Monday, December 9, 2013

Video Games as Art




For the final project in my Game Studies class, I decided to write about the controversy over whether video games constitute art. (My paper can be downloaded here.) I decided to write about this subject because I had read arguments about this before—particularly when Roger Ebert first made it clear that he thought video games could not be art. This controversy always puzzled me. I have been playing video games since I could hold a controller, and it seems so obvious to me that of course video games can be art. At least the ones which intend to be artful.

Through my research, I’ve come to realize what I already knew: I hate art culture. Arguments over what is art and what is not just become so petty. Arguments can appear rational at first, but after a little digging, any argument from either side will likely boil down to something completely irrational. Art is something which will never be clearly defined. It is not like science, where everyone who participates comes to an agreement on explicit definitions of terms to be used in the literature and research; everyone in art culture just picks their favorite definition, and if a dispute arises, no one within a 10-foot radius is safe from the foamy saliva that flings from the mouths of either side as they scream right past one another.

So I don’t really care any more. I’m just going to let video games be video games and let the children scream it out.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Gamification is Bullshit is Bullshit




In his article “Gamification is Bullshit,” Ian Bogost writes about his distaste for gamification. With great vitriol, Bogost denounces all forms of gamification as bull shit, saying that it is only a tool for marketers; that it perverts games. Game developers which make use of it are just taking the easy way out, Bogost says. He believes that the “bullshitters” which make use of gamification are not liars, since bullshitters have no interest in the truth.

I’m not sure what triggered his rant, but the truth is Bogost’s article is bull shit. Gamification is something which people do and have done naturally, way before video games were around. When children walk down the street and jump over cracks, they are gamifying their walk home to make it less boring. When you offer yourself rewards for completing small steps in a project at work, you are gamifying your work (“whistle while you work” is telling you to make a game out of a boring task). And doing this can make you more productive.

If Bogost’s beef with gamification is that some game developers overuse it, then his article should address that instead. It is an entirely different complaint. To throw out the whole idea of gamification is just nonsense. To say game developers who use it are just being lazy is ignorant and short-sighted. Game developers use gamification because games are funner when a player has clear goals, and gets rewarded for his or her actions. And most people play games with the goal of having fun.

Monday, October 21, 2013

5 Games


In class on 2 Oct 2013, we played a few different games with the purpose of assessing a game objectively while trying to maintain the absorbed experience a player would.

One of the most interesting games was one called QWOP, named after the keys used to play. In it, a player uses the keys Q, W, O, and P to control the legs of an athletic sprinter. Q and W control the knees while O and P control the hip joints. The goal of the game is to see how far you can make the character run using this control scheme. As you can probably imagine, this is rather difficult. The game explores what it is like to make a game out of something which we usually take for granted: how complex the balancing act of running or walking is, which in video games is usually as simple as pressing a directional key.

Another game I played during the session was Canabalt. It was a platformer in which the player moves rapidly from left to right, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding obstacles in the way. I liked this game because it was simple and fun.

We also played a few games together as a class. One was called There’s Only One Level. This game was rather interesting. You play as an elephant, and your goal is to get to the exit of the level.



Sometimes you have to press a button that’s up on a higher platform to open the door to the exit; other times you must avoid pushing the button. At every completion of the level, the player starts again, but with minor modifications to the game mechanics. Another variation is that the arrow keys stop working, and the player must discover that the only way to get to the exit is by using their mouse to drag the elephant. I thought this game was really interesting because it kept surprising me with which game mechanic they would change to challenge the player to get to the end.

Another game we played in class was called Don’t Burn the Rope. It is a simple platformer in which the player traverses a cave at first, in which there are directions as the player progresses. It informs the player that they must burn the rope to defeat the impending boss. At the end of the tunnel, the player encounters the boss. The way to win is to climb up platforms on the side to the roof and collects a torch, and then jump across platforms to reach a chandelier which is hanging by a rope. If the player jumps across the chandelier so that their torch touches the chandelier, it drops on the boss and kills it. The player then wins and is rewarded with a humorous song about the game during the credits. This song was my favorite part of the game. It essentially clues the player in that the game is somewhat of a joke and encourages them to play again.

Finally, the last game we played in class was called “dis4ia.” This game was rather different from the rest of the games we had seen. It is an autobiographical video game about someone’s experience going through hormone replacement therapy. It was told in the form of a series of mini-games in which the player makes their way through surreal interpretations of the things the narrator had to do during her therapy. For instance, to tell of her experience in the doctor’s office, the player must walk through a lobby and find the chair to sit and wait. Later, to communicate her experience taking hormone pillls, the player controls a side-scrolling up-ended mouth which must collect pills which are being shot down from a bottle above. It made for a pretty entertaining and engaging story of the experiences the narrator had to go through during her hormone replacement therapy.

They all made for rather entertaining games. My personal favorite was There’s Only One Level, because even though there was only one level, the variety of ways in which the player had to get to the end made for a pretty fun experience.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Word Wars

For my Game Studies class, I developed a paper game called Word Wars. It is a derivative of Scrabble, in which there is no point bias for the letters (i.e., every tile is worth one point). To make this game, all one needs is a standard set of scrabble pieces, or one could make the tiles out of 50 small pieces of paper. This is the letter distribution for the tiles:

Tile Letters (Format: LETTER – NUMBER OF TILES)

  • A – 5
  • B – 1
  • C – 1
  • D – 2
  • E – 6
  • F – 1
  • G – 1
  • H – 1
  • I – 4
  • J – 1
  • K – 1
  • L – 2
  • M – 1
  • N – 2
  • O – 4
  • P – 1
  • Q – 1
  • R – 3
  • S – 2
  • T – 2
  • U – 2
  • V – 1
  • W – 2
  • X – 1
  • Y – 1
  • Z – 1
And this is the final version of The Rules:

Rules  
  • Every player is given a pile of 25 tiles, which each have a letter on them, but plays with a hand of 7 tiles each. (Tile distribution is listed below.)
  • Each player lays down letters to make words a la Scrabble.
  • If a player runs out of tiles, the opposing player makes successive turns until either they use all of their tiles, or they cannot make another word.
  • If both players successfully use all of their tiles, both players count the tiles in play and split the points.
  • If one player uses all of their tiles and the other does not, the player who used all of their tiles wins.
  • In any case, if a player cannot make a word with their tiles, they must either forfeit the round or trade tiles (see below).
  • If a player wins, they collect all the tiles in play and tally their score. All tiles are then reshuffled and redistributed for the next round.
  • Players continue for 2-5 rounds, and whoever has the highest score wins.
  • Trading: If a player so chooses, they may trade any number of the tiles in their hand. However, each tile they trade gives the opposing player that many points, which they tally immediately. Traded tiles go back into the player’s pile, and the pile gets reshuffled.
  • Sudden Death: If a player cannot make a word with their current hand, then they may choose to call Sudden Death: They give their hand to the opposing player. If the opposing player can successfully use all of their remaining tiles, plus the opposing player’s tiles, they win the round, and double their points. However, if they cannot use all these tiles, the opposing player wins the round (but does not double their points). A player may refuse Sudden Death.
As one can see from the rules, the core mechanic would probably be a Race to the Finish, as players are essentially trying to use up all their tiles first.

For those interested, here is my log of play tests, which details the evolution of the game, and the changes it underwent:

Play Log
  •   Play Test 1 (18 Sept. 2013)
    • After the first play test, I realized having all the tiles at once made the game very confusing initially. 25 tiles is too many options when trying to create a word. So I decided to stick with the way Scrabble does it: each player has a hand of 7 tiles, and draws from their own pile after each turn to maintain 7 tiles.
    • To help with a reduced hand size, I thought a trading mechanism would be beneficial for situations when the player’s current hand isn’t very good. However, I felt there must be some kind of drawback to trading tiles, so I decided giving the opposing player some points would be sufficient.
  • Play Test 2 (28 Sept. 2013)
    • After watching a player lose after the other player had used all their tiles, I realized that the opposing player still has their tiles left, and they should have a chance to try to use them up. So I tweaked the rules regarding winning, introducing the possibility of a tie. If both players manage to use all their tiles, they will split the points.
    • I had an idea that introducing some kind of way to save oneself from losing a round might make things interesting. So I thought of Sudden Death, which is described in the rules.
  • Play Test 3 (30 Sept. 2013)
    • Saw that there wasn’t much use of Sudden Death, but I think it’s still a fun thing to have. I thought maybe with less tiles, the game might go faster, but upon some thought, the letter distribution is already pretty thin with only 50 tiles, so I decided to make no changes.
Here are the earlier versions of my rules, for comparison with the final rules above:

Initial Rules
  • Every player is given 25 tiles with letters on them.
  • Each player lays down letters to make words a la Scrabble.
  • If a player runs out of tiles, s/he wins the round.
  • If a player can no longer make a word with their tiles, they lose the round.
  • If a player wins, they collect all the tiles in play and tally their score.
  • Players continue for 2-5 rounds, and whoever has the highest score wins.

And finally, a picture of the game in action during one of my play tests!


Monday, September 9, 2013

Game Day

As a class exercise, we all brought games from home and played some with each other. In my group, we played a game called Cards Against Humanity. If you have ever played the game Apples to Apples, this is more or less the same game, but the more adult version. It's a fantastic game, especially if everyone is drinking.

The rules and game mechanics are:
  1. There is a white deck and a black deck. Everyone draws ten cards from the white deck. Each white card contains a phrase, or word.
  2. During each player's turn, they draw a black card, which has a subject, question, or a fill-in-the-blank sentence.
  3. The player who draws the black card on his/her turn reads the card to everyone playing, and then everyone picks a card from their hand of white cards which they think fits the best.
  4. Once all cards are collected, the player who read the black card reads aloud all the white cards given to him/her and proceeds to pick the card which they think either fits the best, or finds the funniest.
  5. Whoever holds the most black cards at the end of the game wins.
The combination of black cards and white card answers are what make the game so hilarious. So for example, a black card might ask, "What keeps me up at night?" and answers could range from, "Daddy issues" to "Bitches." A personal favorite combination of mine is "What were Michael Jackson's final dying thoughts?" and "Kids with ass cancer." As you can tell, the combinations can get pretty heinous.





Since the goal is to collect as many black cards as possible, a core mechanic is Collection. Also, because a commonly used strategy of winning this game is predicting the sense of humor of the person who read the black card, it could also be argued that a core mechanic is Prediction.

Cards Against Humanity is a very fun game for those with a darker sense of humor. Many combinations of black and white cards are wholly unexpected, which provides a large portion of the comedy.

Its web site is here:
http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/

I strongly encourage you to give it a try.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Marshmallow Game


I recently experienced the Marshmallow Game for the first time. It is an interesting game in which a few participants must work together to build a structure out of twenty pieces of spaghetti, a piece of string, and tape, on top of which must rest the marshmallow. It was an interesting experience that demonstrated the strengths of good cooperation, and for many others, demonstrates how easily bad cooperation can lead to disaster.


Luckily, my group’s structure stood successfully. We spent much of our time in the planning phase. More than half the time was spent discussing how best to make the structure stable with the marshmallow on top. Around the five-minute mark, I began to worry that we would run out of time without having actually built anything, so I decided to urge everyone to start building something. We hurriedly settled on a triangular shape, which was reinforced by taping three parallel spaghetti sticks together for each leg, and managed to finish the structure and top it with the marshmallow just in time. Surprisingly, we had the tallest structure in the room and won the game.


Through this experience, I learned that good communication is essential to collaborative efforts. I also learned that time management is essential as well, as we had difficulty getting past the design phase.