Category: David’s Posts

Playtest

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Someone forwarded along an email announcement about the Playtest group that is meeting at Georgia State and it seemed worthwhile enough for you that I figured I would pass it along — we didn’t really get into this directly, but circled around the fact that both Gone Home and Dear Esther are fundamentally about trauma.
If any of you attends this event tomorrow and writes up a blog post about it, I’ll give you extra credit points.
Additionally, this group at Georgia State is seeking proposals for future presentations. I know some of you are particularly interested in gaming and the new center at Georgia State, Creative Media Industries Institute, is an interesting resource. If any of you are interested in putting together a proposal, come talk with me about it. Again, I’ll offer extra credit (lots of extra credit) if a team from this class puts on a presentation with the Playtest group.

Next Session of Playtest: February 3

Playtest would like to remind everyone that our next session will be Wednesday, February 3, in Troy Moore Library on the 23rd floor of 25 Park Place, GSU, from 3:00-4:00 PM.
For this week’s session, “Trauma Narratives in Video Games,” Jennifer Olive will lead a discussion on how trauma studies intersects with videogames. How does trauma get represented in videogames? What is the purpose of including trauma in these games? The games for play and discussion will be Tetris, The Walking Dead, and Papo and Yo.
If you haven’t heard of Playtest, it is a weekly hour-long meet-up supported by the Creative Media Industries Institute and the New and Emerging Media Initiative that discusses and explores game mechanics, concepts, and experiences in a comfortable and critical setting. More information about Playtest, including how to propose a session, can be found on our website.
Playtest sessions are open to GSU and non-GSU students, staff, and faculty as well as game developers, critics, and anyone with a serious interest in game design or development; so, please feel free to share this e-mail announcement with your students, colleagues, and friends.
I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to contact myself (jolive1@gsu.edu) or Cameron Kunzelman (ckunzelman1@gsu.edu) via e-mail if you have any questions.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. We look forward to seeing you at our next session of Playtest!

Week Ahead: 4

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Here’s what’s on tap:

4 2/2 Dear Esther
2/4 Podcast and Manuel’s workshop day.

In Class Plans

We’ll spend a bit of time in class today discussing the updates to the Manuel’s assignment (see below), but mostly we’re going to focus on Dear Esther, in particular comparison between it and Gone Home.

Thursday is going to be devoted to giving you opportunities to brainstorm together about the podcast assignments and to touch base about the Manuel’s assignment. You can ask me questions, ask each other questions, work near each other and bounce ideas off one another, and so on. Come to class ready to work!

Upcoming Assignments

I’ve updated the Unpacking Manuel’s assignment page. You should pick an object to research quickly so that you can get started on your essay and reflection.

Only half of you have signed up for a podcast episode. Those of you who have already signed up, please consider moving up to an earlier due date, since you seem to have a better sense of what you want to do. I know that nobody wants to be first, but there are distinct advantages to being the first episode turned in — including that we’re all going to think whatever the first group does is great because we won’t yet have anything to compare it against!

Edited to add:

Thus far, I have not been giving anyone a difficult time about just pasting URLs onto pages and posts but as of today, I will begin to do so. Remember, URLs are for computers, not humans. Show an awareness of audience and of the generic conventions of web publishing, instead of printing on paper, and use links!

Dear Esther Reflection

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In class, I asked you to spend at least a couple of hours playing Dear Esther and to keep track of your progress through the game — where do you go and what brings you to decide to follow the path that you do? Write a blog post with a 2-3 substantial paragraphs discussing your pathway and the patterns that you notice in the game as you play. As with Gone Home, pay particular attention to how the game establishes setting and time, both at the start of the game and then throughout and how the game establishes character. Do you feel like Dear Esther is very similar to or very different from Gone Home? In what ways?

Week Ahead: 3!

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3 1/26 Play through Gone Home to completion.

Due: Gone Home response and your Player Character Avatar.
1/28 Richard Bell, “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home.”

Begin “Unpacking Manuel’s” assignment.

Bogost HTDTWV “Art” & “Empathy” (9-23) was assigned for last week, will discuss today, so if you didn’t read it before do so this week.

Due: Drafts of visuals and a script for the series intro segment, which we’ll discuss in class on Tuesday.

Class Plans

We’ll spend most of class today discussing Gone Home while also deciding on next steps for getting podcast ready for publication.

On Thursday, we’ll continue discussion of Gone Home after having read Bell’s piece. And will spend much of the class session going over the Unpacking Manuel’s assignment and beginning to work in it.

Looking ahead: podcast series

The episode sign up sheet has been updated per our class discussion and agreement, so there are now 10 episodes with due dates on Fridays throughout the semester starting 2/12. You should be forming pairs and claiming slots on the sign up sheet.

Also needed for the podcast series:

  • 2 images for iTunes distribution: a square avatar (1400 x 1400) and a rectangular header (2480 x 520).
  • An audio intro for the series

 

Gone Home Reflection

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Editor’s note: If someone ever asks you to chaperone a high school band trip, don’t do it in the winter when everything gets canceled because it might snow or you’ll end up working very hard to occupy a group of kids trapped in a hotel room. Just fyi.

As you play through Gone Home for class on Tuesday, please try to pay attention to your own thinking and emotional reaction as you play and take notes as you go. If we were a little later in the semester and you were more comfortable with publishing to your sites, I might have asked you to liveblog your game play — feel free to try that if you’re willing.1 Probably most of you will choose instead to play through the game, taking notes of the things you notice, and then when you’re finished write a blog post with about 3 paragraphs worth of reflection on the experiences.

Pay careful attention to the start of the game. How does the game begin? How do you feel at the start? How does the game establish setting and time, both at the start of the game and then throughout? How does the game establish character? Especially think about how the game establishes character given that there is only one person present in the narrative and it’s the first person narrator–without dialog and other traditional methods of defining character, how do the game designers go about doing so? Finally, your first larger writing project will build from our discussion of Gone Home towards thinking about how games make use of objects and descriptions of those objects in order to shape narrative, so pay particular attention to all the various things that you pick up and examine and how the writing frames the meaning of those objects.

You do not need to address all of these questions. You do not even need to answer any of these questions, to be honest–if there is a different pattern that really captures your attention and you feel a burning desire to explore it in your blog post, then do that instead of answering the questions in the paragraph above.

  1. There are a number of different ways that you might liveblog game play. If you want to try it but aren’t sure how to pull it off, my suggestion is to open up your site in a tab and then launch the game. Just look around at the start point of the game for a minute or two, then write a blog post in which you announce your intention to liveblog your experience playing the game and then write a couple of sentences about the start point and publish the post. Then whenever you notice something interesting or worth commenting on as you play, leave a comment on the post with your observation. Boom, liveblogging. ↩

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