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Either Spam has crept onto our blog, or someone has entirely too much time on his/her hands.

I will be posting my comments regarding these readings on my blog as I read the chapters.

Well, I just finished the article by Henry Jenkins. Seeing as there's no other place to discuss it I figured I'd say something about it here.
I found that to wonderful material, perhaps because it articulated ideas I've been on the verge of for a while now. The funny thing is I'd been toying with the idea of "emergent stories" for a while now. However, that spring partly from my tinkering with ideas of emergent rulesets and character creation for tabletop rpgs. I think it would be interesting if you "discover" or "write-in" things about the character as you go along. It could be fun to "play" with the narrative, rather than being "lead" by it. In fact, manipulating events and characters can be a game in itself given suitably rich environments and character responses. Actually, a big part of the draw I find in social games like dating sims and diplomacy games. Figuring out how to get a given reaction becomes a puzzle in and of itself.

Anyways, sorry for the ramble. I blame the sleep depro. 2 more points before I go.

quote:
Adams claims, "a good story hangs together the way a good jigsaw puzzle hangs together. When you pick it up, every piece locked tightly in place next to its neighbors."

The problem here is story events are not immediately chained as in a novel. Even if you make a strict line of evenets if players have any freedom they'll control what they do and how they go about it between mission points. The story in games needs to be broken down into segments, if for no other reason to provide sections with greater player freedoms. I don't think controlling the storu is as good a goal as providing something they can interact with.

I found the movie anology more compelling. Given the current state of games, action movies seem particulally appropriate. As he points out, the time in a good movie is divided pretty smoothly between plot and action without taking away from either.

Anyhow, I think there were some more points, but ideas came to me a bit to fast while I was reading . I bookmarked the think for later reads though.

Your interests in "Writing in" and "Tinkering" with things could be something you explore in the next 2 classes and see how it might work

Well, I managed to salvage a few minutes between activities, so here's an update on some of what I've read.

"Video Games and Computer Holding Power" was interesting, though some of the trasitions seemed a bit odd. The part about technology fears being projected onto video games was an interesting point. In fact, I may end up quoting some parts of this article for my paper in Current Themes (the subject is video game violence). I agree that gameplay is rarely "mindless". In fact, if things appraoch a state where you no longer think players seem to either start working from reflex or quickly get bored. In fact, even reflexes seem to be the result of learned actions, which implies a certain amount of thought. I have found comments about less activity in the frontal lobes during gameplay. However, I wonder if this has anything to due with the focus on the game and outside of onew own life. I can certainly relate to the zen like state mentioned later in the article. Games let you get out of your own life for a bit. It actually reminded of a classic "male" reaction of doing things to take one's mind of a problem. This lets the subconscious work on the original problem while the conscious mind concerns itself with the current activity. I definately think games are rich in exploration potential. Of course, explorer-type gamers can usually run through much of a games content fairly rapidly. In fact, a common issue that shows up in the GameDev forums is the debate between explorers and goal-oriented players. Games are definately an excellent conduit to fantasy. Therein seems to lie many of the temptations and problems. An interesting application I noticed in both this and the handout was the use of games as an exploratory medium. They do provide a safe space to experiment with things one can't or shouldn't do for any number of reasons. Perhaps that's part of why there are so many violent games. People do seem to have some violent instincts, but rarely seem to express. Perhaps such games act in part to vent and explore these urges. However, to more throughly work these isssues ouch, more realism may be needed. I'm refering to realistic reactions more than graphics. After all, blowing up monsters is fun, but if you want people to think about violence and your reactions to it, you have to give it signifigance. Of course, you may just be playing for the gamplay, which the article does seem to refer to when it mentions the "perfect mirror". This mirror seems a way to challenge and measure oneself, which can be good or bad in it's own right.

I realize I'm babbling, so I'll cut out now. I'll try to get to some other articles by tommorrow.

Well, I managed to free up a few minutes between writing and research, so I may as well post my reactions to "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat".

First off, I was expecting this to more of a 'developing in an movie/games environment' and was plesently suprised to find an early Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG?). The object oriented model they talked about made sense, though I'm not sure how you'd execute the variable representation they mentioned. I know we have things like alternate text for images, but this suggests a much wider range of alternative forms. If you're going that far, why not give a bit more customizable representation. That would create the weird phenomenon where different players could see the same scene differently. Most of the empahsis seemed to be on the community, which seems to be a key point. I found the emergent behaviours intriguing. The story about Death's Handgun was particulaly interesting and entertaining.

This is a shorter post than the last. Maybe I'll add more later.