What were interesting for me was Juul’s words: “The advantage of structuring a game like this is that the player experiences a predefined story by completing the missions, while having freedom to solve the tasks in different ways. Even thought the player is in principle free to ignore the missions, most players will try to complete them because they want to, because it is more interesting to undertake the missions than not to (pp.82-83)”.
I had been thinking that the more freedom people have, it becomes more interesting to the players, because they can move on their own. But come to think of it, if there were no restrictions, and the player can do what ever they want to, it wouldn’t be playing the game, but rather, creating the game.
I was playing cards with my Singaporean friends when I came here. The game was similar to the one I knew in Japan, so I didn’t have difficulty understanding how to play, but the rules were slightly different. The Japanese version I knew is more restricting, and hence it was difficult for me to win the game in Singapore. I know I’m biased in ‘my way’ of playing the game, and not used to the Singaporean version, but I thought that more rules would make the game more exciting. …Though my friend said that it’s because I was losing too much! :P
I think that overcoming the restrictions makes the players excited about the game. Too much limitation is not, but by overcoming all the rules and making out the way, is challenging and exciting.
It’s like the rules in school – it’s exciting when we find a bypath!
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
The Pupper Mater Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission Based Gaming
I never heard of I Love Bees – sounds interesting! (This class really makes me get to know new things!) One thing that I thought about the ILB, was that by playing this ‘game’, the players feel some kind of freedom. If this was in a computer game, yes, it would be interesting, but maybe not much. Because there is a premise in their head that they can do anything in the real world makes the players excited about the game. Otherwise, I think you won’t take off your pants and dance in public!
Doing all those interactive games in class, I had been thinking about the freedom in game. In a game, there is always some kind of limitations – rules, time limits, and so on. There are restrictions in a game, and sometimes players feel they are being controlled (like me when I first did Zork) but at the same time, restrictions make the game more interesting. Player fulfill their self by making their way our in that restricted area.
But in ILB, they are in the real world. Although they are under the control of the puppet master, the player can escape from that situation at any moment. Moreover, the puppet masters are watching the players, and thus fulfill their needs. Mcgonigal also says that the players in power plays are ‘directing us to direct them better’. In contrast, in computer games, when the players try to move on their own, the character suddenly stops moving, or the time limit comes, or the so loved quote ‘That’s not a verb I recognize’ appears on screen.
Maybe this is why virtual reality world games (Is this the right name? The one we can make the same character as ourselves and move around in the game world, and it’s interactive.) are getting popular. The sense that we are in a similar place as the real world, but can move around as the player likes, make them feel some kind of freedom. Making the game world more similar to the real world, is maybe the way game designers can become like the puppet masters.
Doing all those interactive games in class, I had been thinking about the freedom in game. In a game, there is always some kind of limitations – rules, time limits, and so on. There are restrictions in a game, and sometimes players feel they are being controlled (like me when I first did Zork) but at the same time, restrictions make the game more interesting. Player fulfill their self by making their way our in that restricted area.
But in ILB, they are in the real world. Although they are under the control of the puppet master, the player can escape from that situation at any moment. Moreover, the puppet masters are watching the players, and thus fulfill their needs. Mcgonigal also says that the players in power plays are ‘directing us to direct them better’. In contrast, in computer games, when the players try to move on their own, the character suddenly stops moving, or the time limit comes, or the so loved quote ‘That’s not a verb I recognize’ appears on screen.
Maybe this is why virtual reality world games (Is this the right name? The one we can make the same character as ourselves and move around in the game world, and it’s interactive.) are getting popular. The sense that we are in a similar place as the real world, but can move around as the player likes, make them feel some kind of freedom. Making the game world more similar to the real world, is maybe the way game designers can become like the puppet masters.
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Game Design as Narrative Architecture
It is interesting for me that Eskelinen strongly denies Jenkin’s opinion about the relation between computer games and storytelling. I’m curious if he will define the ‘Create-your-adventure’ books as a story or not.
Although I agree that there are no stories in Pack-man or Tetris, I think there is a story in certain games such as RPGs or interactive fictions.
In a ‘normal’ story, the movements of the character, the storyline, and all the other story elements are pre-determined by the author. But in games, the users create the story while they are playing with it. I think this is the reason why games are difficult to be determined as a story. Because the narrative in the games are fleeting and changing constantly, many people will not recognize it as a story.
However, although probably Eskelinen will not agree, the process of playing the game means creating the story.
The player can use their own interpretation and make up their own narrative. But at the same time, in order to prevent the players from making the game into a too much non-linear (off the line) one, the game designer restricts the player by using the term ‘I don’t recognize the word’, make the player go through certain challenges, or something similar to that. By limiting some parts, some player may feel the constraints, but can still find his/her own way out to make a new narrative. Imagine if we took out all the game like elements from the games. I think there would be a story left there.
One of my friend once wrote a review in his blog about a game he played. I have never done the game before, but according to his explanation, it seems to be a game where the player explores in Chopin’s dream.
He said that the story of the game was way too bad, and because of the story, the quality of the game went down despite the beautiful images.
In his blog, he wrote that
I think that the other parts of the game were in high quality except the scenario. This fact is really mottainai! (wasteful)
…I didn’t even feel like watching the ending. I was too shocked and didn’t feel anything about the story.
From his review, we can actually see that players expect to seek a story inside the game – especially in RPGs. And in his opinion, it can even affect the quality of the game.
Although Eskelinen dismisses the fact that games are not like stories, I think there is actually a story in anything. I remember my senior student in Japan writing in his blog (sorry, again!) about his experience in Alaska. There, he stayed in a local house with a young married couple. In Alaska, because of the lack of resources, furniture, food, and many other things used in daily life are made by themselves. And he realized that because almost everything is handmade, he felt that there is a story in each product. The story is about the process making each goods.
It’s not like furniture, but playing games are also like the process of making furniture or food, in a sense. They don’t use any tools, only the users mind and hands, but still, we are making a story.
But can computer games really tell a story in a way that parents tell stories to their children?
When I was small, my parents used to read me books and sometimes tell their original stories. It was fun for me to imagine all the things and make the characters in my mind when they told me their own story. Although I think that computer games have a narrative, I wonder if they can tell stories in this way. If parents started to play a computer game before bed, that would give a complete different meaning to storytelling!
Although I agree that there are no stories in Pack-man or Tetris, I think there is a story in certain games such as RPGs or interactive fictions.
In a ‘normal’ story, the movements of the character, the storyline, and all the other story elements are pre-determined by the author. But in games, the users create the story while they are playing with it. I think this is the reason why games are difficult to be determined as a story. Because the narrative in the games are fleeting and changing constantly, many people will not recognize it as a story.
However, although probably Eskelinen will not agree, the process of playing the game means creating the story.
The player can use their own interpretation and make up their own narrative. But at the same time, in order to prevent the players from making the game into a too much non-linear (off the line) one, the game designer restricts the player by using the term ‘I don’t recognize the word’, make the player go through certain challenges, or something similar to that. By limiting some parts, some player may feel the constraints, but can still find his/her own way out to make a new narrative. Imagine if we took out all the game like elements from the games. I think there would be a story left there.
One of my friend once wrote a review in his blog about a game he played. I have never done the game before, but according to his explanation, it seems to be a game where the player explores in Chopin’s dream.
He said that the story of the game was way too bad, and because of the story, the quality of the game went down despite the beautiful images.
In his blog, he wrote that
I think that the other parts of the game were in high quality except the scenario. This fact is really mottainai! (wasteful)
…I didn’t even feel like watching the ending. I was too shocked and didn’t feel anything about the story.
From his review, we can actually see that players expect to seek a story inside the game – especially in RPGs. And in his opinion, it can even affect the quality of the game.
Although Eskelinen dismisses the fact that games are not like stories, I think there is actually a story in anything. I remember my senior student in Japan writing in his blog (sorry, again!) about his experience in Alaska. There, he stayed in a local house with a young married couple. In Alaska, because of the lack of resources, furniture, food, and many other things used in daily life are made by themselves. And he realized that because almost everything is handmade, he felt that there is a story in each product. The story is about the process making each goods.
It’s not like furniture, but playing games are also like the process of making furniture or food, in a sense. They don’t use any tools, only the users mind and hands, but still, we are making a story.
But can computer games really tell a story in a way that parents tell stories to their children?
When I was small, my parents used to read me books and sometimes tell their original stories. It was fun for me to imagine all the things and make the characters in my mind when they told me their own story. Although I think that computer games have a narrative, I wonder if they can tell stories in this way. If parents started to play a computer game before bed, that would give a complete different meaning to storytelling!
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
The stories in the interactive fiction
Last week when I played the interactive fiction alone, I saw it was not interactive – moreover, I thought it was restricted in many ways. (See last week’s blog post) However, when Mr. Mitchell played it in class, I had a different impression. With the assistance by others, I actually found it as interesting.
What was different from Shade and the Cinderella that we played in class, was while Shade had to complete the story on our own, in Cinderella, the player needs to somehow ‘stop’ the story, and try to make it into our desired one. Cinderella told the story regardless of our (or rather, a bird) existence. In order to stop the prince from marrying the step sisters, the player has to somewhat take action as a creature with no lips. What was fun in doing these games, was that we were able to manipulate the narrative by ourselves.
I felt that I had not realized how to play the game when doing alone. I was just trying to find my way out, trying to get close to the goal. But unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to achieve the goal, and concluded that it was not interesting, and not interactive.
This reminded me about when we talked about the hypertext 253 in class. I think I said that 253 was also not really attractive to me. But there were people who liked the text too. I remember Mr. Mitchell’s words, “Playing for the story”. I didn’t really get the meaning at that time, but I think this can relate to the interactive fiction now. Both in 253 and the ZORK, I was just trying to find the goal. Of course we have to get to the goal in the end (especially in interactive fictions), but in order to fully enjoy the game, we need to find the story inside it. That is, play for the story. We need to acknowledge the story, but at the same time, create it into a more interesting one for each of us.
Though I thought that interactive narrative is restricting our actions in the game, now I think it a bit different. In order to enjoy the game, the player needs to try and find out a way to make the narrative ‘interactive’, not just try to focus on achieving the goal.
What was different from Shade and the Cinderella that we played in class, was while Shade had to complete the story on our own, in Cinderella, the player needs to somehow ‘stop’ the story, and try to make it into our desired one. Cinderella told the story regardless of our (or rather, a bird) existence. In order to stop the prince from marrying the step sisters, the player has to somewhat take action as a creature with no lips. What was fun in doing these games, was that we were able to manipulate the narrative by ourselves.
I felt that I had not realized how to play the game when doing alone. I was just trying to find my way out, trying to get close to the goal. But unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to achieve the goal, and concluded that it was not interesting, and not interactive.
This reminded me about when we talked about the hypertext 253 in class. I think I said that 253 was also not really attractive to me. But there were people who liked the text too. I remember Mr. Mitchell’s words, “Playing for the story”. I didn’t really get the meaning at that time, but I think this can relate to the interactive fiction now. Both in 253 and the ZORK, I was just trying to find the goal. Of course we have to get to the goal in the end (especially in interactive fictions), but in order to fully enjoy the game, we need to find the story inside it. That is, play for the story. We need to acknowledge the story, but at the same time, create it into a more interesting one for each of us.
Though I thought that interactive narrative is restricting our actions in the game, now I think it a bit different. In order to enjoy the game, the player needs to try and find out a way to make the narrative ‘interactive’, not just try to focus on achieving the goal.
Monday, 8 October 2007
The Pleasure of the Text Adventure
In order to get a better understanding of interactive narrative, I tried playing ZORK 1. I think this was my first time to play interactive narrative online by myself. To tell the truth, while playing the game, I became a bit irritated. This was probably because I felt that the game was somewhat restricting to me. Although it is true that I can type out anything I want to, and the narrative depends on me, I did not feel completely independent. Some of the simplest words that I typed was not understood by the computer, and in order to get through the game, I had to give up some movements, or follow the requirements that the computer will probably expect. Therefore, I partly feel that interactive fiction is deceiving us to think that the users have a chance to move around freely. Really, the narrative is already decided, and the user plays the game in some sense ‘interactively’, predicting the next movement we should take.
Hypertext reminds me of a Japanese novel called “なんとなく、クリスタル” (Somewhat, Crystal). This is a novel nominated as Bungei-shou. This novel is full of annotation – there are almost three annotations in one line!! I couldn’t believe that this novel was praised, because I felt that the annotations were useless, and bothers the story. (Many critics say that because of the annotation, the novel was given attention). The annotations in this book were not the general information, but moreover, the personal opinion of the author. I think that is why I felt they were unnecessary.
(This is just an example of one novel, so I know that hypertext is not always like this.)
To tell the truth, because I am not a technical person, I thought that interactive fiction and hypertext fiction is both just kind of comouter game. However, because their approach is quite different, overall I agree with Montfort’s opinion that they are different.
But at the same time, it also gives me a similar impression too. The narrative is already decided, and users move around in that limited space. The moving around action differs by pushing the buttons, or typing out the words.Although it is hard to decide whether the two are different or not, I think interactive fiction gives us an expectation that we have a possibility to choose by ourselves, more than hypertext fiction.
Hypertext reminds me of a Japanese novel called “なんとなく、クリスタル” (Somewhat, Crystal). This is a novel nominated as Bungei-shou. This novel is full of annotation – there are almost three annotations in one line!! I couldn’t believe that this novel was praised, because I felt that the annotations were useless, and bothers the story. (Many critics say that because of the annotation, the novel was given attention). The annotations in this book were not the general information, but moreover, the personal opinion of the author. I think that is why I felt they were unnecessary.
(This is just an example of one novel, so I know that hypertext is not always like this.)
To tell the truth, because I am not a technical person, I thought that interactive fiction and hypertext fiction is both just kind of comouter game. However, because their approach is quite different, overall I agree with Montfort’s opinion that they are different.
But at the same time, it also gives me a similar impression too. The narrative is already decided, and users move around in that limited space. The moving around action differs by pushing the buttons, or typing out the words.Although it is hard to decide whether the two are different or not, I think interactive fiction gives us an expectation that we have a possibility to choose by ourselves, more than hypertext fiction.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Group Project 1
Because I took some photos last class, I'll upload some to my blog!
I have to do my blog post as well...
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
253
Ryman says “In cyberspace, people become places”.
I checked in my Oxford Dictionary of English (2003), to see how ‘place’ is defined. It said,
Place: 1. a particular position, point, or an area in space; a location, 2. a portion of space designated or available for or being used by someone, 3. a position in a sequence or series, typically one ordered on the basis of merit.
So if it is true that "In cyberspace, people become places” as Ryman said, people must be defined as the above.
Actually, I agree with Ryman’s opinion. In the narrative, “253”, all the passengers have their own notion in mind, and was sitting, not being able to move. Of course they can stand up, talk, dance, and get off the train. However, because passengers cannot move from a certain place while the train is moving, it made it easier to imgaine the people as place. In 253’s case, I think it can be coined as the 2nd explanation in the Oxford Dictionary. Each passenger have their own individual appearance, inside infromation, notion, and nobody can interrupt their space. It is ‘being used by’ the characters.
I thought about the blog we are now using. The reader of the blog can have a sense of godlike feeling, maybe. Think like this:
The blog we have=seats in the train
The design of the blog=appearance of the passengers
The posts that we do every week=the notion of the passengers
Isn’t is a bit similar? And the readers can have a godlike feeling, because they can just see through the blog without getting in contact with the author. Readers can jump around blogs, start from which ever day the reader wants to start from, and never know the ending (because blogs don’t have a specific ending unless the writer is posting novels).
So, I think it’s safe to regard people as places in cyberspace. But at the same time, being ‘place’ seems to me as being digitalized, and only one aspect of the human is being showed to the out side. That is a bit sad ><
I checked in my Oxford Dictionary of English (2003), to see how ‘place’ is defined. It said,
Place: 1. a particular position, point, or an area in space; a location, 2. a portion of space designated or available for or being used by someone, 3. a position in a sequence or series, typically one ordered on the basis of merit.
So if it is true that "In cyberspace, people become places” as Ryman said, people must be defined as the above.
Actually, I agree with Ryman’s opinion. In the narrative, “253”, all the passengers have their own notion in mind, and was sitting, not being able to move. Of course they can stand up, talk, dance, and get off the train. However, because passengers cannot move from a certain place while the train is moving, it made it easier to imgaine the people as place. In 253’s case, I think it can be coined as the 2nd explanation in the Oxford Dictionary. Each passenger have their own individual appearance, inside infromation, notion, and nobody can interrupt their space. It is ‘being used by’ the characters.
I thought about the blog we are now using. The reader of the blog can have a sense of godlike feeling, maybe. Think like this:
The blog we have=seats in the train
The design of the blog=appearance of the passengers
The posts that we do every week=the notion of the passengers
Isn’t is a bit similar? And the readers can have a godlike feeling, because they can just see through the blog without getting in contact with the author. Readers can jump around blogs, start from which ever day the reader wants to start from, and never know the ending (because blogs don’t have a specific ending unless the writer is posting novels).
So, I think it’s safe to regard people as places in cyberspace. But at the same time, being ‘place’ seems to me as being digitalized, and only one aspect of the human is being showed to the out side. That is a bit sad ><
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