Blogdor!
Resist!
You are a 17yr old old farmer peasant living in a beautiful, but pre-industrialized nation. You're living just outside of your nation's capital city and have hopes of attending college there, but are currently helping your family with the farm. Although the nation in which you live is not particularly wealthy, there is a good distribution of resources for all and very little economic disparity or class colflict amongst most of the populace. However, for the last several months you've been reading and hearing about increased unrest with a faction of your country's military and political members.
Suddenly one day you wake at dawn to the distant sound of explosions and gunfire coming from within the city. Crawling up on the rooftop you see helecopters, jets and tanks streaming into the city. After watching the morning spectacle for several hours, you are finally able to get local radio reception. There has been a coup and somehow a small minority of government and military zealots have mustered up the forces to take over the existing governmental and military forces. Things do not look good...
Ten years later your country has fallen into extreme economic and civil unrest. Death squads now march through the streets, giant factories dot the city and outskirts with sweatshops, the air hangs thick with the resin of oil refineries lining the coast and rooted mightly elsewhere across the once beautiful landscape, and hope and health are bleak and desperate.
For the last ten years you've been fighting with the resistance forces, trying to survive, trying to make changes, and trying to get the rest of the world to hear about what's happened to this virtually remote part of the worlld. Fortunately, the team you're with has discovered what could be the most promising lead yet, and they need your skills and abilities to make it happen. It's dangerous, but it could help lead to understanding exactly what happened all those years ago that caused this, and possibly garner international attention and support towards really helping this torn country as well as bringing those responsible both here and abroad to justice. Finally, this is the chance you've been waiting for!
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In the beginning you'll delve deep into a secret world of military and political strongholds, scouring vast underground catacombs filled with traps and vital information. As the adventure progresses further, you'll need to assume false identities with the pressure building as you encounter informants, deception, double agents and death squads as the scope of involvement branches outside your country towards that of the world's most powerful nations as you struggle to escape this hell alive and discover the truth for all!
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Audience: 12 and up. Male and Female. The player enjoys puzzle and adventure games including aspects of history, politics and geography as this game uses different factual examples of historical information about foreign intervention (not confined to any one country, ie. the US) combined into an 'all-encompasing' fictional time and place.
Subject: Subject matter deals with factual examples of major foreign intervention to be used here as what took place in this country, it's affects, and the outcomes this had on the citizens of this country, the newly instated government as well as participating foreign governments, and ultimately the economic, social and environmental implications. Not entirely different from any kind of hero/heroine like oppression/resistance plot (ie.Star Wars), but made more contemporary and educationally inclusive.
Genre: Edutainment/adventure/puzzle game; single player/third person viewer.
Theme: This game is playful and scholarly and is perfect as interactive digital media as many of the puzzles needing to be solved are politically historical in nature, so may require a person to also do research outside the game (have an online window open in which to access google, etc.) in order to solve a problem or question to be able to proceed. The objective here is to bring some factual knowledge to those people who enjoy those kinds of games that already have elements of 'only you can save our land from destruction; solve this puzzle and advance on,' and set an example that this kind of behavior really does go on all over the world besides just in fantasy and fiction.
Jason Lohse
BECA 670:
Stormchasers RPG
High Concept:
In September of 1955,
Hurricane Janet was the tenth hurricane to strike the Atlantic that season. Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and his crew of eight flew out of
Guantanamo Bay Cuba, and into Hurricane Janet on a weather reconnaissance mission. A mission that would be their last. In this
RPG however, you and your crew will get a crack at stepping into their
flight boots, with a chance of completing the mission and flying the
twin-engine plane to safety.
Characters:
-Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham
-Up to six crew members with specialities ranging from: meteorology, navigations, radio operations, radar specialist, co pilot and (of course) gunner.
-Two journalists specializing in Navy operations and forcasting.
Player Motivation:
Because the nature of the accident and what really went on in the plane remains a mystery, players will be challenged with a variety of situations with various outcomes. As each player makes a decision that benefits the the exploration of the hurricane as well as survival of the plane, they will recieve experience insights that will be critical to the mission and their survival further on in the game as the hurricane builds and challenges increase. By the cumulation of their mission they will have encountered one of three different possibilities for the final outcome of the mission based on the decisions they made. Players will be motivated to complete all three dramatic outcomes based on the level of each challenge and the stunning audio and video engrossing them into the game.
Genre:
Role Playing Game
Target Hardware:
Board, PC, MAC and console
Target Customer:
Those interested in Role Playing adventure games, intrigued by history and are excited by the prospect of reworking the details of an event that remains shrouded in mystery.
Unique Selling Points:
-Three alternate endings
-Personalities of actual people in a historical context
-Variability in number of players with less than nine assuming roles and specialties of the remaining characters
-Game interaction available through board or electronic mediums
Design Goals:
Offering a generally high level of emotional intensity within the context of the game and the fast pace of the situations and how this will lay out graphically and auditorilly, with the board version providing strong graphics cards and visuals. Providing three different endings based on the decisions of the characters along with fictional ending possibilities of survival. With electronic versions players will be given the option to save at various points should they like to resume at earlier stages of the game and also allowing for characters to explore the three endings without having to play the entire game over from the beginning. A similar option will be available to those playing the board version. Lastly the design of the game will be simple in its usability. Rules for control of console and computer based games will consist of either text for PC and MAC or choice selection (ala choose your own adventure) for console. The board version will allow for more direct interfacing between a referee and the players.
Jason Lohse
BECA 670: Game Analysis Presentation Outline
Genre:
• The genre of game I’ll be exploring is known as RPG or role playing game. As our text points out, the two most basic elements of RPG’s are “configurable player-characters that improve with experience (and) strong storylines.”P.347
• What is
roleplaying and issues associated.
• The player plays a role in the story with the player’s choices affecting the outcome of the plot in some way.
>Acting out a character, sometimes detailing that character's life: birthplace, goals, all in context of fantasy lands and worlds. sometimes played with dialogue and costumes.
>Electronic RPG's with characters already generated for you, but not always.
>Character attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, hit points, experience points, ect.) But not in all RPG's
>Storylines: mission, puzzles, can you save the princess, prevent the Evil Dubya from destroying the world.
>Some die and some don't
>Styles: D&D, post-apocalyptic, futuristic, fantasy, wargames..
>History: Gary Gygax in the mid 70's and transition to electronic RPG's in the late 80's.
>(usually) no time completion or deadline
>Moderator, DM, Games Master, referee, our occasionally just a guide
>Some include random factors like dice or choose your own adventure options.
• Furthermore, the choices they make as they progress through the game have the result of affecting not only the outcome of the plot in some way, but often effects changes within the game character being played.
The Longest Journey:
• Went on sale in the US in November of 2000 and was created by the company Funcom of Norway with ratings in the mid to high 9's out of 10 point scale.
• The game boasts 50 speaking characters within 160 locations spanning two worlds, allowing for over 30 hours of game play during the course of 13 chapters.
• The game character is an early 20's art student named April Ryan who lives in an apartment in a modern, slightly futuristic city. The intro is apparently quite lengthy as it details her history, where she's schooling, her college friends and her crappy cafe job and bothersome neighbor.
• She begins to have very strong dreams and eventually learns of her unusual ability to shift between two different worlds. Her typical world Stark is existent on science and technology, which is in contrast to the second world called Arcadia that's existent on magic.
• After she acquaints herself with this second world, it is revealed to her that it is her mission to bring these two worlds, formerly in balance, back into balance as one world.
• The nature of the game play here then is to accomplish her mission and restore balance to these worlds, this being achieved before 'it's too late,' whatever that may be.
• One thing looks for certain though, that this is a game you may get stuck on with regard to the puzzles, but there seems no real time threat to accomplishing your mission, and no threat with regard to dying somewhere in the process. However, I could be mistaken.
•
The reviews I read on this comment that the characters are very well developed; to the degree that you find yourself caring for and identifying with them, as well as with April. Yet I'm uncertain about the interactivity with non-player characters, and the basic either/or situation this creates as presented in the text; will your player be “immersed in a world, or playing a story.”p.368
• The player's interaction mode is third person, as you are always just behind her and can view her completely. You are able to see various sides of her, so you're never stuck with just one angle of the third person perspective.
• The game is single player, and although looks as though you do spend the majority of time in the world of science and technology (based from the reviews and the majority of Stark world viewable pics vs. minimal Arcadia pics), I can only guess there's also an ample amount of playing in the magical world as well.
• The really interesting thing to me about this game is that on February 18, 2004 Funcom was awarded a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund to help develop the much anticipated follow-up to The Longest Journey. Apparently this has been the first time the Norwegian government (or any government that I'm aware of) has marked this shift that games hold the same cultural recognition as film and television, and actively endorse their development.
• While this can be comparable to the United States funding public television and radio, I'm not sure to what degree if any our federal government endorses film. Furthermore, if the US were to follow Norway in the direction of supporting games and gaming someday, it would most likely be in support of educational gaming as opposed to this style of cultural/fantasy gaming, and certainly highly doubtful of any support for Grand Theft Auto or Leisure Suit Larry style games.
The Call of Cthulhu:
• This is a game based on the H.P.Lovecraft story of the same name. Though the designers of this game claim to keep well in the tradition of the original story, I'm ashamed to admit I've not read it and so can't verify this one way or another. This game was originally released in 1982 and is definitely not an electronic game. It's an analog RPG, with later versions including costumes and props.
• When
researching this game I was hoping to find recent versions that had become the modern electronic companion to the older original version. Although that didn't happen, there is a recent version that plays in the same or similar fashion as the original. I decided to go with this game for several reasons.
• First because it represents the original RPG play format, second is of the horror genre, which itself seems quite different from what I'll generalize as most RPG genres consisting of fantasy stories, and lastly that it's received rave reviews both then and now despite it's relative obscurity in the face of better known and celebrated games such as Dungeons and Dragons then, and the overriding popularity of electronic games now.
• The roles players play include characters such as occultists and investigators who become aware of other realms and worlds beyond our own that are inhabited by horrific and sadistic gods. Although it's unclear to me what the actual goals or 'victory conditions' for this game are, the nature of the game play appears to be finding ancient artifacts, uncovering glues, and doing so in a manner that allows your game character to retain their sanity (sanity points are the primary character survival threat in this game). One of the reviews described this game as the complete opposite of the “gung-ho, direct frontal-assault method of gaming” http://www.gamers.com/userreview/391609 that comprises much of the game interplay out there.
• Again, the player's interactive model consists of direct, physical and storyline play interactivity, with the primary perspective generally consisting of more than a single player perspective although it's unclear to me if this game can operate at both a single player and multi player levels.
• The narrative comes from the work of
H.P.Lovecraft. Chaosium, the company which designed this game as well as many others, has a good reputation of keeping true to literary treatments with detail and respect.
• Other than RPG, the genre the game occupies falls into the sub-genre of horror RPG's. While this may be a larger sub-genre than I'm aware, my impression is that it is still a less common genre than most RPG's.
• Lastly, perhaps because this is essentially an older game, it remains the most unclear to of the three games I've researched here, what the actual progression of the game is like.
• Regardless, considering the high level of reviews this game has garnered (all 10's from the sites I visited), there is a definite appeal and satisfaction that comes with this game play that's best understood by playing rather than what any amount of description can provide. Perhaps this is the 'old fashioned' gathering of several people together in a room, replete with costumes and props that provides for a more realistic interactivity than any console or monitor can provide.
Final Fantasy X:
• Final Fantasy is formatted for PlayStation 2, and is similar to the other games I've been reviewing in that it is only accessible on one format. Despite trying to find information to the contrary, none of these games are cross platform. I’m not sure why, but if this turns out to be incorrect, I'd like to know about it and how to better find out about games that are cross compatible. Although I have encountered a couple RPG's that do advertise this, they just happen to be ones I've not chosen to review because of my interest in these other game concepts.
• Regardless, the latest version of Final Fantasy X has received fantastic reviews and compliments on its continuation of turn-based combat and character advancement.
• Though much of what one can expect from this game is epic battles, this seems to be a lot of its drawing power.
• That and a unique system of character advancement through a grid system that offers choices in character attribute advancement rather than static level advancement.
• Players also have the ability to add ever greater properties to their equipment and weapons. Clearly this is a huge aspect of both game play and interest in game play.
•
Reviews I looked at about the difficulty of puzzles and challenges described those here as almost blasé, but a fair enough distraction from the other more engaging aspects of the game.
• The game’s storyline is apparently very complex and emotionally satisfying, though what the storyline entails remains a mystery. Surprisingly I was not able to find much out about this as most sites went on about every other aspect of the game and all the innovations to standard RPG structure found here.
• This being said, the game takes place in a fantasy world complete with magic and monsters and contains a strong narrative along with a whole lot of dialogue. So while you’ll be involved in very complex, exciting battles, you and other non-player characters will have much to say to each other during the down time.
>Summary: Key elements, experience taken from the game, changes and future of RPG's.
The information I gathered for this report came from the following sources of video game publishers, review and fan sites.
Publishers:
longestjourney chaosium
callofcthulhu
fantasysquare
Reviews and Fan sites:
gamers
gamerspot
gamespot
computerandvideogames
gamereviewers
canadagaming
rpgnews
gamers
gamespot FF review 1
gamespot FF review 2
gamespot FF review 3
comnet
What makes us think that video games are impacting the practice of visual art?
The first thing you saw when entering the
game exhibit at
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was a giant billboard with various imfamous real life historical images recreated in game style graphics. The effect this had on me was basically homogenizing social, political, historical and cultural events into an almost single categorical medium of gaming and 'gaming reflection.' In other words, the weight of reality these events originally had was temporarily replaced with a sense of fictionalized game scenarios. It's strange to imagine 'interactivity' alongside classic images of napalmed
Vietnamese,
imolating monks,
columbine high,
LA riots,
the Godfather (predating movie compatable games by 20 years), etc. I'm not sure if the practice of visual art is necessarily becoming more computer generated because of games, but the context of reality has certainly been shaped by them.
Describe the emotions you encountered. Were you scared, appalled, joyus, bored, what? What kinds of emotions were arroused, why did you feel them, what content arroused your emotions more than others?
I had a mixture of emotions with each game I encountered. Wacco Resurrection was hilarious. It was very creatively designed surprisingly for me didn't carry much of any of the weight of what really happened. Of course, what really happened continues to be debated. The victims here certainly were not the
ATF or
David Koresh, but the diciples caught between the unfolding craziness of a persuasive and delusional cult leader, and the bomb first ask questions later but deny this policy by the ATF.
The various Army landscape games and SIM video of the
Battle of 73 Easting was very frightening mostly because of its contemporary relevence. If this game had come out during the 1960's, we'd see troops invading eastern jungle villages and rice patties, or during the 80's troops invading Central American scenes, though more overtly tundra landscapes and Russian cities. Yeah, this really bothered me simply because of how many US 'interventions' were fabricated, and made me dread what the next series of Army SIM games will look like based upon where in the world we're called to invade next. Blah.
What is one comment, question, and concern you have about videogames after going to the exhibit?
Many of the games attempt to become even more
bodily interactive. I'm curious about the degree to which this can be fully accomodated either through wearing pieces of hardware that can detect and react accurately with subtle bodily movements and cues or other ways such as similar bodily attachments delivering chemical and electrical stimulia to replicate real life involvement in a situation. I would certainly be cool to see how this would effect further depths of game involvement (such as the Tetris trance mentioned in the text) or even game dependence if you're getting actualy chemical delivery through skin patches and such.
Lastly I went to
SFSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy. This site offers the standard faculty, courses, events, research, facilities... The two links I'm drawn toward immediatly are research and events. If you enjoy space blather as much as I do, there's a series of lectures coming up with their
scheduled dates and times. And they offer refreshments! Classy. Interesting ones include the hunt for habitable planets, the state of the universe report, and my favorit, "Have Exotic Baryon Resonances Been Discovered?" I may not be able to crunch numbers well enough to have been a hard core science geek, but I do get off on many of these topics. Of course, the
research area looks just as interesting, what with areas covered being the Cryogenic Electronics Group, Optics Research Lab, Underwater Acoustics, Extrasolar Planet Search (at UCB), Pioneer Seamount Observatory and the Space Interferometry Mission. And lovely as well are links to each of these research areas and their specifics. Bon apetit.
The fourth site I like is the
SFSU Fine Arts Gallery. You can check out current and past selected exhibits as well as info about the arts department and the college of creative arts. One of the current pieces is called
White Collar and features a graphics book you can scroll through (the medium is actually called linocuts). There's 128 pages to this. A lot of work and very important subject matter handled well both topically and artistically. Great stuff! As well, the selected past exhibitions are probably 'the best of' (the last several years at least) and certainly feel that way once you spend time there checkiing them out.
Grumble. This sucks. I just checked out my links to make sure they're all working properly, and discovered that several of the sites I went to are embedded within the CIA site without having different urls of their own. Not sure what to do about this. Yep, I'll be asking about this little issue in class...
Ok, one really cool site I found was a student site through CIA (I promise I 'll go elsewhere) called
The Wisdom of Wonka. It's premise is whether Wonka could in fact hold many of the secrets to life, and how this wisdom is available partially through the lessons learned from four very naughty children. Click on the kids and see. It's a pretty basic site, but it's oh so cute and a treat for Chocolate Factory movie fans.
The second
site I really liked was Paula Levine's, who's the Ast.Prof. and Acting Director of CIA. She's also got links similar to Steven Wilson listed as current projects, essays, teaching and videos. She also offers an interactive game she designed called
Blotto!, which allows you to choose your gender and religion, and then gives you a series of ink blot tests. I'm not sure where it goes from here as it's only avaiable to play on CD-ROM, but it sure looks wacky.
Among other cool stuff I found here, there's a description of an interactive public installation called
Crime-Z-land that's comprised of video cameras around city hall. Images are broadcast 24 hours a day and can be found at the Crime-Z-land
website. So beware, next time you're in the neighborhood, you could be taking part in art without your consent! Hmm. Of course this presents itself as a boon to exhibitionists. Well, I'm definately looking for those cameras next time I'm around there.
The first place I went to with this assignment was to the
CIA (Conceptual Information Arts) department on campus. I first began checking them out last fall when I was looking into other options such as minors or second majors here at state.
I tried checking out many of the student projects, but unfortunately none of them were able to come up. This really sucks because there's so many students and so much work to check out. I was able to access the instructors sites though, and what I found was really great. Stephen Wilson is the Professor of Art here, and
his site contains four basic links to Art Works, Books, Essays and Teaching links.
One really cool project of his found through Art Works is game called Protozoa Games. His description is as follows: "Reflecting on animal experimentation and the relationships between species, the Protozoa Games interactive installations allow humans and live protozoa to compete in pinball-like environments mediated by digital microscope and motion tracking technologies." Fun stuff. As for the format, the game is actually a large exhibit that's been played at several different galleries around town. Check out the
video doc of this! Great music too.
In need of a little humor? Or are you far more concerned with such pressing matters as to what the
Illuminati and
sexbots are up to these days, and how they'll be transmitting their perverted effluvium to the masses on this most sacred of Saturdays; Valentines Day?!
Well, if you answered yes to these questions and many more, then you gotta check out the San Francisco Independent Film Festival's
schedule.
And at the end of the evenig curl into your computer chair and geek out to
Homestar and fellow miscreants.
Your brain will thank you for it
Cheers!
Blog #5
Ok, I know I said that Sapphosbreathing was my favorite, but for the record I'd also like to state that
Crookedtimber just so happens to be my favorite too. It's very formally laid out, erm, layed out, not only who the poster is, but who the posters are collectively, as well as guest posters. I for one really appreciate knowing about or atleast having access to knowing about someone if they choose to actively play a role in media and commentary, and the individuals here allow at least some access their personal lives.
The topics covered here are very broad indeed. Of course, what else would you expect from a gaggle of philosophers, academic and otherwise. I've spent a lot of time on this one, and clearly there's a lot of time to be spent here. The reading is fresh and not so rhetorical as much of what I've been reading that tends to fall into the 'preaching to the choir' sort of progressiveness. Maybe that's because I get more into the nature of things here and observable patterns of behavior, as opposed to more decrying over little newly revealed facts that Bush (and foreign and domestice policy throughout much of America's history) behaves as more of a terrorist than what is lauded as terrorist action only as it's directed toward the US.
Great site though; I'm sure to write more on it later.
In the meantime I wanted to post a few personal matters before the evening gets too late.
Blog #4
At first I thought
'this blog is cool because the poster really, I mean really, includes their own thoughts instead of some commentary here and there, while the rest of the post is from another source.' Boy was I wrong. Er, at least as I can tell. Honestly, I don't know. Every blog site I've checked out so far has had the name of the person writing it at the bottom (or rarely top) of the post. This one simply has "Posted at 'time' and 'place,'" with there being at least three or four places listed. An experienced blogger Jason is not.
At any rate, the level of writing here is very good, so while it's unclear to me who wrote these pieces, they are at least well written. The topics are very in depth and cover a range of political and social issues. So although I like the site, I'm somewhat confused about how to get a sense of personality from it outside of just the issues addressed and items posted. Feedback on this one is appreciated.
Blog #3
This site contains lots of commentary about ethnicity, racism, reparations, the current administration, right wing politics and organized religion, and 'non-traditional' historical perspectives. This barely touches it, but I really appreciate the broad topics here where inclusiveness of perspectives is not. That's ok though. This is a treasure trove of not only progressive thought, but also one that really reaches into the various realms of ethnicity (and not just being African American, though that constitutes much of what's here) where on a day to day basis I'm just not immersed in or exposed to regularly, but is wholey pertinant to the rest of humanity outside our bleached media mainstreams. I haven't had a chance to read everything here, or anywhere else actually, but while I will probably disagree or not subscribe to viewpoints found or posted here from time to time, I give this site a smiley face and two gold star stickers.
Blog #2
The first entry I read was a brief snipet of Ezra Pound. Though I still haven't read Pound, following this was some commentary by Brian Leiter about the philosophy of ignorance as it applies to his reflections as a six month old blogger. Even though essentially none of this entry was written by Cleis (the poster), I really appreciate her connections here with another Leiter commentary about Chomsky and a comment he'd made about anti-Semitism in the US.
Later Cleis presents her most recent reading list featuring six books that while very appealing to me, will sadly not be read in the next year due to my backlog of reading as it currently stands. Perhaps I'll just stumble upon one someday, and having read about the basics of each, will most likely leach onto it until I've sucked it dry. Fun!
This site contains some very thoughtful information and insight into feminism in the broad sense, and I resonate with a lot of it. Of my five, this one I could really get into and trance along with, as opposed to other blogs that contain much of interest to me, but don't resonate as deeply personal. That said, let's get to the others already...!
