an animation student writes...
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Exquisite corpse (second appearance of)
Not strictly Game blogging, but... I mentioned this in my post yesterday, and today The Guardian is featuring a piece on just that term! It's features Tim Burton and his Twitter blog 'Tim Burton Story'. The Corpse can be viewed by non-Twitter folk too. The Rules (of course there are rules!), are simply:
- This story telling experiment runs November 22 - December 6, 2010
- Tweet as often as you like
- The best Tweets of the day will be selected to build the story
- All selected Tweets can be viewed under "All Submissions"
- Follow the story as it unfolds on the "Read the Story" tab
- Inappropriate submissions will be blocked
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Who am I? (makes me Xyzzy thinking about it)
this post is about who I am, or, really what type am I? I have just four types to choose: Killer; Explorer; Socialiser; and Achiever. My hope is that I am an Explorer...
However, Magnus (and Richard A Bartle in 'Players Who Suit MUDs') have loaded the dice. It all depends on how I interact with MUDs (Multi User Dungeon!) If I play them like games, (ie Chess, tennis, D&D?) then I am an ACHIEVER. Or are they pastimes (ie reading, gardening, cooking?), then I'm an EXPLORER. Maybe like sports? (huntin', shooting', fishin'), then KILLER.. Or else MUDs are entertainments? (like nightclubs, TV, concerts). Then it's SOCIALISER. Er, then I'm none of the above.... maybe more explorer than the other three... and using the four following details seems to be closest to getting me into one of the four.
To summarize Bartle: EXPLORERS will be interested in having the game surprise them; the sense of wonder which the virtual world imbues that they crave for; other players add depth to the game, but they aren't essential components of it, except perhaps as sources of new areas to visit; scoring points all the time is a worthless occupation, because it defies the very open-endedness that makes a world live and breathe; most accomplished explorers could easily rack up sufficient points to reach the top, but such one-dimensional behaviour is the sign of a limited intellect. I think Explorers are a bit smug too, perfect.
However, there appears a caveat from this rigid hierarchy: "Other types could conceivably exist, but they are very rare if they do. The dynamics model is, however, imprecise: it takes no account of outside factors which may influence player types or the relationships between then. It is thus possible that some of the more regimented MUDs (eg. role-playing MUDs, educational MUDs, group therapy MUDs) have an external dynamic (eg. fandom interest in a subject, instructions from a teacher/trainer.)"
"Instructions from a teacher"...Bingo.
Interestingly, (or not) I was in this domain years ago. As a younger version of me, eleven years old or so... My cousin was a Wargamer, and he and his friends would be serious Napoleonic battlers. They wound up outgrowing the living room table and booked a function room in a big pub near an abbatoir in Liverpool. The heady aromas of beer, fags and slaughtering mingled with Humbrol painted lead soldiers on a battle field half filling the room. The whole thing looked amazing. I was fascinated too by their dedication, but not enough to want to do more than roll the dice when asked to. Or help them to locate the correct page in their rigid rule book. Maybe I'd get to pass them a ruler, to allow one to carefully move their infantry down the perfectly modeled valley - though I never actually moved them! It all took forever... week after week after their work/my school. I never saw an outcome, always missing that late night victory/defeat, they would pick another vintage clash to mimic and off they went... three, four, five weeks onwards.
A couple of them went onto playing Dungeons & Dragons and I'd bump into them in the more quality real-ale pubs downtown. They would remember me and tell me the latest news of developments and championships from around the world. It seemed a shame they stopped the Wargaming, it was seriously impressive and a proper spectacle for a young boy. But they dreaded the endless painting and the limited nature of the battle reanactments of their old hobby.
I got D&D as a concept and as a social force, but like the new MUDs I'm not going into a dungeon willingly... I haven't see the old Wargamers for years (my cousin no longer plays, but collects the ephemera), I wonder if they moved with technology. They met to socialise and wargamed out of real passion for their favourite subject. I bet they are connecting with the wider world and playing in a larger domain than the back room in the old pub (which was levelled a few years back) most evenings. I can easily imagine their avatars!...
A bit of history...
Now if it was being sent to discover the North West Passage... I'd be there! Explorer!*
However, Magnus (and Richard A Bartle in 'Players Who Suit MUDs') have loaded the dice. It all depends on how I interact with MUDs (Multi User Dungeon!) If I play them like games, (ie Chess, tennis, D&D?) then I am an ACHIEVER. Or are they pastimes (ie reading, gardening, cooking?), then I'm an EXPLORER. Maybe like sports? (huntin', shooting', fishin'), then KILLER.. Or else MUDs are entertainments? (like nightclubs, TV, concerts). Then it's SOCIALISER. Er, then I'm none of the above.... maybe more explorer than the other three... and using the four following details seems to be closest to getting me into one of the four.
To summarize Bartle: EXPLORERS will be interested in having the game surprise them; the sense of wonder which the virtual world imbues that they crave for; other players add depth to the game, but they aren't essential components of it, except perhaps as sources of new areas to visit; scoring points all the time is a worthless occupation, because it defies the very open-endedness that makes a world live and breathe; most accomplished explorers could easily rack up sufficient points to reach the top, but such one-dimensional behaviour is the sign of a limited intellect. I think Explorers are a bit smug too, perfect.
However, there appears a caveat from this rigid hierarchy: "Other types could conceivably exist, but they are very rare if they do. The dynamics model is, however, imprecise: it takes no account of outside factors which may influence player types or the relationships between then. It is thus possible that some of the more regimented MUDs (eg. role-playing MUDs, educational MUDs, group therapy MUDs) have an external dynamic (eg. fandom interest in a subject, instructions from a teacher/trainer.)"
"Instructions from a teacher"...Bingo.
Interestingly, (or not) I was in this domain years ago. As a younger version of me, eleven years old or so... My cousin was a Wargamer, and he and his friends would be serious Napoleonic battlers. They wound up outgrowing the living room table and booked a function room in a big pub near an abbatoir in Liverpool. The heady aromas of beer, fags and slaughtering mingled with Humbrol painted lead soldiers on a battle field half filling the room. The whole thing looked amazing. I was fascinated too by their dedication, but not enough to want to do more than roll the dice when asked to. Or help them to locate the correct page in their rigid rule book. Maybe I'd get to pass them a ruler, to allow one to carefully move their infantry down the perfectly modeled valley - though I never actually moved them! It all took forever... week after week after their work/my school. I never saw an outcome, always missing that late night victory/defeat, they would pick another vintage clash to mimic and off they went... three, four, five weeks onwards.
A couple of them went onto playing Dungeons & Dragons and I'd bump into them in the more quality real-ale pubs downtown. They would remember me and tell me the latest news of developments and championships from around the world. It seemed a shame they stopped the Wargaming, it was seriously impressive and a proper spectacle for a young boy. But they dreaded the endless painting and the limited nature of the battle reanactments of their old hobby.
I got D&D as a concept and as a social force, but like the new MUDs I'm not going into a dungeon willingly... I haven't see the old Wargamers for years (my cousin no longer plays, but collects the ephemera), I wonder if they moved with technology. They met to socialise and wargamed out of real passion for their favourite subject. I bet they are connecting with the wider world and playing in a larger domain than the back room in the old pub (which was levelled a few years back) most evenings. I can easily imagine their avatars!...
A bit of history...
This text illustrates the real start of MUD gaming and the huge development from board to computer: 'Colossal Cave Adventure' (1975) by Will Crowther - which ran on PDP-10 mainframe computers. It is - get this - graphics free, or was from the beginning.
Imagine that! Well you would wouldn't you... I was a bit taken by this (belatedly) when we discussed them in class. Natalia recalled playing non graphical MMORPGs in Poland and it was like writing an enormous Exquisite corpse. Her story and its charming denouement touched us all, but she loved it for the specific genre of its imaginary and ever evolving world. Pure Fantasy and from the Dungeons and Dragons, Collossal Cave lineage. This is I know still the most popular genre in MUDs and MMORPGs - the exact stuff that put me off. Just looking at the language of the early Crowther game, I know this to be something I really wouldn't have liked!
"Rubbing the electric lamp is not particularly rewarding. Anyway, nothing exciting happens" You know!
Now if it was being sent to discover the North West Passage... I'd be there! Explorer!*
Explorer! *
"At this moment of history when the task is posed, in the most unfavourable conditions, of reinventing culture and the revolutionary movement on an entirely new basis the Situationist International can only be a Conspiracy of Equals, a general staff that does not want troops. It is a matter of finding, of opening up, the 'Northwest Passage' towards a new revolution that cannot tolerate masses of performers, a revolution that must surge over that central terrain which has until now been sheltered from revolutionary upheavals: the conquest of everyday life. We will only organise the detonation: the free explosion must escape us and any other control forever."
('The Counter-Situationist Operation in Various Countries', S.I. No.8, January 1963)
Thursday, 18 November 2010
I'm good, I'm good, I'm so freakin' good...
This is my HIGHEST Primrose score... EVER!
Gonna Paypal a payment to designer Jason Rohrer (see earlier blogs) NOW!
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
"Playing Games Can Be a Research Method"
Interesting Narratives outside First Person Shooters... which I watched instead of playing MMORPGs!
GLS #5: Doing Development-Led Research in Games from itucph on Vimeo.
"Four years of counting barrels in 'Doom'"... an interesting First Person Gaming talk by Daniel Pinchbeck. He clearly loves his subject, and challenges the notion that you can't be a fan and an academic (and Senior Lecturer in Creative Technologies at Portsmouth University). I'm finding just studying Games to be getting harder. I would never spend four years counting barrels (and other details in a game), but that's what it feels like. And if I'm already writing about them, how can I get further into them?
I now see several Games innovators that I feel are well worth following up, so I will try to play their games AND write them up in the next blogs... just don't expect them to be Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games...
I intended to attach a screen-shot here of the top rated games on a MMORPG gameslist, but since it gets updated all the time, check it yourself. All but one in the top ten is fantasy or SciFi... there is another category that crops up occasionally: 'Real Life', but it isn't...
For me, the list made for grim reading... I had to chose one and didn't want to spend night after night dithering about just starting... The stuff on there is offering no credible narrative or real difference except to dedicated genre freaks. So pick one at random and engage... Fail! Mac users aren't so well served even reading the FAQs it wasn't good news. The pic below was 40 minutes in (3%) and still going nowhere...
I logged in and began more than three, just because I seemed to get something wrong at a really basic stage... and in typing in the details I already felt like a trespasser.
Plus, the only game I wanted to play is in development (an MMORPG version of Battlestar Galactica), and maybe I was to honest with my details in the application for testers!! Hmmm...
The chat between players is constant, but for an outsider pure drivel, and in code, I began as a trespasser, now I was feeling like something far more sinister. They had things to say - but I had nothing to show for my three hours and my inadequacy was pretty unappealing to the World. I was a wallflower, and I didn't want to be patronised. I regretted all my choices and fancied getting into a time-based arts mindset. Build a random wall and face a chair in front of it and watch the clear sky whoosh above it. (I wandered off for a while and read about actual examples of this abstraction.. and if I wasn't wasting bandwidth here in the land of Elves I could be exploring them on Half Life).
The quality and flexiblity of play are of a far higher standard than I would have guessed at, but most of these high-end graphics are wasted on hackneyed old rubbish. I really hated it! Mind you, I had to "come down" with a puzzle game to decompress so maybe I was just hopeless at the stupid game I chose. Besides, I'm an only child, I'm used to playing on my own.
The other issue I had (and this goes to the heart of all digital content) is who pays and how? This isn't the time for me to engage in the free/not free debate, unfortunately. This is about how paying for stuff takes up too great a percentage of the playing experience. I'm happy to pay for content in many areas (and put up with banners and sponsors logos without too much of a moan) but some of this experience is like entering a cinema and being asked for a strip search. And once inside, having the projectionist pausing the film at key moments while the usher shakes a money box in my face. You simply can't have a complex relationship with the game or with any other players unless you invest huge amounts of time, and I guess, money. You can't build your pretty castle or your army on day one, or day two, or day three (I made day one), and for that reason I'm not coming back. This doesn't prevent millions of others building castles and armies and paying and playing on, but I was left fuming at the chiseling.
GLS #5: Doing Development-Led Research in Games from itucph on Vimeo.
"Four years of counting barrels in 'Doom'"... an interesting First Person Gaming talk by Daniel Pinchbeck. He clearly loves his subject, and challenges the notion that you can't be a fan and an academic (and Senior Lecturer in Creative Technologies at Portsmouth University). I'm finding just studying Games to be getting harder. I would never spend four years counting barrels (and other details in a game), but that's what it feels like. And if I'm already writing about them, how can I get further into them?
I now see several Games innovators that I feel are well worth following up, so I will try to play their games AND write them up in the next blogs... just don't expect them to be Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games...
I intended to attach a screen-shot here of the top rated games on a MMORPG gameslist, but since it gets updated all the time, check it yourself. All but one in the top ten is fantasy or SciFi... there is another category that crops up occasionally: 'Real Life', but it isn't...
For me, the list made for grim reading... I had to chose one and didn't want to spend night after night dithering about just starting... The stuff on there is offering no credible narrative or real difference except to dedicated genre freaks. So pick one at random and engage... Fail! Mac users aren't so well served even reading the FAQs it wasn't good news. The pic below was 40 minutes in (3%) and still going nowhere...
I logged in and began more than three, just because I seemed to get something wrong at a really basic stage... and in typing in the details I already felt like a trespasser.
Plus, the only game I wanted to play is in development (an MMORPG version of Battlestar Galactica), and maybe I was to honest with my details in the application for testers!! Hmmm...
The chat between players is constant, but for an outsider pure drivel, and in code, I began as a trespasser, now I was feeling like something far more sinister. They had things to say - but I had nothing to show for my three hours and my inadequacy was pretty unappealing to the World. I was a wallflower, and I didn't want to be patronised. I regretted all my choices and fancied getting into a time-based arts mindset. Build a random wall and face a chair in front of it and watch the clear sky whoosh above it. (I wandered off for a while and read about actual examples of this abstraction.. and if I wasn't wasting bandwidth here in the land of Elves I could be exploring them on Half Life).
The quality and flexiblity of play are of a far higher standard than I would have guessed at, but most of these high-end graphics are wasted on hackneyed old rubbish. I really hated it! Mind you, I had to "come down" with a puzzle game to decompress so maybe I was just hopeless at the stupid game I chose. Besides, I'm an only child, I'm used to playing on my own.
The other issue I had (and this goes to the heart of all digital content) is who pays and how? This isn't the time for me to engage in the free/not free debate, unfortunately. This is about how paying for stuff takes up too great a percentage of the playing experience. I'm happy to pay for content in many areas (and put up with banners and sponsors logos without too much of a moan) but some of this experience is like entering a cinema and being asked for a strip search. And once inside, having the projectionist pausing the film at key moments while the usher shakes a money box in my face. You simply can't have a complex relationship with the game or with any other players unless you invest huge amounts of time, and I guess, money. You can't build your pretty castle or your army on day one, or day two, or day three (I made day one), and for that reason I'm not coming back. This doesn't prevent millions of others building castles and armies and paying and playing on, but I was left fuming at the chiseling.
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