First Assignments
1. Still need e-mails with blog urls. Only gotten urls from Rohith, Christian, Jay and Curtis so far.
2. On your own blog, (not the class one) Blog your top 10 favorite games, why they're your favorite and, what made them really stand out for you. We'll use this to begin to help us decide what we'll be demoing for each other in class.
3. Start doing research on the net for MAME and Pinball emulation programs and sites and for articles and information on the intellectual property and rights issues around them. Start posting sites to our common delicious site and check folder to make sure you're not duplicating bookmarks. Put your name in as part of the extended description field so we know who put it up.
4. Got to the discussions tab on the class blog and start discussing :-)
Retro Historical Game Research
Due Date: 9/23-end of the quarter
Retro/Historical Games Research...
Group Web Searching and Delicious entering. Start by entering the companies below and use them to build tags/categories off of.
1. Emulators:
Where are the legal ROMs? Starroms is one provider, are their others? Intellivission gives away a few games on their web site as a way to suck you into buying their compilations, are there others? Have any manufacturers just released their stuff into the public domain?
2. Compilations
Intellivision sells collections of their old games pretty much anway you'd want 'em. CDs for PCs, "TV Game" controllers with embedded SW, cell phones, etc. Are their other companies reselling their old products across multiple platforms? To PCs?
3. "TV Games"
Molded Controllers that connect directly to a TV set, Jakks TV Games and Radica UK are two companies that do this? What do they sell? Are there other companies doing it?
4. Magazines and Web Sites.
Retrogames and retrogamer out of the UK are two, what else can you find?
You gotta fight for your right to party?
Historical Rights Research
Step 1: 2000 Words on each company, 2 companies each (except atari and nintendo 4000 words): minimum citiation 10 and should include your book, historical websites and where possible, historical articles on companies. Website resources include mobygames.com and wordiq
"http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Timeline_of_video_games"
Due Date: Midnight oct 4th as 500 word summary on your blog. Submit full paper as hard copy to me in class the next day,
We'll pick from these companies...
Nintendo (Pres PS1)
Sega
Atari (arcade and console only)
Coleco
Intellivision
Taito
Namco
Magnavox
Bally/Midway
Capcom
Texas Instruments
Konami
Williams
Atrovision
Gottlieb
Activision
Taito
Tengen
Items to cover:
Company History, significant hardware and software release dates, top/most significant releases, different platforms most significant tiles appeared on, dates, company current status (dead, acquired, etc) current status/availability of titles.
Use your book, and web resources.
Step:2 In class we'll discuss your findings
Step 3: we'll use the information you've gathered to help us determine our letter writing campaign steps :-)
Game Time Line
Create a broad game history timeline that covers main console and computer releases. Make it a simple text html document like the one at word iq (see previous assignment) Not every game ever released, just major hardware and top 10 games of each year.
Now take your favorite games list and what you wrote about them for the earlier assignments and drop them in.
This'll be due Weds Night the 6th at midnight. Submit a brief description of the experience of building on your class blog and put a link to the WWW page on it as well
Timeline Site
I've been going through the timeline examples posted under the timeline category in our Delicious site and I've picked a couple that y'all have found that are in the ballpark of what we're looking for. While many of them have usefull information what we're particularly looking for is something that displays multiple timelines and or multiple topics across time. That list, though short, is as follows...
Nice display of multiple events and links between them in time.
MSNBC 9/11
Lots of functionality here. Gotta click all over to check it all out, interface is a mess, but some ineresting ideas.
World History
Only one timeline, but easy on the eyes and provides detailed info in a pop-up
Egypt
Ugly, but shows info and jumps, on click, to more detailed info
9/11 take 2
Multiple events and projects in different phases. Zooms at click but doesn't provide additional info.
Mars Missions
This one is also ugly, but shows some color coding and differentiation between types of information
Civilization
This one show's many events, but not multiple types of events. Could be broken down by color code, etc.
Inventions
Last but not least an article on Timeline Construction in Excel which might have some useful design process info.
We'll start talking about them in class Tuesday and kick around some ideas.
Final Paper and Presentations
Paper Presentation Assignment:
Paper Content:
Write on 3 games that you find particularly addictive and/or cutting edge. Using terms and language from...
1. what we’ve read in the New Media Reader
2. from the three chapters from Hamlet and The Holodeck handed out on10/26
3. And what you can learn about games as stories vs games from Henry Jenkins
analyze the games. What is it about the designs, writing, etc that makes them stand out to you? Highlight features and/or sections of the games that best exemplify what you’re talking about. Compare them to other games and/or other media and/or each other. 5000 words 15 citations.
Presentation Content:
Put your $ where your mouth is ☺. Demonstrate the features and sections of the games you wrote about and discuss them
Due Dates:
Selection of 3 Game titles and Tech Specs: ie what we’ll need to demo them in class on presentation day. Due Monday Night 11/1 before midnight. Try to avoid overlap. No more than 2 presentations showing the same game, so submit early if you want to ensure you get your pick. Significant overlap is unlikely, but it could happen. Submit your picks by adding a comment to this section of the blog
Submission of Hard Copy: No later than the end of office hours Wednesday 11/10. If it’s after 2:30, it’s too late.
Presentations: Thursday 11/11 and Tues 11/16. Order TBA depending on games to be demoed and platforms required.
Web Site Content Assignments
Ok,
Here's the list of data points for the Computing and Game sections of the www site. More to come for the others. Luis will post exact word lengths, etc for spec but you can start tracking the details down.
Whoever doesn't claim these will pick some from the other list of Electronic Music, Tech Art and Video Art list I'll post in an hour or so
General Computing
As we may think
Sketch Pad
DynaBook
Englebart Mouse and Windows
Apple II
IBM PC
Macintosh
Windows
Commodore 64/128
Commodore Amiga
Atari 400/800
Atari 512
ATI
Alienware
Arcade and Computer Games
Space War
Pong
Donkey Kong
PacMan
Tetris
Mario
Mortal Kombat
Zelda
Zork
Ultima On-Line
Everquest
Sims
7thguest 11th hour
Myst
Atari/Bushnell
Nintendo
Soy
Microsoft
EA
Namco
Ok, start collecting your data now so you're ready when the submission form is built