Keiko

One art-based website that has always intrigued me is the Orisinal site by Ferry Halim. Although this site focuses more on design, the games really have an interesting feel to them. They're all relatively simple and require the mouse as the main way to navigate around. The games (49 of them) bear similarities to one another, yet all maintain a different feel and different goal for the player to accomplish. The animation is very clean and maintains consistency throughout the different games.

I dont' know what kind of game I would create if I had the opportunity to create one. When I think of games I like to play, a few come to mind, but I can't think of any way that I would alter them or improve them to create a game of my own. Thinking about architecture, I was trying to find a way to incorporate a new way of making space or implementing space into a game, but haven't been able to come up with anything thus far.

Although I have heard of video game music being covered in the past, I have never heard of a symphony being hosted to commemorate video game music. In Toronto on September 30, Play! A Video Game Symphony made its debut. The symphony attracted many different people: fans of the game, composers, and game creators. With the exception of popular game music from Zelda or Super Mario Bros., not much game music is recognizable or even remembered. The symphony allows listeners to focus on the music that we don't often think too much about while playing games. Some of the music was featured from games such as Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Metal Gear Solid, Oblivion, and the upcoming Blue Dragon. Symphonies such as these allow people of all ages to appreciate music and can attract many different audiences.

The music also allows people to realize that video game music is and can be much more than just a bunch of background music. Many people think of the music as nothing more than "beeps and riffs." This music shows the depth of the music and allows us to embrace our 2st century culture, rather than toss it aside. Capitalizing on gaming culture, the symphony has the potential to be popular as long as video games are popular.

Play! A Video Game Symphony will be touring worldwide and will be announcing tour dates and locations in the weeks to come.

(I attempted to see the links on the site and on YouTube, but had errors connecting.)
News Website
Play! A Video Game Symphony Website
YouTube Videos
Zelda Medly

A Force More Powerful is a game which uses the idea of peaceful revolt rather than violence. I feel it's a very different kind of game from America's Army. Although, both have certain rules and rely on strategy, the basic intent of the game is different. America's Army, because it deals with the army, automatically deals with "good" vs "bad," us vs them, and killing people. However, the U.S. Army does attempt to add more to the game by forcing players to pass multiple training sessions before actually playing the game.

AFMP seems to be more strategy-based. The game encourages people to plan ahead and think, rather than just react to the situation. It encourages people of all different backgrounds by designing it for people with little or no previous gaming experience. It also allows many different people to play by ensuring that the software is compatible with most computer hardware.

The game gets its challenges from factors that affect us in the real world. The tactics used are very much like tactics protestors use such as: fundraising, protests, strikes, and civil disobedience. By being in charge, the player selects which groups will take parts in certain areas of protest, but also has to decide on which strategy is the most beneficial to the characters in game. While the player is able to control the movement of their own people, each of the actions they take, the opposing force (the computer) will respond with "necessary" actions.

This game allows people to think carefully, to create strategies, instead of just acting in the moment. Since it is a simulation of very realistic events that could potentially take place, it allows people to see beforehand, what their actions might result in.

Rockstar games has a new game coming out next month called Canis Canem Edit. In some ways, this game is similar to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto games, except it includes a series of short games. In the game players act as Jimmy Hopkins, a 15 year-old boy who has been expelled from more than a handful of schools, and is being forced to go to Bullworth Academy by his mom and step father.

This game includes school subjects, like English, science, biology, physical education, and woodshop. It also allows Jimmy to walk through the halls, talking to girls, and beating up other kids. The game gives missions, which Jimmy must carry out, but, similar to Grand Theft Auto's police meter, there is a trouble meter that displays how much trouble Jimmy can get in before being sent to the principal's office. As the game progresses, Jimmy learns new things from his teachers, and is able to implement these techniques into the schoolyard.

Science
Physical Education
Photography
Art

Rockstar has gone through the trouble of making many different types of characters for this game, and each character has a different look and a different voice, complete with a unique personality. Being stereotypical, the game's schoolyard has four different types of cliques: nerds, jocks, preps, and greasers.

Jimmy can pedal through the streets of the game, and egg people, but not unlike Grand Theft Auto, he can get caught by the policemen on bikes.

I'm not quite sure how the game works as a whole... Does Jimmy go home and sleep and interact with his parents, or can he wander the streets endlessly? Is there a penalty for going to school late? Or missing school? I have many other questions that I don't know the answers to, but I'm eager to find out when the game comes out.

On a side note - I like how Rockstar's page for the game gives off the appearance of a legitimate school

Well, since it turns out I was supposed to do a Show And Tell on a serious game, I guess I'll have to use the Show And Tell I made Monday for next week. While trying to look up serious games, I came across several sites:
Water Cooler Games
Food Force
Persuasive Games
SimSchool

However, I had a hard time finding sites with games that I could actually play. Water Cooler Games had several links to other sites, some of which were just articles, and others that actually had links to games. They had a commercial from Belgium about a fictitious game called Teenage Mum. Although this game isn't real, I found it amusing that they made an advertisement as if it was. The site mainly deals with news articles on games or issues dealing with politics, advertising, education, healthcare, society, and design.

Food Force is a game that must be downloaded. Fro what I've learned, the game gives players six missions, which are actual steps taken in delivering food to those in need. The missions include:
Air Surveillance: Fly a helicopter to locate the hungry
Energy Pacs: Design a balanced diet for the people of the city of Sheylan.
Air Drop: If the player lacks funding, he/she can drop packs of food by air.
Locate and Dispatch: Buy food and transport it to Sheylan in the fastest, and cheapest way possible.
Food Run: Safely deliver food to a town in Sheylan via a convoy or trucks.
Future Farming: Aid the citizens of Sheylan in rebuilding their city.
On the game's website, they have the game downloads and patches available, as well as more information on donating food/money to countries in need.

Persuasive games, I found, has easy-to-access games. However, over half of the games are in progress, or must be accessed by contacting the game makers. I managed to play Airport Security, Disaffected!, and Take Back Illinois. I found Airport Security to be the most "fun" and easy to understand. This game has people act as airport security, and makes travelers take off garments or remove items from their suitcases, depending on security restrictions. Disaffected! was a game I actually downloaded where the players acts as a Kinko's worker, and must assist customers. The gameplay was hard to understand, and the instructions given weren't especially clear. Lastly, Take Back Illinois consisted of four mini games which address issues concerning the state of Illinois.

SimSchool was a game in which a player would have to register. Not wanting to receive emails from the site, I didn't register, and merely looked at the information on the website. Basically, the game is a simulation of the classroom. Potential teachers are supposed to use this game to learn the differences within each student, and by applying different learning techniques, unique to each student's needs. From this, they can see how their instruction impacts the students, and learn from the results.

The first thing I noticed with the website is that there were no examples of game play. Although the site talks a lot about what the game is meant to do, it never really displays what this game is like. Images would have helped me to understand what kind of game this is. At this point, I'm unsure if this is a game based on text, or if it actually has graphical images.

In the article we read, Chris Crawford talks about how some similar storytelling games lack drama and options for the player, but there are certain limitations that must be laid down because the game can only store so much information. Whatever is programmed into the game is all that the player has as far as options. With games, naturally, if it hasn't been programmed into the game, you can't do it.

Lastly, if the game must be "programmed" or created by the player, then it's really more like "create your own story" rather than adding your own twists and changes to an existing story, as he states on the site. The site asks, "ave you ever wanted to try to jump right into a story and speak to the people in it? Have you thought about playing the protagonist, letting your feelings and imagination steer the story in new, creative directions?" But by giving the story so much fexibility, the person is, in essence, creating their own story rather than meeting the characters of an existing story or changing the outcome of the story. It almost sounds as though the game is more like work (creating a game for yourself) rather than playing along in a game.