IGT Game Symposium

I attended the all day event on April 17th, which included guest speakers from 3G Studios, Sandia National Laboratories and UC Santa Cruz.

James Kosta gave an very informative presentation on how 3G Studios develops games. Their development team doesn't stick with one audience, they in fact go the direction that they believe produces the most profit - i.e. moving to a Wii fitness game from a PC/Console WWII FPS.

Donna Djordjevich gave an overview of the training scenario game the DHS wants to use in place of tabletop games. This game scenario presented had a toxic airborne substance, and such issues that would arise in the game would be how to allocate resources and where to place command structures.

Michael Mateas from UC Santa Cruz discussed previous projects of his, including a game called Facade. Facade was a first person view of a person visiting an old friend of his and his wife. As the night goes on their dialog and the player's create different scenarios.

Game Discussion

The class developed an idea of a game based on how the Sims operates. Instead of being contained within your house though, your avatar could go anywhere as he/she pleased (i.e. sitting at a cubicle at work all day, or attend those fun corporate meetings). It would really just be a model of the real world, but we agreed upon that the social aspect is what would keep the customers coming back. There would be a social/career ladder as well that everyone would have to climb, so eventually someone could become president, or Supreme Galactic Overlord depending upon the type of gov't.

I would imagine the social aspect would spawn several parties/factions much how WoW, Eve-online, and real life have. It begs the question of: what rules should the game employ? Do we want the players to have the ability to dissolve organizations (if this is the direction we want to take the game in the first place), or have some hard system in place that players have to work with.

Larry Dailey presented some information on what he described as serious games within Journalism. He showed off some interesting web games students had made, such as an electoral votes US map puzzle, and quiz the candidates on issues game. I learned that although some games are old, they still have relevance today and are still played quite a bit. On the journalism side of serious games I gathered from the lecture that the fun aspect to presenting the news resonates more with the audience, for example The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

Presidential Photos

I attended the Presidential photo talk close to two weeks ago, and although we don't have class this Thursday it's probably about time I posted about it. The speaker was Eric Draper and he basically discussed some of his experiences photographing President G. W. Bush. He covered some funny moments, when he first started he had accidentally gotten caught up in Clinton's motorcade at the inauguration. And some serious moments, when the President committed troops to Iraq and 9/11.

I actually enjoyed the talk a lot, it was more enlightening to see the President as an average person at times. In addition, Mr. Draper discussed how he moved to a digital archive, and rotated pictures he had taken throughout the weeks in some room or hallway in the white house.

- I didn't have a camera, so no-go on the image verification that I was there Dr. Louis.

Lagoon/LagoonCraft

Many games are military simulations, including Lagoon which Dr. Louis presented on Thursday. They need to be designed to be realistic, so anyone interested in the results of the scenario can evaluate themselves or others. But they also need to be fun to play, in the case of Lagoon students can actually play Lagoon on their own time and improve on previous experiences.

Lagoon covers the serious games aspect well, it's both fun to play (at least initially) but it serves its purpose as an AI interface for instructors.

As I've worked with Lagoon/LagoonCraft before I knew its purpose and how it related to games. What I did learn was everyone's views on Lagoon from an art and journalism standpoint.

Lecture Feb 5th

1. I learned there are quite a few serious games out there. Most are unknown, and I would guess it's due to players just wanting to have fun in them.

2. Various serious games were presented, including an electric shock in Tekken, Raid Gaza and America's Army.

3. I view art as a representation, often creating professionalism surrounding a game. The lecture provided a side of art I never really thought about, such as the Shoot an Iraqi "game". But I view a game as a place where someone can do what they want just to have fun.