Bibliography

These are the texts that I either referenced or used for source information to aid my own understanding;

Fullerton, F. (2008) Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 2nd ed. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2003) Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Juul,Jesper. (2005) Half-Real; Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Isaaman, Marie-Claire (2010) Introduction to games studies

NUCA Lecture, 8^th October 2010

Goodswen, Chris (2010)

NUCA Lecture, 8^th October 2010

Isaaman, Marie-Claire (2010) what is a Game?

NUCA Lecture, 15^thOctober 2010

Isaaman, Marie-Claire (2010) Interactivity

NUCA Lecture, 12^th November 2010

Wargames. (1983) Directed by John Badham [DVD]

Red White and Blue. (2010)Directed by Simon Rumley [DVD]

Wikipedia (2010) Metal Gear Solid 4 Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_4:_Guns_of_the_Patriots >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Croc: Legend of the Gobbos Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croc:_Legend_of_the_Gobbos >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Super Mario Kart Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_mario_kart >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Pokémon Red and Blue Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Final Fantasy VIII Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VIII >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) Grand Theft Auto 3 Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_III >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Wikipedia (2010) ModNation Racers Available from:

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ModNation_Racers >

[Accessed 13^th October 2010]

Interactivity

Interactivity as a word can have multiple meanings, with no set wrong or right answer. Last week’s lecture explored interactivity and a variety of meanings. These are just some of them.

An Active relationship between two different things/ the defining of a relationship between two communicants
The participations of Agents in the reading of a text
The ability to meaningfully influence outcomes within a representation

A crucial issue with attempting to define what interactivity is that it is a vague term. Is it that all media or experiences are interactive by definition? There is no structure or clear indicators of what is or isn’t interactive. Furthermore, designers who are aiming for interaction have to ask themselves; How, Where and By Whom.


Zimmerman’s Model of Interactivity breaks different forms of interactivity down into distinct brackets:

1.       Cognitive Interactivity  

2.       Functional Interactivity

3.       Explicit Interactivity      

4.       Beyond object               

(In relation to interactivity in games)
Cognitive interactivity is the acceptance and immersion of a player physically into a game. This could be through storyline, gameplay or other means.
Functional Interactivity is the interaction of the player with the user interface. Was the response time correct? Is the interface easy to use or confusing? It can also mean the direct experience of physically playing the game.
Explicit Interaction is the closest to describing what is meant when it is said that games are interactive. When a player follows the rules of the game, takes part in programmed random events and choices or participates in a constructed simulation it is all considered to be explicit interaction between the players and the game.
Beyond Object interaction is when a universe or storyline is expanded upon outside of its original format. The most obvious example of this is the Star Wars Universe. Beginning as 6 films, it has since expanded into graphic novels and video games (amongst other media). For the audience to have a complete view of the fictional world depicted, they would have to play the games, watch the television program and read the graphic novels. Currently Viral advertising is the most common of this form of interaction – with sites created purely for the purpose of advertising the game/film/TV series by approaching a fictional element of the series.

While it can be defined into these 4 brackets, Interaction is not as simple as it seems. For example someone may interact with an object on a desk, causing it to fall off. This may not be deliberate – but yet it is still Interaction. But when it is interacting with an object out of choice or to follow rules (roll of the dice, dealing cards, etc.) these are all Designed interactions. This is because it is in a system or set of rules that the particular thing has to be interacted with.

Additionally a series of interactions when playing a game can be broken down further into Micro Choices (Tactics) and Macro choices (Overall strategy). By using Micro choices to build an overall strategy, it completes the multi-layered process that translates into a full experience.



How was my App reflective of the Zimmerman’s model of interactivity?

The Cognitive interactivity of my game wasn’t as important in my app design due to the nature of the concept. The game is a racer which is set in the future when racers would partake in an underground league known as ‘Flush’. For the player to get immersed and cognitively interact with the game the characters would have to have strong personalities and the world would have to be explained.
However as this is only a small app that focuses on addictive gameplay, the ‘story mode’ wouldn’t be the focus of the game. This isn’t uncommon in games, as I have noticed several games which have little or no narrative and story behind the action – the most notably being Soul Calibur IV (which has little story stages and an incoherent or unexplained storyline). This doesn’t mean that play suffers – in fact many games that focus on gameplay are better in that area because of it. However as a fan of single player narrative driven games it was a little disappointing to not focus on story. That said, lack of narrative seems to be evident in almost all apps. They need to have a small file size so narrative is often forsaken – and a scenario is set in place of a storyline. So on that basis I would say that players don’t really have much cognitive interaction with my game.

The fact about designing a game for a platform where screen ‘real estate’ is paramount is that achieving a good level of Functional Interactivity with the player is almost as important as the Explicit interactivity. This is because, while conventional games systems have a set ‘controller’, in the iPhone or iPad there is just a screen. The developer has to build their own controller just knowing the features of the platform and the screen size.
This is why I chose to have no ‘controller’. The player has to physically turn the iPhone to turn their bike. The only interaction they have with the screen during game play is by tapping the bike to shed parts or holding down for a second anywhere else to pause. By doing this the screen isn’t overwhelmed with buttons, each role is clearly defined with no room for error and will be easy for players to remember in one play. This removes the need for repeated tutorials. The app would have one single tutorial that could be turned off or on in the options menu (or when the screen first appears). Overall I would think that the player would feel the app has a good functional interactivity should it play as I intended.

Explicit interactivity would be the programmed choices that the player could make in my app, be it to turn a particular way, shed bike parts, and choose to save / not to save. I would feel that my app offers strong explicit interactivity between the player, the bike and the track. Since the game is fast paced, the player will constantly have to make choices that would affect the overall outcome of their characters. As all games by their very nature offer high levels of Explicit interactivity it would be hard to say ‘my app has one of the highest levels of explicit interactivity’ as I would say that all games offer around the same – it just varies between games what the player is actually interacting with (Their avatar, The story, The fates of NPCs, Etc.).

At this point in time my app offers no Beyond Object interactivity. This is not because it doesn’t have the capacity to. I would say because of the strong Japanese art connection in the character design that some form of Graphic Novel or Anime would never be out of the question so that the player could interact with the fictional world created beyond the app (it would likely increase the players cognitive interactivity with the story also). However, due to the nature of the platform, this is not probable.


What of the Micro and Macro interactions that the player would have with the app?
Well I would say that the Macro intentions of the user would always be along the lines of;
- Beating friends at a game-mode
- Unlocking new characters
- Breaking old time trial records
- Progressing in the story
- Completing the track

The Micro interactions would probably involve the character selection (different characters for different tactics) and also all of the split-second choices made in the gameplay (avoid that obstacle, go for that particular time trial clock, shed at this point as there are less obstacles, etc.).

From this analysis, the ‘Flush Racing App’ complies with all elements of Zimmerman’s model in one way or another and this is a welcome sign. All games and really media in general need to offer some form of interaction between their perspective players/audience. I would say though that games are significantly more interactive as they are a much more natural form of post-modern media to that of films and games. Modern films have tried to add levels of interactivity (Time-Code had four pieces of footage running on the same screen), but often this fails to really entice audiences as reaching towards one area of interactivity (in Time Code’s case ‘Explicit’ (the audience shapes the story by what they watch – but yet still the story has been made to allow them that choice)) other areas suffer (functional – the audience struggle to watch it, Cognitive – the audience’s state of disbelief has been broken). This is not suggesting films do not offer interactivity. The definition; the participations of Agents in the reading of a text, summarises the relationship between the audience (agents) and the film (text). The strength of films is undeniably in their Cognitive Interaction.


 --------------------------------------Beyond Object Interactivity note -----------------------------------------


An interesting recent display of beyond object interactivity was Assassins Creed; Lineage, a short film which was done using a combination of real actors and computer generated backgrounds. The film delves deeper into the background of the protagonist’s father in the 2^nd game. This jump from game to another media is an interesting leap, but one that is happening all across the gaming industry.        

An example of this is in fable 3’s Kingmaker App. The app casts the user as either a Rebel or a member of Logan’s Army. The user is instructed to mark their symbol on key points around real cities, and then a tally is taken and points awarded. The app bridges the game between the console game and almost an urban sport – whilst causing the player to identify their own city with the Fable 3 game. Furthermore to give incentive, the player gains money in their game dependant on just how well their team is doing on the app.

Both of these examples show just how much emphasis is now being placed on making a game more alike to a ‘franchise’ by using beyond object interactivity as a tool. Books, Graphic Novels, Websites, and Urban Sports are all becoming commonplace for the characters and narratives of popular games to be explored (or exploited depending on viewpoint) and this is likely to grow. It would not be unrealistic to say that in a few years’ time all of the above media and more (Television, Manga, Film) will be utilised to promote games series on a regular basis.

 

Iterative Process

The iterative process is one that is heavily promoted as a crucial way of producing solid and dependable games. But what is the iterative process?

The iterative process is simple and works in 4 states that repeat in a cycle. These are; Generate Ideas, Formalize ideas, Test ideas and Evaluate the results. Should there be an issue at the final evaluation stage then the process repeats itself. By doing this, a designer is ensuring that at all stages of the project there will be no problems and that their product will perfectly tailor their target market.

As a process it is dependable and as a designer, I have used it subconsciously in both of my projects. In my board game design project when designing the Miscalculation cards, at the end of each design I would ask several people what they thought of the design, asking questions like; did it feel like the type of card they would see in a board game and (dependant on the stage of development) whether or not it fit the criteria I wanted. A clear example of this is when I was applying the writing to the cards. The writing needed to be clear – but at the same time be fitting of the design. Not including the iterative stages that the template had, it took 3 repetitions of the original cycle to create the final version

The first stage was seen as too futuristic, so in the next stage I looked at the colour of copper and made the writing look embossed – a industrial process fitting of the time. When I showed it to several people they each said that the design was hard to read and too dark. So the next stage, being happy with the overall design template, I simply increased the contrast of the writing and background so that the writing was clearer. My feedback was more positive, but still as a collective they felt that it needed to be lighter still. On the fourth stage I had lightened up almost all of the area around the writing and the response was that the writing was clearly visible and not out of place. This was exactly what I had wanted so the process stopped there.  It can be seen that there is a clear improvement from the first three stages to the last and in the end, the result was far superior than had I just kept with the first stage.

Another example of the iterative process is in the film War Games – a film I had watched in Fridays afternoon viewing. In the film it features an advanced CPU that can learn from mistakes. At one stage, the CPU plays a game multiple times, each time taking different routes, calculating the results and trying again to alter the result. This internal iterative process is repeated untill the computer realises that there is no positive outcome.

 This is something that often might happen should designers use the iterative process later in production rather than earlier. This is likely due to the face that constant feedback at each level will allow each idea to be refined into a complete working concept, rather than complete a concept, collect feedback on it as a whole and have to start from scratch. It is because of this that often it is obvious when games fail to achieve what they want that an iterative process has not been used.

 Obviously there are a few downsides to the process, in that it takes longer and is more expensive to keep bringing in outside testers consistantly – which is why some games developers don’t follow the technique. However from a personal viewpoint and looking at the long term impact, the use of an iterative process has positives that far outweigh the negatives. If a game uses the process and is far greater due to it, then reputation grows, a fan base is gained and critics might rate it highly. If a game hasn’t used it and there are faults that appear after it has gone on sale, then the opposite will happen (damage to reputation, fan base gets angry and critics will write the game down as a failure).