This is a double entry on the last two episodes of the documentary known as Games Britannia. It is a three part series that talks about the history of games (if you read the post of it I did of episode one - "Dicing with Destiny") to the point of where games have come too.
Games Britannia Ep 2 - Monopolies and Mergers
The first game that was mentioned was a game called The Mansion of Bliss. It was a game where players had to reach a place of 'happiness', they game was pretty simple and straightforward, players move the character by rolling the dice and once they've landed on the square you then read a small paragraph based on where they landed. It was then used as a base for the game known as The Mansion of Happiness which was created in America, but this was used to encourage morale as those were the sort of games the american public enjoyed playing the most. Interestingly enough, a game called The Checkered Game of Life is the polar opposite. Virtue wis no longer it's own reward, you play to gain influence, wealth and etc.
Another game that was pretty interesting was call PANK a Squith. It's a game where the player takes control of a woman who you have to get into a place where it was considered man only - The Houses of Parliment. The path to this involves a few obstacles - prison, ridicule and opportunity. Each player picks the path they decide to go about it, it also sets up a form of conflict between players (staged conflict, to be precise).
Brer Fox AN Brer Rabbit was surrounded by a bit on controversy as it had a politician on the front cover, Lloyd George, as a fox that was waiting to pounce on land ownership - reference to an uproar that happened in 1909. Eventually, the game was long lost, but not truly forgotten, as the game helped create that would eventually conquer the world - Monopoly!
Oddly enough, even though Monopoly is based off the streets of London, the game was originally created in America as The Landlord's Game, which was created by American activist Elizabeth Philips. The game had similar mechanics of the game we know today, but it wasn't very popular. However designers tweaked the game (location it's set in mainly) and then that helped paved the way to the game that's well known to us today. Monopoly has had a massive following in various: like Simpsons Monopoly, Ipswich Monopoly (check the local Waterstones - proof!), Monopoly with 'credit cards', you name any iteration or re-skin and it's pretty much been done. It even has national championships yearly worldwide.
Cluedo (originally murder) was created to help bring normality back to the public once the war was over. The main plot of the game is that at a "typical" English get together, someone has been murdered and you have to solve the murder, you need find out who it was who committed the crime, where it took place and the choice of weapon used. My personal opinion is that the game has made Murder Mysteries become popular as you could easily transact the rules of Cludeo into a mystery murder with real people.
Games Britannia Ep 3 - Joystick Generation
This part of the post is from the third and final episode of the documentary, which was talking about the evolution of board games to video games. The ZX Spectrum helped with the industry in Britain that started with the release of Manic Miner, the ZX was a rival to BBC's Microcomputer (early console wars).
Black + White was a game released in the year 1990 which allows you to play 'God' to the game's inhabitants, hence why it was given the nickname "The God Game". You move the pieces at will and decide what fate you decide to place on them (be it killing them, torturing them, etc...)
The mention of the Tomb Raider series. was said to have helped the popularity of the industry as the main character, Lara Croft was the character that could live beyond the game and capture the audience's hearts. Since it's debut in 1996, the character seems to relate to players. They mentioned Heavenly Sword, which was one of the early titles that was released on Sony's Playstation 3 had a female protagonist - Nariko. The game managed to have a character that players cared for as Lara, my reason for that is because if there is one person worth keeping yourself alive for (be it family, or other relation), the game also used a strong actors who also did the stunts.
Wipeout was said to find the balance that Heavenly Sword lacked, the right mix between fantasy, story + character. Proved to be a big hit when first released and was said to have helped other racers to become important.
To conclude this post, I thought that both of these episodes were very interesting. I quite enjoyed learning about the history of where Monopoly came from and how ir became successful. But probably more so enjoyed the third episode more, because for me personally, that was where my love of games started.
Friday 30 March 2012
Royal Game of Ur Iterations/Essay
The Royal Game of Ur
Throughout the essay, I will be talking about what I had to do which involved The Royal Game of Ur. For the past number of weeks, our lecturer has been talking about this ancient game and for this unit, we will not only get to play the game, we would also be able to iterate it. I touch briefly on the history of the game, the rules of play, the iterations I did while playing the game and also my own views on the ancient game.
Starting off with the history of the game, the game was first board created in the year 2600 BC to 2400 BC and is roughly around 4,400 years old. It was first played in Mesopotamia and to this it is still played to this day. There were five game boards founded between 1926 – 1930, in the Royal Cemetery of Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley, the game boards were usually described of having 20 squares (hence getting another name: The Game of Twenty Squares) which would consist of 4x3 square grid, a ‘narrow’ bridge of two squares and a smaller grid of 2x3, on these squares there were a few designs on it, one of them being a rosette flower that appeared every five spaces and was considered to be lucky. There was also a tablet that was excavated along with the board that had the rules of play for the game that has been deciphered by various researchers each with their own interpretation of the rules. (Fig.1: What the original game board)
Before iterating the game, the rules I followed were:
- Highest throw goes first.
- Pieces enter from opposites sides of the board.
- You must always move – lose a turn otherwise.
- New pieces can be introduced at any turn.
- Pieces can “piggyback” and move together.
- Single pieces on the “bridge” part of the board can be knocked off by opponent landing on that square.
- If a player lands on the rosette square – gains another go and is considered a safe zone (can’t be knocked off).
- Knocked off pieces must start again.
- Exact throws must be thrown to leave the board.
(Finkel, 2005)
However, when looking over at the texts I read, the rules were fairly different, one article from Robert Charles Bell (see Bell, 1979 Vol. 1 pp. 23-25). One of the things Bell talks about is that a pool is involved which would indicate that the people in Ancient Mesopotamia would gamble when playing this game, it also brings up a very interesting thing about the Rosette symbol squares, which was instead of the rule where players who land on it get an extra go the opponent would have to pay a fine which would go into the pool. Also they only played with 3 D4 dice, and how they figured how the score worked is as followed:
- Jewelled Corners up = move 5 + another roll.
- Three Plain Corners up = move 4 + another roll.
- Two Plain Corners up = 0 + turn ends.
- One Plain Corner up = move 1 + another roll.
(Bell, 1979 Vol. 1 p. 24)
Another interesting thing that I came across from this reading, was that the only way to get a piece on the board was that players had to score a 5 when they were rolling three D4 Dice which reminded me of how players can get a game piece on the board when playing Ludo, which you’d get rolling a D6 die (you’d have to roll a 6 in this instance). It doesn’t mention anything in the rules about players moving two pieces at the same time, but as I said earlier, there are loads of interpretations of the rules to this game, so no one really has a proper understanding.
Andrea Becker did a symposium which was then edited by Finkel. The article had a brief summary behind the history of the board, and includes a brief explanation of the rules itself. You have two players, both have to move seven counters along the fixed path to win the game using three dice (or sticks), the flower squares can be considered as a safe zone – and you get an additional roll. These rules seem pretty similar to the ones I played when carrying out my task. The article showed a few variations of the game board, all with different designs except for the rosette flowers that appear on every board in the same places. The board itself did go through an overhaul in design, keeping the 20 squares: it 4x3 square grid, but would have a bridge of 8x1 squares.
(Fig. 2 – Picture of the board of the Royal Game of Ur in the second and first millennia)
(Finkel, 2008:20)
“...the new format would suggest a change in play in that the pieces would remain ‘at war’ all the way to the end of the track.”
Finkel, On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur, Fine led. 2008:20
Finkel made an interesting point about the board that was used in the second and first millennia. Which would suggest that with the bridge being extended; it changes the game. The game keeps the same rules as before – it’s still a race to see who will get all of their pieces off the board, but the main change is that the level of competitiveness has increased because now you’re going to be “at war” for the most part of the game and you’ll want to make sure that it’s your piece that gets the before your opponent.
I am now going to talk about the iterations I made when playing. My first iteration was that if a player rolled a 0, they could get another chance to roll. The main reason for this was when first playing it, there was a period where all me and the person I was playing against were just rolling zeroes and it was just slowing down the pace of the game so we figured to help speed it up a bit we’d have a second chance like feature which did help.
The second iteration was one that I or the person that was playing didn’t know was an actual rule, but we did add bits and pieces towards that iteration. It was the piggybacking rule. But we both agreed that of you do piggyback you cannot land on the rosette square on the board. This was mainly because if you could land on those particular spaces with two pieces, the game would be broken, you’d have two pieces saved and it wouldn’t be very fun if you had both players doing the exact same tactic of having two pieces on the “safe” zone, it wouldn’t be as fun. Which would then go onto an iteration that we decided would help benefit from this a lot is that you can un-piggyback pieces whenever you want too. I do feel that this was a bit of a silly iteration, looking back on why we added this rule, it didn’t really make much sense at the start but later on, you’ll see where it came in handy.
The next change we decided on was to do with the rosette spaces. One of the things that myself and my iterating partner noticed was that whenever we got on the rosette square, we didn’t want to move those pieces, we’d just leave them there and move the other pieces that wasn’t occupying one of those spaces. So, we agreed that if you are to land on the rosette, the extra roll you get you will have to move that same piece. This was clearly done to fasten up the play, as I mentioned earlier we wasn’t moving from those squares, and in the rules it states that only one piece allowed on that square, which means that if you rolled and you want to move onto one of the safe zones, you couldn’t. Of course, if the player was to move onto a space occupied by piggyback – then the player would end their turn but would have to move that piece on their next roll.
The final change made was again to do with piggybacking. We both agreed that if you are piggybacking then you would have to half the result of your roll. Which was fair because it’d make the game somewhat too easy, any player would just piggyback two pieces throughout the game and there you go, easy win for one player? There is more, we also agreed that if you were to land on a rosette while piggybacking, you do not get the extra roll you would get and you cannot consider it the safe zone either – meaning an enemy piece can take both pieces off the space and off the board. This was done to try and balance out the whole piggybacking thing, two pieces in the safe squares again would make the game unfair. Apart from that, I think it adds a bit of strategy to how and when a piece should carry another piece.
In conclusion, I did feel that the game itself was fairly enjoyable to play and could see the appeal of what the people in Mesopotamia liked about it, it was competitive, had some form of “fun” elements in the game (well, the rules with the pool anyway) and seemed like something anybody could pick up and play. On the other hand, given how old the game is, and how things may have been different at the time, I could genuinely see where it would be hard to iterate the game on the original board, that being said, looking back at my iterations, I do feel that maybe I could of come up with some better ones that would of served a better purpose, so if given a chance to do this again, I’d say come up with some more innovative iterations.
Bibliography
· Becker, A. (2008) “The Royal Game of Ur” in Finkel, ed. pp. 11-15.
· Bell, R. C. (1979) Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition. pp. 23-25.
· Finkel, I. L. (2008) “On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur” in Finkel. pp. 16-32.
· Hunicke et al (2004) describe games as 'systems that build behaviour via interaction'
Thursday 29 March 2012
Gender and Gaming
This is a post on about gender within the games industry.
According to Miller Et Al. People tend to go by gender for their occupation. I agree with this point to a degree, as it has something to do with gender role. Gender role are social and behavioural norms that are considered socially acceptable based on their gender .Something I picked up from Sociology, when children are growing up, the toys we are given to us at a young age kinda affect the sort of paths we take in life. If your a boy, your given things like toy tools, action figures, play mobile cars and so on, wheras if your a girl your given thigns like tea sets, dolls, a kitchen play set and so on.
Implict sterotypes have also been a factor on gender differences in est. salaries; money + wealth are viewed as masculine. The sterotype implying that when it comes to finding jobs, males tend to go for jobs that are highly paid.
Women are segregated to certain jobs that have fewer job oppurtunities, which also pay less. Women's cognitations + beliefs about technology and science are more negative towards technology and science than that of men's - mainly why most women tend to move away from the video game industry. Only 0.4% of women have lead only positions in the industry, whereas 1.2% are men. Also only 23% of senior position within the twenty UK games companies.
The percentage of men and woman in each job description within the games industry
Male (%) Female (%)
OPS/IT/HR 53 47
Writing 70 30
MKt/PR/Sales 75 25
Production 79 12
QA 87 13
Excutive 88 12
Visual Arts 89 11
Design 90 10
Programming 95 5
http://www.tnsglobal.com/_assets/files/Factsheets_UK.pdf (Source material for a few of the points I will bring up).
I also looked at National Gamers Survey in 2009, where there were studies on gamers within the UK. The first survey "Percentage of UK Population Playing Games and Time Spent. It was shown that Males play ALOT more games than Females, but it shows that at aged 50 + years that 43% of women play games (more than males in that group which is 41%) which shows that males hold onto their gaming habits then. Also I noticed that the 8 - 12 year old have a 99% (Male) playing games than the 96% (Females). But, the 13 - 19 year old group holds less, but more hours are accumulated within that group from the males at a total of 11.1 hours. It also shows that Males play more console games than women, however, women player more game portals.
Well, this is it for this entry, the link is up where I got the information from, feel free to have a look, comment and share your thoughts.
According to Miller Et Al. People tend to go by gender for their occupation. I agree with this point to a degree, as it has something to do with gender role. Gender role are social and behavioural norms that are considered socially acceptable based on their gender .Something I picked up from Sociology, when children are growing up, the toys we are given to us at a young age kinda affect the sort of paths we take in life. If your a boy, your given things like toy tools, action figures, play mobile cars and so on, wheras if your a girl your given thigns like tea sets, dolls, a kitchen play set and so on.
Implict sterotypes have also been a factor on gender differences in est. salaries; money + wealth are viewed as masculine. The sterotype implying that when it comes to finding jobs, males tend to go for jobs that are highly paid.
Women are segregated to certain jobs that have fewer job oppurtunities, which also pay less. Women's cognitations + beliefs about technology and science are more negative towards technology and science than that of men's - mainly why most women tend to move away from the video game industry. Only 0.4% of women have lead only positions in the industry, whereas 1.2% are men. Also only 23% of senior position within the twenty UK games companies.
The percentage of men and woman in each job description within the games industry
Male (%) Female (%)
OPS/IT/HR 53 47
Writing 70 30
MKt/PR/Sales 75 25
Production 79 12
QA 87 13
Excutive 88 12
Visual Arts 89 11
Design 90 10
Programming 95 5
http://www.tnsglobal.com/_assets/files/Factsheets_UK.pdf (Source material for a few of the points I will bring up).
I also looked at National Gamers Survey in 2009, where there were studies on gamers within the UK. The first survey "Percentage of UK Population Playing Games and Time Spent. It was shown that Males play ALOT more games than Females, but it shows that at aged 50 + years that 43% of women play games (more than males in that group which is 41%) which shows that males hold onto their gaming habits then. Also I noticed that the 8 - 12 year old have a 99% (Male) playing games than the 96% (Females). But, the 13 - 19 year old group holds less, but more hours are accumulated within that group from the males at a total of 11.1 hours. It also shows that Males play more console games than women, however, women player more game portals.
Well, this is it for this entry, the link is up where I got the information from, feel free to have a look, comment and share your thoughts.
Chris Crawford - Story
Chris Crawford says "That's why (games) are so emotionally crippled...they just don't bother with people other than as walking dolls that preform mechanical functions. The cardboard people in games do for drama what inflatable doll do for sex" (2005:15)
He mentions six lessons to consider when it comes to story.
Lesson #1 - Stories are complexed structures that must meet many hard-to-specify requirements
Games have never paid much attention to games. Stories are about people (the basic rule) that is lost in the high-falutin analysis of narrative theory. The movie, known as KOYANNISQATSI is shown to lack this, it lacks a protaganist or dialogue. People in this movie are the auidence, revealed by their works. The reason why games are so emotionally crippled are because games concern themselves with things: things you acquire, things you use, things destroyed and so on.
Lesson #2 - Stories are about the most fascinating thing in the universe: people.
All stories have conflict. Sometimes the conflict is either direct and violent, examples include Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. There are some conflicts that is social, sometimes it can be symbalic, but ti's still conflict none the less. Jurrasic Parl 2 has indirect conflict. Mathmatician and a bussiness man. Dinosaurs are merely the 'noble savages'. Well conflict at least is one place where games shine, even though this is mainly done through violence.
Puzzles
Puzzles play a part of a story, but isn't a strong force of a story. Yes, CSI uses science to help solve the mysteries, and the technology is amazing, but it is the strong characters ad often poignant storylines that are the true strengths of the stories. Without them, CSI would be a whodunit.
Lesson #3 - Puzzles are not a necessary component of stories.
Stories that concern choices characters make. Can be used to help drive the story. Star Wars "Use the force, Luke".
Lesson #4 - Spectacle does not make stories.
Many observers have noticed that our culture is increasingly dominated by the image. It's not needed in stories, but at the same time, it can be good visually. Films like Saving private Ryan have benifitted from this.
Lesson # 5 - Visual thinking should not dominate storytelling.
Spatial reasoning is when we can work something out using our knowledge of space. When used in a metaphorical sense, it works well, it also allows us to use statements like "Your statement is wide of the mark". However, according to Crawford, he says that "when people use it too literally, in storytelling, it becomes a problem.
Lesson # 6 - Stories take place on stages, not maps.
Stories will mess around with time, they will break it up, jump backwards and forwards, as well as skipping parts altogether. They will skip how the character arrives at a place (personally don't really see much of a problem with it - unless there's something that happens that would bring more to the story). Games themselves use this pretty well, however, games like JRPGs (which are really heavily story orientated have you take the character everywhere.
These were the lessons I drew from the Crawford article, I found these to be interesting as well as insightful and look forward to using these lessons into my own story writting.
He mentions six lessons to consider when it comes to story.
Lesson #1 - Stories are complexed structures that must meet many hard-to-specify requirements
Games have never paid much attention to games. Stories are about people (the basic rule) that is lost in the high-falutin analysis of narrative theory. The movie, known as KOYANNISQATSI is shown to lack this, it lacks a protaganist or dialogue. People in this movie are the auidence, revealed by their works. The reason why games are so emotionally crippled are because games concern themselves with things: things you acquire, things you use, things destroyed and so on.
Lesson #2 - Stories are about the most fascinating thing in the universe: people.
All stories have conflict. Sometimes the conflict is either direct and violent, examples include Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. There are some conflicts that is social, sometimes it can be symbalic, but ti's still conflict none the less. Jurrasic Parl 2 has indirect conflict. Mathmatician and a bussiness man. Dinosaurs are merely the 'noble savages'. Well conflict at least is one place where games shine, even though this is mainly done through violence.
Puzzles
Puzzles play a part of a story, but isn't a strong force of a story. Yes, CSI uses science to help solve the mysteries, and the technology is amazing, but it is the strong characters ad often poignant storylines that are the true strengths of the stories. Without them, CSI would be a whodunit.
Lesson #3 - Puzzles are not a necessary component of stories.
Stories that concern choices characters make. Can be used to help drive the story. Star Wars "Use the force, Luke".
Lesson #4 - Spectacle does not make stories.
Many observers have noticed that our culture is increasingly dominated by the image. It's not needed in stories, but at the same time, it can be good visually. Films like Saving private Ryan have benifitted from this.
Lesson # 5 - Visual thinking should not dominate storytelling.
Spatial reasoning is when we can work something out using our knowledge of space. When used in a metaphorical sense, it works well, it also allows us to use statements like "Your statement is wide of the mark". However, according to Crawford, he says that "when people use it too literally, in storytelling, it becomes a problem.
Lesson # 6 - Stories take place on stages, not maps.
Stories will mess around with time, they will break it up, jump backwards and forwards, as well as skipping parts altogether. They will skip how the character arrives at a place (personally don't really see much of a problem with it - unless there's something that happens that would bring more to the story). Games themselves use this pretty well, however, games like JRPGs (which are really heavily story orientated have you take the character everywhere.
These were the lessons I drew from the Crawford article, I found these to be interesting as well as insightful and look forward to using these lessons into my own story writting.
Remediation
What is remediation? Well according to Bolter and Grusin - it's what we call a representation of one medium in another remediation. We argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media.
Immediacy
Hypermediacy isn't an example of aesthetic perserve of the world wide web, as it's conventions have been picked by the television's rolling news, news feeds on mobile phones.
Immediacy
- Media that aspire to a condition of transparency.
- The aim is to make the viewer 'forget' that they are watching a movie for example and be drawn in the experience.
- Immersive virtual reality.
- Photo realistic images.
- Artfefacts that are aware of and wish to display their own constricted native.
- They call attention to their own constructed nature all the time.
- WWW.
- Video Games Hub.
Hypermediacy isn't an example of aesthetic perserve of the world wide web, as it's conventions have been picked by the television's rolling news, news feeds on mobile phones.
Why remediations takes place?
It takes time for new medium todevelop unique foms of content. No surprise that sucessful conventions are traded between media. Computer games visuals have been used in film - CGI. Which has become very popular over the years as alot films use it, be it either for the whole film, or just certain aspects of it.
My personal opinion on remediation is that I find it very interesting how certain aspects of media have been taken from one and used onto another (may sound as if I am repeating myself a little bit), however, the problem with that is once people keep using a certain kind of remediation - be it majorly or a little bit, it starts to become a bit too samey, but on the other hand, as things keep getting over used there are a few ways people try and better them.
British Museum Trip
Due to the financial difficulties at that point in time, I wasn't able to attend the trip to the Bristish Museum where we would of have the chance to play The Royal Game of Ur on one of the original game boards.
My thoughts on La Decima Vittima
The folllowing post will be my thoughts on the film La Decima Vittima (translated as The Tenth Victim). In a lecture, we watched a italian movie (see the title of the post). We were discussing games that take place in real time (Pervasive Games ), and this film is a prime example of just that. The film takes place in Italy, where the world is like a game where assassin's have to kill each other to go up in the ranks. Minus that, you have a cheesy storyline between the main character, Marcello, who is one of the assassin's in a loveless marriage with his wife, who finds himself the traget of female assassin Caroline who is looking for her tenth victim (ironically enough, it just happens to be Marcello). My personal opinion of the film was that the concept and idea of how the world has become one big game show was fantastic, but unfortunately I wasn't too keen on the film. The storyline was a bit too cheesey for my liking, and a bit too predictable on how it would progress and how it ends.
The film did help make live action games more popular, one of the most well known examples would have to be The Assassin's game. It's a game that takes place in real time which involes a a group of people (who signed up to play this game) are assigned a target in the "outside world" and are set out to "kill" them. You have three ways of eliminations: direct, indirect and capture. Direct eliminations occur when a player uses long ranged weapons: examples include water pistols, nurf guns, and fake stabbings. Indirect eliminations involve "poising" the target using tabassco sauce or vinegar. Capture elimination is just by tackling the target to the ground. The game is pretty popular in universities around the world, and there are a few videos on it.
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