Lecture 1: 4Mar2010 Physical Games

Today we have discussed what makes a game physical. We have learned that you automatically think of childhood games (because you are so accustomed to it?) and that we can learn a lot from sports to make computer games more exciting: after all, they are often more engaging, more social, more emotional, healthier, etc.
I have shown you my definition of "Exertion Games": a computer game that requires intense physical effort from its players. This is my definition, and you do not need to agree with it, but I believe it is important that you know it.

Please put in the comments below your thoughts about this class (you heard advice on how to do it from the 2nd years). You also need to post the URL of your game team's website to the left (you would need to become an editor to do that).

Thanks for all your contributions in the class, I had a great time, and I am looking forward to seeing all of you next week.


Cheers,
Floyd

PS: For the 2 groups that present next week: Can you please make a better job in bringing a big sheet of paper (or A4 stitched together) with you, with your "the one thing we want everyone to remember from this presentation" printed on it so we can add it to the wall? I'll be there half an hour earlier if you want to setup etc.
I want you to achieve the following: If I wake up any of your fellow students in the middle of the night, and ask them "why do people play games?" or "what is play?" they mumble "there are 4 reasons, hard fun, easy fun, .... and they play out differently in different games, for example when I play WoW, there is a lot of easy fun through exploring the virtual world" or "play starts when entering the magic circle of play. That circle is evident when I play Halo because... " and then they can fall asleep again. That's when you know you did an ace presentation.


Homework

Start preparing your presentation with your group
Enter the URL of your team's blog either on the right or in the comments below and enter progress weekly
Read 2 papers on "why we play games" and "pervasive games" before next week
Bring $20
If you are presenting next week, practice!
Comment on today's lecture

Presentation

Hi,

Here is a presentation about all the projects, each project gets one slide.
Please add in no particular order:

a representative image of your project (Use all the space! Make it look good!)
30 word description: consists usually of 2 sentences: what the game is about and why it is original.
Your URL
Team members

Feel free to play with layout, structure etc. Make the visual stick out, not the words.

Arduino books on iphone

Hi,

If you are interested in Arduinos, there are reduced books on the iphone available now:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/getting_started_with_arduino_and_a.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

Cheers,
Floyd

Groups needed

Hi all,

Please make sure you have your 2 groups posted before the next lecture, in particular, we still need a group to present the second paper next week asap:

We already have a group for the first Wii paper (thanks!), so if you are interested in the Wii, or especially if you do not think the Wii is the best thing since sliced bread (the paper is much more critical than the first one), you should take this topic on!

It's rather short, but exciting, and asks some fundamental questions about physicality and computer games and high-end graphics (and how/if they relate).

If you are excited by this, please start working on it asap so you can present in the next lecture.

Comments on 3 other topics:

• Arduino: I am trying to organize you a couple of boards and sensors etc.
• GlovePIE: Let me know if you need access to Wiimotes for development and demo.
  
• Social play: You should be able to get the book (chapter) through the library, but I am also trying to get you a PDF version. You need to select the highlights of the text to focus on, but it makes up for it by being very clever. So if you think most computer games are boring because they do not understand the social aspect, you should read this.
  

Everyone:
please make sure you do your homework! There are still comments missing, and groups to be formed!

Couple of thoughts for the 2 groups presenting next week:
Everyone should have read the papers by then, but because I don't know you enough yet, I am not sure if everyone will, so please include a little repeat into your presentation what the text says before you go into the discussion. Please make sure you aim for under 30 min so there is enough time for discussion. Please also decide for yourself what you think is the most valuable point of the text (or its references!) for your fellow students to learn about/discuss/think critically.

If you need the Wii to demo, let me know and I'll bring one in.

Any other questions for next week? Post into comments!

Cheers,
Floyd