In which we discuss
placing limits on our play
so we have more fun.
I was visiting Jesper Juul at the MIT Gambit lab today and we got into that trusty old “what is the definition of a game?” debate. While I know that greater minds than I have attempted to address this question, I have often found the answers dissatifying and too heavily focused on the idea of “winning” and goal seeking behaviour in general.
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I’ve just been to visit the MIT Museum where there is currently an exhibition of Arthur Ganson’s kinetic sculptures. Ganson describes himself as “a cross between a mechanical engineer and a choreographer”. His sculptures are all about creating unusual qualities of movement, and he makes a point of showing off the mechanism. In some cases the mechanism is all there is.
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I know that this may seem like an unlikely title for game designers, but I firmly believe that anyone who wants to work in the area of Narrative or Expressive AI should become intimately familiar with this story and regularly ask themselves the question “Could my storytelling system possibly produce works as richly complex as this?” I’ve found it to be a valuable exercise in humility.
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I have spent the last week since GDC visitng Michael Mateas and Noah Wardrip-Fruin in the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UCSC. I am considering attending UCSC as a student in the DANM Master of Fine Arts program, and I felt quite at home. The UCSC campus is huge and mostly open land. Most of the buildings are hidden up above the tree-line among the glorious redwoods. (more…)
Friday was the last day of GDC and my body clock had finally adjusted (more or less) to California time. Which means that I actually made it to a morning session (although not the 9am session). The talks I attended were:
It’s amazing how much more content you get when you arrive before lunchtime. I should remember that for the future.
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The somewhat impressionist image you see above was taken at eight in the evening on the corner of Market and Ellis St in downtown San Francisco. It depicts a group of young men sitting at tables playing chess. This image blows my mind.
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Things have been a bit of a blur, so I’ll just mention a couple of the highlights of day 3 of GDC.
Wednesday morning I slept late, after staying up all hours at the IGDA party. When I did finally wake up, I wasted what was left of the morning looking for a laundromat, since the hotel wanted to charge me per item for laundry, meaning that it would cost $108 to wash 4 days worth of clothes, which includes $3 per sock. For that kind of money I could burn my socks and buy twice as many replacements! But you’re not here to read about my socks. (more…)
After our presentation, the rest of the day for me consisted of the IGDA ‘working lunch’ for academics and industry people, followed by Jesse Schells talk about his book and finishing with the IGDA party which continued into the wee hours.
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Day 2 of GDC is over. This was the day of my MDA workshop with Robin Hunicke, Ethan Kennerly and Ben Smith. For a presentation that we kind of (ahem) put together at the last minute, it all went surprisingly well. (more…)
, by James Paul Gee.
