My Corner on the interwebs

[idg5202]

It’s amazing to notice how many times we play games on playing games (playception much?).

I mean: haven’t you ever tried to add some rules to an existing game (or ignore some), just to make the whole experience more suitable to you and your friends? I bet you did, at least once in a lifetime. Not...

[karlgrech90]

Hey Andrea, 

Its true what you say, sometimes we adapt our own rules to a game, such as knife fighting in CS. The rules of UNO are almost unknown to us since we invent so many rules to it that we cannot differeniate what is the proper rule and what isn't. What is amazing is that in the case of UNO and Monopoly and practically any game (especially card/boardgames) is that we set the ground rules before a game in order not to end up in a confusing game which will probably give rise to an argument . 

The other thing I wanted to mention is how we find bugs in a game (such as the swing of death in GTA IV) and we decide to play with them instead of disregarding them as bugs and moving on. 

Once while playing Far Cry: Blood Dragon, I was in the final stage and loads of enemies were coming, and these could not swim. While swimming to avoid the enemies coincidentally I found a patch of land on which I could stand and they could not come anywhere near me. I ended up killing all the waves of enemies from this tiny patch of land I can stand and shoot from. Which obviously was not intended by the game.

I guess the modification of rules are either to add or reduce challenge and sometimes they can be a mode of expression by players, modding GTA: Vice City and making people zombies creates a completely new game. So sometimes playing with the game rules themselves you are creating another game.

[idg5202]

Comment on: Everyone is an artist

Today I don’t want to write about games like Electroplankton.

Don’t get me wrong: the whole debate around games being art, or art being a game, is truly interesting to me. There are some great examples of how digital games can be used as form of expression (I don’t like to use here a broad and fuzzy word such as “art”) by designers, but I would like to focus on games that do so for players: emergent play is a phenomenon that amazes me, and (I think) probably underestimated.

So, instead of focusing on “What the designer did” or “What the game is supposed to mean”, etcetera, I would prefer to look at “What players do in order to express themselves in games created to be pure entertainment”. I’m referring to a huge amount of examples: from machinimas to Minecraft (and similar) sculptures, to mods, user-created content, and other forms of expression that emerge from gameplay or just from the game engine.

My take on this subject is that games, aside the debate about their connection to “art”, can be seen simply as a medium (Captain Obvious to the rescue here). So what? Media are, roughly speaking, tools to enhance expression of messages, and they can even grant nowadays a huge spread through masses. And art is, so oversimplify it, a form of expression; a way to re-read the reality and – also – communicate. Therefore, pretty much every game can be considered a tool that could enhance art: without going too deep into the debate, I would say that – as every tool in existence – their outcome depends on their use.

[karlgrech90]

Hey Andrea, 

It is a very interesting aspect of games that you have brought up here, games have many a time become a form of expression for players themselves rather than the creators of the game. Modding communities depend on the fact that a game is able to be manipulated in multiple ways that have created entirely new games, namely DayZ. Even by changing the representational level of a game, you have changed the whole meaning generated from it. But as you said, games are more a medium than they are a form of art in themselves. But I don't know, what makes something artistic is mostly its ability to create different interpretations of the same thing, and games do that very often since every play session is unique as is every player. So games just might be a form of art.

[idg5202]

Here we go again, yet another discussion of how games are not narratives and vice versa. I think that rather than emphasizing on their differences/ similarities, it’s better to see games as what they are; a multimedia mess. I specifically agree with Ryan’s discussion about media and each medium’s…

[idg5202]

Bonus comment: the Youtube channel of a guy that uploads playthroughs without commentary (which I already linked in a previous post).

[karlgrech90]

Hey Andrea, what about those people who make 'Let's Play' videos, who are completely new to the game themselves, and those people who literally make fun of the game, the context of the game completely changes and our perception of it as well. It is a considerable problem when you come to think of it since the game developers are releasing one thing that the audience is interpreting in an entirely different context.

[idg5202]

What surprised me most about this week’s readings is the absence of anything to do with video game music (not sound). I feel that music plays just as vital a role as sound does in player experience and involvement, with many of the industry’s top composers sharing the sentiment. Some industry...

[karlgrech90]

Hi Matt, I completely agree with your view about the effects of music on player experience. Mainly the atmosphere that game music creates is a very important element in itself. Also the fact that game music in certain dramatic scenes effect us emotionally and as you said, will make us empathize more with characters.

One thing I loved about Dead Space is the cacophony or violins when the player engages in combat against a monster. It made me panic even more and it confused me at times, adding to the horror of the overall experience. Even the scores in Metal Gear, especially that violin attack of when a guard spots you, give the player a shock that drives him/her to act as fast as possible.

Game music is indeed quite under studied and is yet such an interesting area of study