Wait, where did last week go?

Okay, so this is the long delayed second post from GDC only a week later. It turns out I'm no good at writing from the road. In fact I happen to be pretty bad at doing anything all that practical when I am traveling. My main focus was to absorb everything I could at the two conferences I attended so that next week in class I can share with you what I've learned. Let me pick up where I left off last week at the Game Developers Conference.

On Tuesday of last week I attended a number of sessions and I'll try to paraphrase them for you:

The first session I attended was titled "Getting Serious About Alternate Reality: Designing a Different ARG. ARG refers to Alternate Reality Games, this description comes from the GDC website: 

 ARGs combine different forms of media and real-world presence to create an experience that actively blurs the border between fiction and reality. With their radically unconventional structure and reality-blurring ambitions, ARGs have generated a great deal of attention from mainstream media, but does the actual experience of playing an ARG live up to the hype?

Well, no. The game discussed was titled Chain Factor designed to support the CBS TV show Numb3rs and was an attempt to integrate the narrative of an episode of the show, an online game, and some clever advertising to create a game that seemed to require way too much time and energy to become involved in- all, ultimately in the service of a television show. If there is one thing going to GDC teaches you is how much energy, mental and otherwise, is expended on creating disposable consumer culture. While Frank Lantz, the game's lead designer, had some interesting ideas about constructing narrative through game play and puzzle solving based on the French Literary movement Oulipo at the end of the day this is still a game for a crime drama on TV.

More interesting was the second session on the impact of Will Wright's Spore on education. Prior to the game's release there had been much speculation that this game would be used in science classes to discuss evolution and even had the creationists up in arms, unfortunately that wasn't the case. While relatively entertaining the game failed to deliver on the science and ended up being criticized by both sides of the evolution debate (yes, there's still a debate). Interestingly the game has been used by English teachers, but mainly it's free creature maker feature that can be found online at the Spore site. This is totally fun and I'll give extra credit to anyone who reads this much, downloads the software, and then posts their creations.

The last session I attended on Tuesday was whether video games could be considered an art form in their own right, a point of debate after Roger Ebert had once written an article claiming they could not be. However, this is a big topic and one that I will address in an upcoming separate post.

GDC Day 1

Good morning from San Francisco! Yesterday was the first day of the Game Developers Conference and it was a pretty packed day. I am here to attend the Serious Game and Casual Game summits, with the occasional wandering over to see what the independent game producers are up to. These summits consist of presentations, panel discussions and workshops on a number of issues around game design over the course of two days. The conference itself lasts five days, but the last three are really about games for entertainment that's when companies like EA and Nintendo pull out their big new games for everyone to preview. I'll stick around for the first day of that part of conference because that's when there is some interesting overlap between the two sides of the business.

Much of the hype this year has been about iPhone and other smart phone games, as well as games for Facebook. I am interested in the growing number of platforms for gaming, but as an artist the small screen size is a major drag. This is also a year when everyone is talking about government RFPs (requests for proposals) these are typically issued from a government agency like the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Department of Education or more often the U.S. military. Such government contracts are a growing part of the serious game industry as these different agencies start to see the potential for gaming as a training or education tool. These contracts can be very lucrative and small companies are often encouraged to apply because of rules that support small business. I'll return to this topic later when I discuss the session I went to on RFP's.

Anyway, the morning began with a short presentation on a social game project known as Akoha which bills itself as the world's first social reality game where you earn points by playing real world missions with your friends. The whole point is basically a pay it forward concept, you get cards that have points on them for performing acts of kindness, in using your card you receive the points and then pass the card on to the next person who is supposed to do the same thing. Everytime your card is used after that gives you more points. The presentation raised some interesting questions about social gaming and acts of kindness (is it still a good deed if you are doing it for the points?). What I was interested in was how with these cards and other merchandise the company was looking for a real world product to sell that would generate income and support the online game. This is a concept really developed successfully by Webkinz and I'd been wondering why it hasn't been done more.

The second session in the morning was a workshop on teaching game design in the classroom without using a computer. For this workshop we were put in teams and assigned some group projects to complete. It ended up being pretty interesting and could prove useful in a course on interactive art/media as well as game design.

In the afternoon I attended a presentation by Katherine Isbister on the topic of designing more compelling avatars for your game by considering the psychology of the player. Katherine suggested that as designers we think of the avatar as a bionic problem solving suit, it represents and enhances the image of the player to others and themselves. She discussed four levels of psychology to consider in developing the avatar: visceral, cognitive, social, and fantasy. She gave some examples of successful character designs from Bear.com to Little Big Planet and City of Heroes. The big take away for me was to consider ease of use in personalizing an avatar vs. a more complex interface such as in Second Life that requires much more buy-in from the player. There's more, but I'll have to write more after I reflect a bit.

The last session was on the RFP thing I mentioned earlier and here I'll just paste my notes because I need to run to Day 2's events.

Legal Issues
1. Who owns the intellectual Property?
2. Who has rights to the source code?
Marketplace Issues
If you are a sponsor where do you post opps?
See sites
Serious Gaming
Building Better RFPs
3 q’s
What are we trying to teach the player?
How will we know when the player has learned it?
Who needs to know if they have learned it?

And a list of sites for funding:
Sites
www.fedbizopps.gov
www.grants.gov
http://ies.ed.gov/funding
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5361
http:///digitallearning.macfound.org
http://www.kauffman.org/
http://www.rwjf.org
http://www.cpb.org/grants
Chronicle of Philanthropy

Okay, well, more later.

Readings for Monday

As I discussed in class I would like you to read this essay by Luis Camnitzer that can be found at the Philagrafika website. Here is the link: 

http://www.philagrafika.org/pdf/WS/printmakingacolony.pdf

extra credit to anyone who reads the other essays as well...

The infinite print

We discussed this project pretty thoroughly in class, but I'll give a brief synopsis here. I will also try to write another post over the weekend that expands on the ideas of the project.

The infinite print takes as its starting point the idea that with advances in technology from desktop printing to faxing and the internet printing has never been so ubiquitous or the dissemination of information so easy (too easy?). Just what types of objects are we creating with a desktop printer and what kind of experience is possible in viewing these objects? What is left of what Walter Benjamin called in his essay Art in the Age of Mechanical Production the "aura" of the original art object? With this project you will be creating both the infinitely re-printable and lossless image as well as the unique art object. What experiences result from both will be the focus of our discussion. 

Specific requirements:

For the infinite edition, your project should be designed to be printed from any desktop color printer.

The unique object should contain an element of the digital, but should not be re-producable in it's exact form. What that means is up to you to define.

The process:

In creating this work you are free to develop the visual content around your own individual research.

You should have at least five preliminary sketches posted on your blog, as well as a written description of your project that includes examples of artists and/or writers who have influenced your thinking (this is to give us context for your work).

The deadline for the infinite edition is Wednesday, March 25th. I will be out of town that week, so you will e-mail me the print in pdf. format for easy printing.

The deadline for the unique object is Monday, April 6th. Since you have a good amount of time to complete this project be ambitious, think large, think extreme, think pastry!