GA Tech Games as an Expressive Medium

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Games as an Expressive Medium: Values at Play Game Development Unit

 Games Education 

Course


Table of contents

[edit] Teachers

[edit] Instructors

[edit] Course Background Information

[edit] Location

Georgia Tech

[edit] Classification

See: Areas for classifying for your course.

Primary classification: Game Design


Secondary classification: Experimental game design


[edit] Time periods

A five week course.

[edit] Course Structure

[edit] Course description

The Values at Play unit of LCC6318B is an opportunity to consider human principles in the design of computer games.

The idea that values may be embodied in technical systems, devices, artefacts, and processes has taken root in a variety of disciplinary approaches to the study of technology, society, and humanity. After all, the creation of technology embeds within it they ways in which people might interact with each other or view the world. Therefore, creating software is in essence creating worldviews and worlds, and these constructions embed the idea of values into the technological systems.

Fortunately, there are several emerging examples of social values being integrated into design projects. Netomat, for example, is a company with a net-based product of the same name which holds social values such as authorship and democracy within both the structure of the company and in the product. The company is financed by a unique combination of venture capitalists, foundations and individual investors reflecting the company's foundation in art as well as its belief that technology is not neutral and should provide both a financial and cultural return. (http://www.netomat.com/). Another example is the UK/Canadian recording label Fading Ways, which was founded using the Creative Commons copyright approach out of a personal philosophy of 'fairness' centered around particular philosophical theories and the founders' beliefs (http://www.fadingwaysmusic.com/).

Companies, research initiatives, and products do embed values into systems, generally through the process of design. This is no different in the design of computer games. Games are a cultural medium, carrying embedded beliefs within their representation systems and structures, whether the designers intended them or not. In media effects research, this is referred to as "incidental learning" from media messages. For example, The Sims is said to teach consumer consumption, one of the values of capitalism: it encourages players to earn money so they can spend it and acquire goods. It also encourages sharing, in that fans can share skins and objects online. The Grand Theft Auto portrays its world as a violent place, rewards criminal behavior, and reinforces racial and gender stereotypes.

Our goal will be to design game prototypes as systems which intentionally offer other alternatives, even activist alternatives, in game development. How can a game designer intentionally "break the mold," especially when designing for social themes?


[edit] Week by week topics

Week One

Values lecture, core readings, implications of technology on meaning and human issues. Hopscotch. Students are asked to brainstorm values using the values cards, and find example games which demonstrate the values on the cards. Students are assigned to make documentation of this example in a short video to be posted online in the class blog/wiki, and archived in full screen on dvd. All class participants will comment on all students projects, and whether they believe the game examples demonstrate the value proposed, and why.

Day 1 Activities: Pretest survey, hopscotch. Choose 2 values from vCards for video exercise to posts on blog.

For next week: read:


Week Two

Review of the individual videos. Divide into groups. Following the VAP methodology, designers begin brainstorming on their own games focusing on a limited value set constraint, and flesh out five game examples in their sketchbooks. Students begin paper prototyping the best of their sketchbooks in class, rotating participants. Paper prototyping goes through the week with Professor Flanagan in the studio.


Day 2 Activities: Review game examples. Assign Teams. Begin on the design of new games with a new distributed value. Hand out checklists. Begin prototyping. Blogging.

For next week: read:

  • Desurvire, H., Caplan, M. Toth, J. A. (2004). "Using Heuristics to Improve the Playability of Games." CHI 2004, Vienna Austria [1]
  • Sweetser, P. & Wyeth, P. (July 2005) GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games, Computers in Entertainment (CIE), v.3 n.3.
  • Steven Harrison, Maribeth Back, Deborah Tatar. June 2006. ["It's Just a Method!"- a pedagogical experiment in interdisciplinary design. |http://values-at-play.pbwiki.com/f/-HarrisonInterdiscDesignMethod.pdf]Proceedings of the 6th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive systems, University Park, PA, USA. ACM Press New York, NY, USA, 261 - 270.
  • Orr, Mike. "User Centered Design." (Linux) [2]
  • Weber, R.N. (1997). "[Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military

Cockpit Design." Science, Technology, & Human Values, 22 (2), 235-253.|http://values-at-play.pbwiki.com/f/-cockpit_design.pdf]


Week Three

Finalizing paper prototypes. Design work includes finalizing game mechanics to support the particular value. Implementation begins, and feedback is given through the week by Professor Flanagan.

Day 3 Activities: In class playtesting. Iterating. Verification. Blogging.

For next week: read

  • Latour, B. (1992) "[Where are the missing masses, sociology of a few mundane artefacts|http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/050.html]." In Wiebe Bijker and John Law (editors) Shaping Technology-Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. pp. 225-259
  • Winograd, Terry. 1978. "[On primitives, prototypes, and other semantic anomalies.|http://values-at-play.pbwiki.com/f/-WinogradPrimitivesPrototypes.pdf]" Proceedings of the 1978 workshop on Theoretical issues in natural language processing table of contents, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Association for Computational Linguistics Morristown, NJ, USA, pp 25 - 32




Week Four

Implementation continues, and any values conflicts in the game prototypes are identified. Students continue with iterations to dissolve values conflicts.

Day 4 Activities: Play testing and iterations. Verification of the social principles designed into the games. Blogging.

For next week: read:

* Pierce and Henry. (1996) "[Computer Ethics and Social Issues: An Implementation Model." Proceedings of the symposium on Computers and the Quality of Life.|http://values-at-play.pbwiki.com/f/-PierceEthicsSocialIssues.pdf] Philadelpia, Pennsylvania, United States, 1 - 5



Week Five

Students verify values and finalize the game prototypes!! Celebration ensues.

In preparation for Unit 2:

  • Pearce, Celia. (2006). "Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Play." In Visible Language 40.1, Special Issue: Fluxus After Fluxus, January 2006.

[edit] Analysis of learning methods

[edit] What worked

Please discuss what techniques worked well


[edit] What didn't work

Please discuss what techniques didn’t work as well as you had hoped


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