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Brett Boessen

Raph's Website » Rules versus mechanics - 2 views

www.raphkoster.com/...rules-versus-mechanics

games fundamentals production design rules

shared by Brett Boessen on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Brett Boessen on 15 Dec 11
     
    Nice fine-grained discussion of one designer's distinction between "rules" and "mechanics."
Bryan Alexander

Peacekeeping the Game - 6 views

www.peacekeepingthegame.com

games

shared by Bryan Alexander on 28 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 Feb 12
     
    Open source board game on political conflict.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Brett Boessen on 28 Feb 12
     
    How is it open-sourced? (If the answer is "read the site materials", I apologize in advance. ;)
  • Bryan Alexander on 28 Feb 12
     
    Read the site materials. :) Seriously, the rules, counters, and board are all printable there. Not an ambitious game.
  • Brett Boessen on 28 Feb 12
     
    Oh I see it now. I especially like the supporting materials -- goals, background article. Those wouldn't have to be seen by the players, but could really help the facilitator/teacher.
Brett Boessen

On Authorship in Games - Click Nothing - 5 views

clicknothing.typepad.com/...on-authorship-i.html

ebert games art criticism blog post

shared by Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10 - Cached
  • interacting with a work does not shape the work, it ‘only’ reveals it.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Well put.
  • Because a game is a complete formal system
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Is he implicitly arguing here that games with emergent elements -- especially MMO's and games with heavy player-vs-player interactions -- are not games, or is he arguing that they also represent "complete formal system(s)"? Or did he simply misspeak? Because I don't see emergence as falling within any kind of closed system.
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Aug 10
       
      I take him to be talking about elements that belong to the game proper, not to things that might emerge within and through the game as a result of player interactions. So in-game actions are part of the game. Forums for player discussion, clans etc are not part of the game, at least not part of the authored game. But I agree, it's very ambiguous and should be debated.
  • The rebuttal to this argument lies in a comparison to film or to music or to any other collaborative artistic creation.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Woops -- I thought he was going to address my points above, but he went in a different direction here. (I'm enjoying the point-by-point-rebuttal structure of the post immensely, though. I'd love more of my students to write this way. :)
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 09 Aug 10
       
      I agree. The noise point is quite good. And careful comparisons with other media are useful.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • The Argument from Legitimacy
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      He rocks this entire section -- well done.
  • “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.”This is a much easier point to tackle simply because there is a fallacy in Ebert’s argument. He is implying that interacting with a work is the same as changing it. But this is not true. My ‘paint’ is not ‘what the player does’. My paint is ‘the rules that govern what the player can do’.
    • Brett Boessen
      Brett Boessen on 14 Jul 10
       
      Agreed. Ebert probably should have read Bogost's Persuasive Games before he started all of this.
  • the audience must always interact with a work on some level
  • The artist is also capable of creating an entire expressive system space that explores a potential infinity of different notions
  • Where most other media require the audience to induce their meaning, games afford the audience at least the possibility of deducing their meaning.
  • GTA: San Andreas on the other hand – which I played for a good 100 hours or so, gave me such a world transforming view of racial tension and inequity in early 1990’s California, that I have been shaken to the core, and have been forced to re-examine a huge part of my world view.
  • while there can be an art of expression in the way someone reveals the art, this does not necessarily diminish the art in the design of the work itself
  • There is noise in these systems too – some of it comes from the collaboration of others, and some of it comes from random noise
  • Many filmmakers, from Taratino to Inarritu to Haggis and dozens more have been increasingly attempting to explore stories from multiple angles in an attempt to mimic – in a medium severely limited for this purpose – what games can do innately
  • Ebert is wrong for two important reasons
  • there is authorship in games, no matter how much we abdicate
  • I will accept Ebert’s roughly stated thesis that art requires authorship
  • Because a game is a complete formal system, the entire possible range of outputs from those systems is determined by me
  • how do you know you are able to express your thoughts and feelings in the design of interactive systems’
  • I know because I understand it. What I am expressing makes sense to me both intellectually and emotionally. If others do not understand it, it is not really a question of whether I am expressing myself, but rather one of whether I am expressing myself clearly
  • The next argument is whether or not it is, in fact, true that the entire possible range of outputs from a games’ systems are really determined by me
  • The next argument would be that audiences cannot reconstruct the meaning I intend them to by way of interacting with systems
  • Another argument against the existence of real authorship in games is the argument about the legitimacy of the kind of authorship I am talking about. In his responses to Barker, Ebert says:“If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices.”
  • The final argument that I see remaining is the one that asks ‘who is the artist here anyway?’ Ebert says:
Ed Webb

Virtual Worlds, Simulations, and Games for Education: A Unifying View - 2009 - ASTD - 0 views

www.astd.org/...1009_aldrich.html

games gaming education simulation virtualworlds virtual_world opinion theory

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Nov 09 - Cached
  • It is more useful, and perhaps more complete, to see virtual worlds, games, and simulations as points along a continuum, all instances of highly interactive virtual environments (HIVEs).
  • The ease with which the children in the pool, the students in the virtual class, and the pilot in the flight simulator move from exploratory virtual-world behaviors to structured but simple games to taking on rigorous simulation challenges illustrates both the differences across these three instances and the connections that link them. It is only by building from open experimentation to increasingly rigorous rules, structures, and success criteria that children learn transferable water survival skills and pilots learn critical flying skills.
  • A virtual world will not suffice where a simulation is needed. The virtual world offers only context with no content; it contributes a set of tools that both enable and restrict the uses to which it may be put. An educational simulation may take place in a virtual world, but it still must be rigorously designed and implemented. Organizations routinely fail in their efforts to access the potential of virtual worlds when they believe that buying a virtual world means getting a simulation. Likewise, a game is not an educational simulation. Playing SimCity will not make someone a better mayor. Some players of, for instance, World of Warcraft may learn deep, transferable, even measurable leadership skills but not all players will. The game does not provide a structure for ensuring learning. Just because some players learn these skills playing the game, that does not mean either that most players are also learning these skills or that it should be adopted in a leadership development program. Conversely, a purely educational simulation may not be very much fun. The program may have the three-dimensional graphics and motion capture animations of a computer game, but the content may be frustrating. Specific competencies must be invoked, and students' assumptions about what the content should be, likely shaped by their experiences with games, will be challenged.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • One example of the commonality across all HIVEs is the need for introductory structures. These asynchronous, self-paced levels or locations allow students to learn and demonstrate basic competencies in manipulation, navigation, and communication before moving on to the "real" exercise.
  • the need for communities around games and simulations
  • Virtual environments provide a natural way for people to learn by nurturing an instinctive progression from experiencing to playing to learning; instructors should encourage the shifting across experimentation, play, and practice in which students naturally engage. In fact, instructors can exploit that behavior by providing stages that accommodate each stage. Light games and self-paced introductory levels can be used to get students comfortable with basic concepts and the interface necessary to exist in the virtual world, and the complexity can be increased to encourage students to move on to play and practice stages.
  • While best practices in content structuring may be transferred from stand-alone educational simulations to virtual world-based simulations, metrics and learning objectives for the different contexts should be different. Learning objectives and assessments around games, for instance, should be focused on the engagement, exposure, and use of simple interfaces while those for educational simulations should measure the development of complex, transferrable skills.
  • Ed Webb on 01 Nov 09
     
    via @timbuckteeth
Bryan Alexander

Where's the curtsy button? I test-drive the online Jane Austen role-playing game | Book... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...-jane-austen-role-playing-game

game simulation

shared by Bryan Alexander on 30 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Bryan Alexander on 30 Sep 17
     
    "Gossip is our weapon of choice," reads Tyrer's Kickstarter pitch. "Instead of raids, we will have grand balls. Instead of dungeons, we will have dinner parties." Ever, Jane, currently a free playable prototype, has strict social rules. To navigate its mazes of etiquette, my character keeps a Lady's Magazine to hand. Drinks with characters are scheduled via requests sent by letter, while the importance of social conduct is reflected in the fact you have three buttons, each offering a different kind of curtsy or bow. "It was about finding out what the characters in her novels did," says Tyrer, "coupled with the etiquette of Regency period."
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