Games Britannia - 2 & 3

In this post I will be discussing the different themes in Games Britannia parts 2 & 3. At the start of the program Woolley discusses and shows how certain board games at the time were produced and back by political movements trailered by the middle classes to point out social problems with the world itself. For example Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit was released during the first decade of the 20th century. This game was pointing out class segregate and how land tax was a very unfair system instead of wage taxes since there were large aristocratic land owners who did nothing productive with their land yet if they commuted heinous crimes they would be able to get away with with it by waving the fee, where as the lower classes were not able to do that. So whilst the game was released by a collection of Liberals to point out these social inequalities they made the game fun to play. But due to the government at the time the game had to be watered down to not show every inequality of the social climate but to also educate the public in a fun essence what was happening with social justice and how Loyde George was attempting to put forward the unrest of the people's budget and redistribute wealth.

However the predecessor to Monopoly was also pointing this one out as well, the Quakier Elisibeth Magie Phillips created a game just after the Great War which was a huge hit. Due to her nature as a Quakier the point of the game was to show more social inequalities of the world and society. And one of the aims of the game was to show the broad evidence of the gargantuin get between the ever richer and the poor who stayed where they were and how she believed wealth should be redistributed and this was one of the aims of the game.


Monopoly borrowed this concept yet it had a simmilar message, it was more based on how the dog eat dor property ownership world worked. When I say this I mean how each player has to buy properties and end up with the most cash at the end of the game as well as make trades, like in the economic world how businesses regularly trample over each other to get to the top to win dominance over each other.


Personally I like how these board games were pointing this out and Elisibeth Magie Phillips was a great believer that games were the way forward in teaching people about the social political stances and issues about how wealth was being very unfairly distributed. These gamed and brought to the masses and they show the every day guy what is actually there and what they are living under and that they don't have to stand for it at all, that they are able to protest about these conditions and get something done.


Later in the episode there is another independent board game which was inspired from three young men watching the news about the latest Afghanistan (or Iraq) war and the outrageously silly they were watching that were being backed by politicians. But one of the best things about the game in my opinion is that the bandanna (auto correct wont let me say the one that covers the entire face) used was brought to a protest at a power station and was considered an offensive weapon, plus due to the satirical themes they are sort of shunned from the mainstream markets yet the game has brought some interesting thought about the whole situation. And the best thing in my opinion, it doesn't preach the designers politics at all, it is just showing what actually goes on in the world and that if you need to get some where and it conflicts with your morals that some times you can justify it.


The next episode mainly talks about the transformation of stories and game from different types of media. For example in the episode he talks about the D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) was inspired by the JR Tolken novels The Lord of the Rings and how the designers captured the feel of the books, characters and environments on the board game and how each time the experience will be different due to different characters and how the game is controlled by the game master. This was hugely popular with adolescent males and the population in the seventies and there was the three day working week to board games as a whole took up a lot of time and helped people escape the misery of their working lives. These games were able to bring people together in spirit and let family bond together due their simple rules yet nice and approachable art styles.


Then of course in the late seventies to earlier eighties computer games started to emerge on personal computers such as the ZX 81. These machines let people play interactive games and stories on their own wit out the need to set up a board with lots of players and due to the easy nature of the language these machines used, many young adults could code works of art form their bed room, and this gave way to Britain being the leading force in the the computer games industry. Then decades later when these machines had more power these games became far more complexed and realistic to play with. They gave the player a fantasy world to play in with out the repercussions to bear. However most of these studios seem to be run by those. who were bedroom programmers in the first place as they have the ability to do so. This means these games are less complex for the average Joe to play and are available to a broader audience. Also due to this the players (who most of which have little to no programming knowledge) have shown enthusiasm in making their own games and level for their favorite games, so the developers allow their players to easily create levels which can be played over the WWW for other to play and enjoy with out having to know much about the complexities of programming.


Personally I like this as this gives the power of creating games and works of art to the masses, some of which have brilliant idea but don't have the know how to do so.

Male and Female segregation in the Gaming Industry.

Recently in my Critical Game Studies lectures we had a discussion on whether or not is the gaming industry sexist? We all had a look at a few pages or surveys in our grasps. We all started on one mission to discover why there was a lack of females on our course and in most of the industry at all to be honest. Through out this post we will be going on a journey to find this one out.

The source of data we used for this discussion were two survey, one performed on 2010 and the other in '09. The first survey is about who many of each gender are hired in the gaming industry, whilst the other is more a survey about each gender playing computer games as a whole.

Table 1. The percentage of man a women in each job description within the gaming industry.

                                              Males % Females %
Ops/IT/HR                             53%        47%
Writing                                   70%        30%
Mkt/PR/Sales                         75%       25%
Production                              79%       21%
QA                                        87%        13%
Executive                               88%        12%
Visual Arts                             89%        11%
Design                                   90%        10%
Audio                                    90%        10%
Programming                         95%        5%

Analysing the data, one can see there is a vivid correlation that there are fewer women in the industry than males. A smaller number of females in face. How does this affect the industry and its products.

Whilst one can already see the the biggest concentration of females is in HR and the greatest minority are in the programming sector, one has to ask "Why is this?". It appears females no longer have to type up redact or E-Mails other than the most mainial now such as checks, there is no longer any interest in that field and no need for it.

I have one thing to suggest for this. Games didn't immediately start off woman friendly. The reason for this being that when games started out they were often text based and their reputation was quite nerdy with mostly males owning the high end (at the time). And due to this games were often see as a sort of subculture where they would often be aimed at males. And the guys who made these game tended to be nerdy guys in a basment how were shunde by pop culture. Where as today in the mainstream markets only programmers know how to code and they were the ones who started of this industry along with their pals. And until recent years nobody know the industry excised unless you were a gamer.

How ever when the few women got in it was because they earned their place there. By this I mean in such departments as programmers artists. These people are programmers but there are just few due to the reputation by the masses they have received unless they had a passion for it.

However you could also ask who are the ones playing games (so they would have the desire to create the master pieces?) The picture below will show the UK % of genders playing games and their time spend doing so, showing a correlation.



Right, there is one thing this chart tells us, woman continue playing these games (possibly because their mental state lasts longer) whilst men become distracted with other things. However I don't think I can back my self up on that one.

Any way, what is evident is that both genders now play computer games. So unless you are designing to teenagers you need to keep a unisex design in mind. However if you were designing specifically for one gender you wouldn't need to worry about this at all due to the difference in playing times between both genders.

But now there is another problem: Which gender are computer games made for?

As a class, we were given a list of the latest 30 in the charts for the previous week ending in 27th Jan 2012. Although I wasn't about to locate the list so it's typed up below as the best selling games in America (Hopefully this is the next best thing).

1. CoD: MW3
2. Fifa
3. Battlefield 3
4. Zumba Fitness.
5.The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As is visible, the top three games appear to be made for the more hardcore audience, they are the once who are playing just so they spend more time to improve themselves, due to the nature of computer games. The oddest part comes in at number four where a mainly female games comes in, which I find surprising as the gaming world is slightly becoming less male orientated. However Elder Scrolls in aimed at both audiences but it is male lenient due to the historical and brutal nature of the games context.

What is the meaning of this then? Well it just means that the focused has stayed with the male market due to the higher demand of said goods but for female games the sector is gradually growing as the market becomes more lenient. However games aimed at both gendered are in higher demand now to due their market share and are available to both gendered so there is a greater market value in them for profit.

Narrative in Games

The narrative in games. Since I was young I have found this a fascinating topic. The narrative of a game is the order in which the events are laid out and the story is narrated to the player, and this can rise the standards of the game itself and keep it going. However if the game altogether isn't worth any praise due to its incredibly weak copy of it's former was, despite how entertaining or funny, interesting the story is, because the designers attempted to make it appeal to a broader audience of the gaming market, so they can sell a greater number of copies. In the following paragraph I will begin to go through the difference components.

Whilst dissecting this format one has to remember, computer games are still in it's infantile stage. Especially story wise, meaning there is still a great potential of growth in developing a narrative to suit it.

For example, I remember when I was younger I would watch my older brother play MGS(Metal Gear Solid) on the original PlayStation. I was fascinated by this game, not only because it was science-fiction but due to the philosophy it brings up and how the story plays out. To be fair it sort of is an interactive film, however it was very unique that you had to sneak around the complex in order to complete the goal and not just kill everyone, so it had a similar spy narrative yet there was a plot where the main characters brother was trying to over throw world governments. And the thing was that in the cinematic cut scenes every thing is very well explained. I.e.it explained how the machine you had to defeat (other wise it would nuke the world) was not technically in any violation of any world treaty (which is rather clever in my opinion) and this added an element of fear into it. Also even thought the level area in which you play and the story is set is just one place and it's not the biggest, everything is so closely scripted to what you do you are fully immersed in the story you forget your just playing, but you are living it. However in the original there were a few pivot points, where when you encounter psycho-mantis and you swap over the controller ports you can confuse him and if you let your love interest Meryle die you get the opto-camo in the end, and if you don't do the former she lives and you get a different happy ending but no opto-cammo.

Don't get me wrong there are other well written stories in the franchise such as Mass Effect where you actions in each game influences references and choices reflect what happens in the rest of the saga. When I say this I mean, if you make a certain choice it will effect the rest of the game';s story line itself. Now in my opineon that is real interactivity!

However not all games have a narrative and are fun. E.g. Tetris, even though it's more of a puzzel it clearly doesn't have a narrative yet it's still fun to play as each time round a completely random piece falls form the top.

Another form of narrative is the type which is told to the player like the narrator reading from a novel to give the player a background story. This tends to be in games such as the Elder Scrolls series. This can some times be an easier way to quickly give the world and story more substence yet with out massive drematic effects.

The last type I will describe is the "evolutionary narrative" where the base of the story is told to the user, when when they type into the console (or turn the page for an option(Fighting Fantasy adventure book)) the story steers towards one of the endings but can be easily changed depending on the commande or scentence typed into the game itself to see how it reacts. One example of this is Facade, which is a semi-game that attempts to try this tactic.

Well these are the different types I can currently think of. I've probably missed some but these are the main ones covered for the time being about the different narrations of games. My preferences lean towards evolving narration and the one used in MGS. But that's just me, if there were more games like that the market would be greatly improved.

Ancient Games

Earlier on I have discussed in one of my posts regarding the BBC documentary "Games Britannia" Episode 1, in my lecture (and when I first watched on the BBC iPlayer a few years back). I can say some very interesting information was presented about what games throughout history were like back in the day and that games historians exist, this includes at the British Museum.

One of the parts of Games Britannia which I found very intriguing parts (Episode one) is, in ancient times (about 2600 B.C.) games used to possess other qualities in their meanings to the players. An example of this would be Snakes and Ladders, which is a slimmed down version of a Hindi game about self-knowledge and enlightenment, that all of the players are meant to reach a new spiritual height at the end mark. The players had no intention of winning the game itself, however the teachings and stories in the game which were given to them, at the same time exploring the vast world of the game board. One entertaining example of this is, whilst at the same time Benjamin Woolley played a game with the historian from the British Museum, he (Woolley) became stuck in what was alleged to be heaven (in the game), and was unable to escape from this. Some would consider  this a good thing (I know I would if I was religious), however apparently, in the Hindi religion, even that is some what a lower value than reaching spiritual enlightenment. I admit it was a good story and like the message behind it. I also like how they implemented a story into it and being to change the players mind set (which is a powerful, yet dangerous thing in my opinion).

Another intriguing point, whilst in the lecture and writing this post is, nobody appears to know precisely the rules of the games or their purpose for being. (Apart from an archaeologist will occasionally find a clay board set with some vague instructions on clay). In my opinion I find this bad yet interesting at the same time. The reason being is that we cannot record precisely what happened and what these were used and created for. However this allows for mystery allows those who find it to modify can create their own rules to make it more fun and give it an update. However what if something bad happens, such as down the time line these instructions are found and misconstrued?

Also in my spare time a while back I was researching historical games pieces just to see what was out there and it turns out that ancient people used anything such as bones, shells, sheeps nuckels and much much more. Guess people will stop at nothing just to play games and not become bored.

My Tweaks to the Royal Game of Ur

Earlier on in the year my class was set the task of individually playing The Royal Game of Ur in one of it's original forms. Then whilst playing the game we had to spot any areas of the game which we thought needed tweaking in order to make it more fun for the player. Whilst doing this few floors were found with the game mainly to assosheated with the rules of the game, so I decided to add a few rules of my own and modify some of them inorder to make the game more fun to play for the current generation of players

The first bug wihc was spotted with the game was that on occasion one player whilst throwing the dice would roll all zeros. And as much as it's very advantageous for the opponent, when this happens repeatedly ton the player who is rolling the zeros this can become boring and very frustrating as they are not progressing across the game board very quickly at all.

Even though this is a rare occurence in the game for players I decided to create a rule in place for this incase it heppens in the future. So to counter act this occurance I decided to imnplement a new rule, if one player rolls three zeros with the dice three turns in a row that player is allowed to throw the dice again straight afterwards untill they roll the dice and get a meaning ful value. When testing this new rule it because very useful and nearly eliminated the boredom factor. However it can become a bit complect after a while as the player has to keep count of how many time this happens ( I wish at the time I had created a counting device which would have made the taske a lot easier). Also with the rolling of all zeros this is a rare occurance so it is not always required. This game mechanic is called a negative feedback loop (Le Blank, 2004, pp. 447).

In the second iteration of the game it occured to me that some times one player would roll a high value with the dice yet with their avalibe counters on and off the board they were not able to take full advantage of their fortunate dice throw. After a while this can get on the player's nerves and creates boredom. So I decided to create another rule which borrows a game mechanic form the game Backgammon, which enables the player to split their roll across a number of different counters on the board. Confused? Let me explain again. If a player rolls higher than a value of one with the dice, and they have several counters avalible but non of them can be moved the full ammount rolled. Then this gives the player the option to move some counters a few spaces across the board thus, more of their counters are moving across the board and they can use their full dice roll. This is called a positive feel back loop as it gives the more fortunate player an advantage in the game (Le Blank, 2004, pp. 447).

Finally the last implementaton or iteration. Whilst playing the game it was also found that some players could gain an unfair advantage which would hinder the other player and creat boredom whilst playing. Some times one player would land their counter on a special square which means they could roll the dice for an extra go if they wished yet if they didn't roll anything then they would stay on the space intill their next turn. As a positive feed back loop this is good because it shortend the game and gives one player the advantage, however if the player in question ocuppys all of these spaces with their counters, then on ocasion the opponent is not able to progress as they counters cannnot hop over another or knock another off a special square. So in order to counter act this I implemented another new mechanic into the game, if a counter stays on any special square for three turns, it must progress across the board on the player's fourth turn. On implementing this new iterationthis rule proved very useful and made the game more fun as it added a level of strategy to it. However, later I discovered that it would have been more useful to create a countng device suck a numbered slider to count the number of turns this happened to avoide boredom and to help the players concentrate on the game itself.


These new tweaks to the game were tested with otherplayers and prooved to be fun and imporved on the game however I believe the game should be brought to a wider audience first so it can be fully enjoyed with the newly revamped rules in place.

Bibliography

Earlier in the year we were introduced to the library and shown how to access vast amounts of information across a number of institutes (mainly The University of Essex and the U.E.A.) we were set the task of creating a concise bibliography, which includes two journal articles, two non-fiction novels, and two contributors to non-fiction novels. And at long last the list is here shown below. However when it comes to using Zotero, I would strongly suggest using it with another web browser if you are a Chrome user, or try using the stand alone. So let's see how this goes.

Adams, E. (2003) Break into the game industry; How to get a job making video games. Emeryville (Ca): McGraw Hill/Osborne.

Adams, E. (2009) Fundamentals of game design. 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research (no date) [E-journal].

Loading: Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association (no date) [E-journal].

Dr. Doug Binks, D.Phil, 2010. "Game Programming Gems 8". Lake. A Course Technology PTR.

Byrne. B, 2010, Fields, T. 

Distributed Game Development: Harnessing Global Talent to Create Winning Games,

Focal Press; 1 edition (2010)

I hope this is all correct (if not then most of it to be in the right place).

Games Britannia - Dicing With Destiny

Recently I had the chance to watch a TV documentary called Games Britannia, which the presenter Benjamin Woolley explores popular games in Britain from the Iron age to the resent day, and unravels the social and cultural history behind  the games we all play today.

 The documentary starts off with Woolley who describes as archaeological dig where a grave was found, the body had been buried on to of an already set game board amongst other ancient relics we now know as Alea Evangelii. The body found in the grave must have been of some sort of importance to this amazing find, could it have been the creator of the game or some for of divination?

 Then we move on to the works of Dr. Irving Finkel, the Manager of the British Museum (at the time of broadcasting) who then talks about the possibilities of the rules if the game itself, which are only speculated at best (nothing concrete).

The board consists of 19 X 19 squares (as shown blow) and one player will have a greater number of pieces than the other.

 

Right, let's get this into the basic premise of game play:]

- A player has to move one counter on a turn.

- The Black Player must takes the first turn of the game.

- If the player cannot move one piece they lost a turn.

Movement

- No piece is able to move trough or onto an occupied intersection.

- The King is the only piece to move through or onto the Citadels.

- The King is the only piece to move through or onto the Castles.

- No piece is able to move onto or through an occupied intersection.

Capturing the King Happens:

- If the King is surrounded on three sides by the opposing pieces positioned on the edge of the game board.

- If the King is surrounded on all four sides by the opposing pieces.

Capturing the basic piece:

- The King can't be one of the counters used in the capturing of an enemy counter.

- A counter can only be captured on the opponents turn by the enemy counter on that turn.

- A counter is captured by an enemy counter when it has become surounded on two of the opposit sides by adjacent opposing counters.

End of the game:

- The player is the white counters wins the game if the King sails to the corner.

- The Player with the black counters wins the game if the King is captured.

 Woolley then goes further to investigate other ancient games we know as modern, games such as Ludo, Chess, and Snakes and Ladders to list some. These originated from India and were modified in such a sense to remove the spiritual sense and lean move towards feasibility and sales.

Overall I enjoyed learning new facts and information about the games I had enjoyed as a child which were originally spiritual games played many thousand and hundreds of years ago.

What is a Computer game, Paiea, Ludus

When one asks 'What is a Computer/video Game?' the answer is simple. By it's very nature it is a game played using a computer with a 'video' (Latin for moving picture) element attacked to it. The 'Computer' implies, there is some sort of a visual component to the fun of the game itself.

At the time of one of our Critical Games Studies classes earlier this year, our lecturer Eddie Duggan, went through with the definitions of Computer games, Play and Games, with us down to their base definitions. He started with diverting our attention to a piece of text by the author Johann Huizinga, who write 'Homo Ludens' ( which was first published in 1938). Homo Ludens, by definition means "Playing Man" is a double entendre on Homo Sapiens, meaning "Knowing Man".

 Huizinga says "Play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly". I will say though, I do agree with this, as it's very easy to surround yourself in a game, not just in the story level of things, but the game play mechanics aspect itself. This has happened to me on many occasions as I you just drown out everything in the background and you forget everything that happened before and all that matters is the game itself.

 Moving more in depth, and getting deeper into the thick of things, Salen and Zimmerman (Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, 2004) observe "A game is a system in which players engage in artificial conflict, defined by rules, hat results in a quantifiable outcome".

 One methods of classifying games is by genre, Newman (Videogames, 2003) cites Howard's and Beren's 2001 typology (Rough Guide to Videogaming, 2001") , this lists seven categories:

- Strategy and Simulation
- Action and Adventure
- Driving and Racing
- Role-Playing
- Sports and Beat Em' Ups
- Platform and Puzzle
- First Person Shooter

On the other hand, genres can become repetitive, they are able to be added to, altered dramatically to produce some new classification, I won't go into the long list as it will take eons... Newman also refers to the terms "Ludus" and "Paidea". Ludus is defined as a game which is constrained more by rules and has a clearer outcome, i.e: Winning. Paidea is defined as a game you player for pleasure, ie: The Sims, Sim City, Sandbox, etc...

Ludus

- Backgammon
- Battleships
- Connect 4
- Drafts
- Chess

Paidea

- EVE: Online
- Everquest
- Grand Theft Auto
- Sims City
- The Sims

What is so interesting about this list is the out come of it, my first thoughts for games that are "Ludus" are all board games, but why is that? If one digs deeper into the classes of a game, one may have encountered such as Ilinx & Mimicry, Agon Alea, that Caillois (2001) adapted from Huizinga.

Ilinx: Style of the moment, Vertigo, Parkour.
Agon: Competitive play, it's in the struggle to win.
Mimicry: Simulation, make believe-believe, role-play
Alea: Randomness/Chance, such as the way Tetris plays out.

 Some genres have combined these elements, Newman observed the card game Poker had combined Alea and Agon, as does Tetris. Make of this what you will, when one thinks about the means of a definition of a game and it's play, I think it's possible that this is certainly it.

Run Lolo Run

Hi guys, apologies for the lack of posts recently I've had a fir bit of work to catch up on.

As of a few weeks ago in my Critical Games Studies lecture we were studying games is varying forms of media such as printed, TV, web and films showing how games interfaces are sometimes used to bring across a point. And how some times in films the story can be based entirely around a game or mechanic, and other times games are just used briefly to help carry the story along. These include, The Lawnmower Man (au fell in my opinion, apart from Pierce Brosmen) where VR (virtual reality) is used to help a backwards gardener become more intelligent and eventually gain telekinetic powers (a bit Philip. K Dick ish as the main character is thrown out of his natural role which I do like). War Games, where the main character cracks into the states defence data bases and has to stop a nuclear strike. The Matrix where every one doesn't realise they are in a VR simulator, TRON and some others.

My opinion on Run Lola Run, it is a German with English subtitles (I like that), It's very action packed. It all start off when Lola wakes up to her telephone ringing, she picks it up to find out her boyfriend is in a phone booth and he has messed up a drug deal by loosing a bag full of 10,000 Marks (before the Euro for younger readers) in 20 mins before he is killed for his error. Sp she tells him to stay where he is as she first goes and runs to the bank where her farther works to ask him for the money which he declines. So due to this her bf robs a supermarket for the money and as Lola arrives she is fractionally too late so she decides to help him and she is eventually killed by the authorities. The it shows a clip of her and her bf asking philosophical questions to each other (which I quite liked as Philosophy is one of my subjects).
Any how, then it restarts and she does slightly different things and that changes peoples lives she interacts with and each time her of her bf dies it restarts and she appears to learn from her mistakes each time.

Personally I thought it was a good film overall and with Lola who learns from her miss takes each time was like a computer game and the characters repeat themselves and slightly change what they say and stuff.

But over all I thought I was quite interesting, however with the realism you tend to spend longer than a few mins in a casino but then she doesn't turn into a cartoon when she runs down the stairs so there's that to consider.