Week 5 Notes

Week 5 Notes!
Here is a link to Tuesday's lecture slides: https://ics3.zulipchat.com/user_uploads/42198/MU4vH1J_N3sT7sxpoSeQTpCq/ICS-3-Week-5-Tuesday-Gardner_Games-GL.pdf

No Class on Thursday!

Week 5 Required Reading
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1555412005281620 A Ludicrous Discipline? Ethnography and Game Studies] also uploaded here for those off the VPN. a_ludicrous_discipline.pdf

Chapter One from: Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming

And optionally, the following video: Politics in Games

Guest Speaker: Dr. Daniel Gardner
His research focuses on how various cultural values and systems of authority influence the design and use of digital media and games Contact: dgardner@Chapman.edu
 * Examines the intersection of UI/UX and Game Design
 * Postdoctoral Fellow
 * Chapman University
 * Grand Challenges Initiative

History of Games

 * Everyone plays something …
 * What counts as a game is up for debate… “inherently political” because it all depends on one’s perspective!
 * It matters where the stories we tell about games come from
 * There are many histories of games and video games

First Games

 * The answer to the question "what was the first video game" depends on who you ask.
 * Some will say it was "Tennis for Two"
 * Some will say it was "Space Wars"
 * Both were games that were running on hardware that wasn't made for games.
 * These early games were primarily created by grad students messing around in labs with government funding.

1968

 * First home console Magnavox Odyssey

70s

 * Text-based adventure games
 * Adventure (first role-playing game)
 * We actually started to have physical graphics and development of a gaming culture/social space that developed like never before
 * No graphics
 * Defining aspect of this era was the text and arcade culture
 * Arcade culture was relatively equitable - both males and females would enjoy arcade culture
 * Ms. Pacman entered existence because of the large number of female players playing Pacman

80s

 * Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tron, Industry Crash, Super Mario Bros. and NES, Zelda, Gameboy
 * Gameboy heavily influences how we play games on handheld devices like our phones today
 * Mobile devices generally supported one game, while the Gameboy was one of the first mobile game devices that allowed for multiple games
 * Start of Nintendo Vs. Sega
 * Nintendo contributed to scenarios “For boys, not for girls”
 * Market crash at this time because:
 * Some games worked in some systems
 * There weren’t many differences between the consoles
 * They all did the same thing; about the same code
 * Instead of a game isle, they put the games into the boys’ isle, causing a shift into the male demographics (self-fulfilling prophecy)
 * Handheld devices that heavily influenced how we play today
 * Resurgence of gaming

90s

 * Completely different perspectives of gaming
 * Never seen before genres like:
 * Real time strategy, MMOs, FPS
 * Rise of FPS (Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Quake (1996), etc.)
 * Tomb Raider
 * Redefining game for many instances

2000s

 * Even more genres that were more immersive and RPG-ish
 * The Sims, 3rd and 4th gen consoles, Steam, Re-rise of handhelds, World of Warcraft, FFXI, mobile games and Indie games begin
 * How do you play Sims?
 * Many ways to play the Sims, individualized experience
 * Steam: giant PC platforms
 * Consolidate game-play experience
 * World of Warcraft
 * Many different clones, took up peoples’ lives (marriage)
 * Mobile games and Indie games
 * Uses different logic
 * Different games in model production

2010s

 * Minecraft
 * One of the most popular games for the last 10 years
 * Tons of opportunity and no "right" way to play the game.
 * Many new terms and categories:
 * MoBAs
 * VR
 * Free to play & Play to Win
 * 5th Gen Consoles, as well as the Switch
 * Switch is one the biggest innovations in mainstream consoles because it breaks down the barriers surrounding "what is a handheld" vs "what is a home console".
 * Pokémon Go
 * Fundamentally changes the way that we play/interact with a game.
 * Got people to walk and explore places they never would have went
 * Change theory in HCI guidelines
 * Highlighted inequalities, such as accessibility, race, privilege, etc.
 * AR is the technology being taken advantage of.
 * Twitch
 * Changed the way we watch games
 * Companies start making their games specifically well suited for live streaming

Potentially Influential Games
These were games that students came up with when asked "What are 5 games that come to your mind?"
 * Flappy Bird
 * Among Us
 * Quake
 * Dark Souls
 * Super Smash Brothers

Growth of Games/Computing

 * Increased interest and practice of video games = driving force for the advancement of computing?
 * Or is the other way around and video games are simply tracking the advancement of computing?
 * Games certainly are one of the things that made the idea of computers "fun" to average consumers.

Boellstorff: A Ludicrous Discipline

 * Thinking about games and culture
 * Inseparability of the two
 * Game cultures
 * Cultures of gaming - cultures around games
 * Gaming of culture - cultures shaped by games
 * Helps us think about relations between games, internet technologies, and culture

Issues with traditional games?

 * Inclusion / representation
 * Who is permitted to play?
 * Who are games about?
 * Professionalization/ Labor
 * Becoming a Job
 * What happened when “play” becomes “work?”
 * How do instructions dictate play?
 * Economics
 * Who can afford to play?
 * Art?
 * When are games art?

How the Internet Changes Games

 * Online Multiplayer
 * Game Ownership
 * “Games as service”
 * The cloud
 * Location awareness
 * Aesthetics
 * Reliance on the interface
 * Spectatorship

Participatory Culture and Streaming
Participatory Culture: (broadly) all the activities we “participate” in the related to the media we consume Streaming: Sharing/broadcasting instances of playing alongside video capture of the player, usually there is an active chat

Issues in Contemporary Digital Games

 * Inclusion/ representation
 * Data Survelliance
 * Accessibility
 * Toxicity
 * Privacy
 * Microtransactions
 * “Legal Regimes” (Burk 2010)
 * Esports
 * Games and Education
 * Ethical Labor Practices