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?
To think about over the next couple of days:
metaphor [from Greek metaphora, from metapherein 'to carry over', 'to transfer', from meta 'beyond', 'over' and pherein 'to bring', 'to bear'. See META-; BEAR 'to carry'.] Use of a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness or analogy between them (the ship plows the sea; a valley of oaths). A metaphor may be regarded as a compressed simile, the comparison implied in the former (a marble brow) being explicit in the latter (a brow white like marble). A metaphor imaginatively identifies one object with another, and ascribes to the first the qualities of the second; where the simile declares that A is like B, the metaphor assumes that A is B; as, "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." (Proverbs 20:27) - "Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, bound for the prize?" (William Shakespeare) A metaphor may usually be expanded into a simile, and a simile condensed into a metaphor.
metonymy [from Greek metonymia, from meta 'indicating change' and onymia, onoma 'name'. See NAME.] Use of one word for another that it suggests, as the effect for the cause, the cause for the effect, the sign for the thing signified, the container for the thing contained, etc. (darkness was the saving of us, for the cause of saving; a man keeps a good table, instead of good food; we read Vergil, that is, his poems; a man has a warm heart, that is, warm affections).
synecdoche [from Greek synekdoche, from synekdechesthai 'to receive jointly', from syn 'with' and ekdechesthai 'to receive', from ek 'out' and dechesthai 'to receive'.] A figure of speech which a part is put for the whole (fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (the smiling year for spring), the species for the genus (cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (a creature for a man), the name of the material for the thing made, etc.
