Required Reading:
Nicholas Negroponte, “Interview with Riz Khan”
In this interview, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of One Laptop Per Child, lays out the basics of their work. He says their purpose is “to get laptops in the hands of children in any way we can.”
Required Reading:
Aside from her really annoying voice, Anna Nagurney had some interesting ideas. She discussed the potential of problem solving with “network theory.”
Her main points were:
1. The proliferation of networks in human life:
US Highway Network
IP Network
In preparation for last week’s class, i emailed a blogger friend of mine, an avid gamer with an interest in game design, for his opinions on Raph Kostner’s essay. He couldn’t get back to me in time for that day, but his response is still worth sharing. Read further for why he thinks the essay is “complete bullshit.”
A response to Raph Kostner’s “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” by Christopher J. Lesiw
First of all, this article is not about math. It’s about pattern recognition. Yes, math has patterns to it, but the fact that the author of the article continuously refers to it as “math” is completely, completely wrong. It’s mostly psychology – specifically, it’s conditioning: teach the player that “if A, then B”.
I agree with the author’s point that the whole “video games make people violent” idea is utter shit, because as they point out, players are more interested in learning the game rules than applying them to society. A game is an enclosed space, not something that continues out into the real world. Okay, we’re good there.
The author of the article obviously does not have experience with games in which story and gameplay are combined, as best as possible, into one element. To say that games have a high school level of writing is REALLY going out on a limb – a limb I’ll hack off by pointing out one of my favorite games, Jak II. In it, the protagonist is transported five hundred years into the future, and learns to cope with the city that has sprung up where he used to live. The characters are solid, the dialogue is fantastic, the plot is full of twists and turns and the entire game sounds like a really good book ought to read. So I’ll debunk that theory right here and now: There are plenty of good writers that work on games, and the author of the article is insulting the Hell out of people who write for games.
There were four recommended readings so I’ll go in order (also, you can check out the corresponding highlights on shiftspace on the website).
The Principals of Notworking: Concepts in Critical Internet Culture
Geert Lovink
Focuses on Three Conceptual Fields: the relation between multitude, network and culture, the art of collaboration and “free cooperation,” and a theory on “organized networks.”
Required Reading Summary:
Dr Anna Nagurney
The Virtual Center for Supernetworks- University of Massachusetts
Networks The Science that Spans Disciplines
She breaks it up into the following topics so I guess I’ll do the same:
-Background
-Examples of Physical Networking
-Network Components
-Scientific Study of Networks
-Classical Networks and Applications
-Interdisciplinary Impact of Networks
-Characteristics of Networks Today
-The Braess Paradox
-Supernetworks
-Novel Applications- Financial Networks to Social Networks
Ralph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun for Game Design”
What Games Aren’t:
Games are, according to Ralph Koster, math problems. They mimic the word problems that we all dreaded in the sense that they “train you to see past it to the underlying math problem, and it also trains you to recognize real world situations where that math problem might be lurking.” (1) Games are inundated with metaphors that teach players towards an understanding. They “train their players to ignore fiction that wraps patterns. (1)
Koster expands on an idea of Deathrace. The first-of-its-kind game was mechanically identical to other games- you would “catch” objects moving around the 2-D screen. However, the premise of the game involved driving a car and mowing down pixilated pedestrians. While gamers argue “It’s only a game!”, research and evidence beg otherwise. They believe that media has an effect on our actions, therefore games like Deathrace encourage violent behavior. Gamers counter this claim by the idea that on screen there is no difference from running over pedestrians, killing people, fighting terrorists, eating dots, catching falling objects, etc. They all act as a metaphor for the actual intent of the game. Society has decided to place too much importance on the story side of the game rather than the mathematical element of the game.
Games are NOT stories, but Koster compares the two for a little bit.
-Games tend to be experiential teaching. Stories teach vicariously.
-Games are good at objectification. Stories are good at empathy.
-Games tend to quantize, reduce, and classify. Stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle distinctions.
-Games are external – they are about people’s actions. Stories (good ones, anyway) are internal – they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.
Since gaming and stories share some traits, he notes that play and storytelling are the two most important aspects in development. While the common notion is that stories are the chief teaching tools, he believes that since language is needed for stories, play predates the story. He segues into the idea of the fun- and how vague the word has become. As people play games, Koster believes they experience :
Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally.
Aesthetic appreciation isn’t always fun, but it’s certainly enjoyable.
Visceral reactions are generally physical in nature and relate to physical mastery of a problem.
Social status maneuvers of various sorts are intrinsic to our self-image and our standing in a community.
Fun, Koster adds, is contextual. We get it from out surroundings. When something is new we experience delight, which fades as we become used to that sight. Therefore, we lose the idea of fun in delight. We had fun engaging and mastering the mathematical problem, and therefore we had fun learning the game.
His conclusion is brilliant and can not be worded in any other way with the same impact: To recap the preceding pages: Games aren’t stories. Games aren’t about beauty or delight. Games aren’t about jockeying for social status. They stand, in their own right, as something incredibly valuable. Fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure, and that is why games matter.
Gonzalo Frasca “Simulation 101: Simulation verses Representation
Frasca begins his argument but stating that he finds problems with the idea that most theorists try to force games into something they are not. He draws upon the differences between simulation and representation. Games, he states, are different from a narrative, in the aspect that they rely on simulation which is a way of portraying reality that essentially differs from narratives (2) . Simulation is the idea that an object is not only represented, but additionally models the objects behavior. He uses images of a pipe to further his discussions of simulation verses representation.
Representation is the idea of depicting, explaining, and understanding reality. It tells us a lot about the actual object, but little about what the object does. We can not see it in motion. Therefore, it is always an incomplete task. If for instance, we see a picture of a plane on a runway, we would have to ask what the plane is doing and why, but if we see a simulation of it, we could see a plane accelerating down a runway, taking off, and flying into the sky. Representation, therefore, needs a narrative to accompany it.
Because many times simulation and representation describe the same thing, they are quite similar. Simulation is narration for an “external observer”. The player is actually experiencing the events and has personal experience. They have some control over the events. Simulation is act of modeling a system A by a less complex system B, which retains some of A’s original behavior. The idea of Second Life is a simulation of life. System A- actual life, is much more complex than the digital life- System B. However, the latter has elements that pertain to some of real life’s events and behaviors.
Frasca believes that if systems are not complex, it is better to use representation and narrative, but as they get more complex, one should use simulation. Since the invention of computers it is easier for simulations to be created since they are innately for complicated than representations. Backtracking towards video games, Frasca states that he believes they are a major medium and could gain even more momentum and get bigger if we understand the characteristics of simulation. But until we fully understand those characteristics, videogames are stagnant.
Ralph Koster “The Core of Fun”
While I do agree that Koster is a fun guy, I didn’t really take away that much “new” material after reading his summary. They seemed pretty similar to me. He starts off with this jazzy piece that he sings into the mic. The constant changing of tone, key, rhythm, etc, represent the idea that things can be broken down into pieces. Likewise, he states that grammar, songs, and even games are fractal- capable of being broken down into smaller parts. He breaks his song down into individual elements, like he does with the game Frogger. In order to get to each additional part of the game, you need to master the previous section. It is this mastering of the mathematically element behind the game that we believe is fun. The story of jumping from log to log in and of itself is not fun, but rather learning how to calculate landing safely on each log is what is fun.
Koster then compares games to social media. He gives an outline of rules that are needed to be successful. I would HIGHLY recommend listening to this part of the segment.
1. WHERE you meet the challenge – what led you to it?
2. WHEN- have you had past experiences with it?
3. HOW to meet the challenge
4. WAY in which you must involve skill.
5. RANGE- you should have a variety of ways to get the same thing. You do not want to always be using the same sources.
6. FEEDBACK is crucial so that you can improve on things and keep good things the same.
7. REPEATABLE- people must be able to do it over and over again and get similar results
8. COMPETITION- you have to have similar sites so that you have ratings. You need always try to be the best in order to have success.
10:39, Apr 12th, 09
reading summary
fun gaming narratives representation second life Simulation storytelling No Comments
First up, Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun for Game Design”:
Games are at their core mathematical problems. The stories that they are shrouded in are merely the icing on the cake. The 1976 game Deathrace involved running people over in a car to win points, but the point of the game is simply to pick up objects on a 2-dimensional playing field, not to kill people. These stories are merely metaphors for whatever math the game is teaching. ”Deathrace does not teach you to run over pedestrians any more than Pac-Man teaches you to eat dots and be scared of ghosts.”
Here’s the problem: most people pay way too much attention to the stories and not the math, thereby accusing games of promoting violence.
Games are not stories, but let’s compare the two for a second:
- Games teach experientially. Stories teach vicariously.
- Games encourage objectification. Stories encourage empathy.
- Games tend to quantify, reduce, and classify. Stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle distinctions.
- Games are external – they are about people’s actions. Stories (good ones, anyway) are internal – they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.
Play and storytelling are the two most important ways of learning, with lecture coming in at a distant third (hmm, i wonder what that says about our education…). Play predates storytelling, which requires semiotics (Koster says language here, but i’m changing it to semiotics because there’s also pictographic storytelling), but Koster claims that stories have achieved much more in terms of aesthetics than games have. Why do we value stories over games, he wonders.
First of all, it’s April 2009, and this paper is from April 2007. In terms of the internet, this is a monumental time gap. So some of the stuff discussed will feel quite behind the times. I’ve tried to compensate for that to some degree.
Anyway, here’s the reading broken down by section: Read More
Bruce Sterling is an America Science Fiction writer who has been said to have defined the ‘cyberpunk’ genre. In an attempt to give something non-fictional to society, Sterling wrote a design theory book called, Shaping Things. It is this book and its contents, which Sterling chooses to discuss in his speech at an interaction design conference. In his speech he states that there is a great need for a sustainable society and that digital technologies are imperative when it comes to creating one.
As Joshua already mentioned, Sterling has created a thing called a “Spime” which he sees as dominating in the future. Spimes are said to have 7 characteristics:
1- They are conceived and designed within a network
2- Each Spime is given a unique digital identity
3- Spimes are physically fabricated from digital plans
4- They can be tracked with real time, geo-locating systems
5- Spimes can be searched out by network search engines
6- Spimes are designed for easy disassembly and reassembly
7- It leaves behind a historical trace, a valuable pool of metadata that can be used to create new spime
Sterling insists that in the future there will be a computer-human interface for everything in the world, EVERYTHING. Allowing for everything to become part of a database.
In the video, Bruce Sterling, an American Science-Fiction writer gives the closing speech at an interaction design conference. In his speech, Mr. Sterling offers a view of the future. A future of “Spimes” – an object he describes as having 7 qualities:
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