CSCE 552 Spring 2009 Understand Games

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Game Development 2009 Game History

First game: William Higinbotham  1958  Analog computer  An isolated incident Inpsiration: Steve “Slug” Russell  1961 as a student in MIT  DEC PDP-1 (18 bit) $120,000

Tennis for two (1958)

Spacewar (1961)

Game for the Masses Ralph Baer (left) and Nolan Bushnell (right)

Magnavox Odyssey (1972) , Ralph Baer Light gun and shooting Brown Box, the first home video game console Sold to Magnavox

Light Gun and Odyssey

Nolan Bushnell and Atari (1972) Computer Space machines Atari company Arcade games Pong: first popular video game

Pong and Arcade Computer Space

Cartridge-based Console (1977) Atari 2600, 1977 Able to support many games

NES (90% market) NES Game boy Mario contra

Playstation Playstation I  Sony ( )  CD form Playstation II (2000)  DVD  Strong third party support Playstation III (2006)

Playstation I Final Fantasy Grand Theft Auto

Playstation III Final Fantasy XIII Grand Theft Auto IV

Xbox Microsoft has been in game for long  Flight simulator  Age of Empires Microsoft (2001)  PC architecture  Xbox Live  Xbox 360 (2006)

MS Games

Designers Will Wright  SimCity  The Sims Sid Meier  Pirates!  Railroad Tycoon  Civilization Ken & Roberta Williams  Adventure games: Quest  half-Life Richard Garriott  RPG games  Ultima

Old Legendary Games Pac-Man Tetris Final Fantasy Pokémon Doom …

Studios MS (flight simulator, AE) Electronic Arts (publisher, C&C)C&C Interplay LucasArts Blizzard (Warcraft) Id Software (DOOM)

Types Adventure (text-based/graphical) Action (shooting, combat sim)  First-person shooting  Combat sim  Action adventure  Platformer (Mario)  Fighting  Real-time strategy (RTS)  Survival Horror

Types Role Playing Game (RPG) Stealth Simulation  SimCity  Flight Simulator  Train Simulator Racing Sports

Types Rhythm  Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) Puzzle  Tetris Education  Typing  NSF funds many such games

Languages Assembly C/C++ VB Java Flash Script

Types of Players (from wiki) Casual gamer: A person who enjoys playing games with simple rules or which do not require large blocks of time to play, may even not consider him/herself as a gamer Hardcore gamer: spends much of their leisure time playing games.  Competitive gamer: plays games for the enjoyment of competing with other players.  Retrogamer: enjoys playing or collecting vintage video games from earlier eras.  Glitcher: enjoys finding flaws in a game or finding ways to exploit unintentional features. Professional Gamer: plays games for money  Game tournament  Receive prizes  Cyberathlete Professional League

E-Sports

ESA Entertainment Software Association Some facts  $9.5-billion software sale in US, more than tripled from 1996, up 14% from 2007  65% US households play games  Average age is 35 with 13 years of playing  63% parents believe that games are postive for their children

Comparison Ave. age: 29 Game buyer: 36 Women: 39% Online: 22% Women online: 40% Ave. age: 33 (12+) Game buyer: 40 Women: 38% Online: 44% Women online: 42% Ave. age: 35 (14+) Game buyer: 40 Women: 40% Online: 44% Women online: 44% 2008

Who and what From ESA

Platform info For Computer Gamers...  30% of most frequent game players are <18  26% of most frequent game players are  44% of most frequent game players are >35 For Console Gamers...  40% of most frequent game players are <18  35% of most frequent game players are  25% of most frequent game players are >35

Genre info From ESA

Online game From ESA

How to Interpret the Data Pro-data:  Do as data suggests  Why: the failure of targeting pre-teen female market Anti-data:  Explore un-charted territory  Target older audience on Xbox?  Real Time Strategy on Xbox?  Shooting game for moms?

ESRB Entertainment Software Rating Board Self-regulated rating board From ESA

Why Rating? Example: Conker Animated Violence, Mature Sexual Themes, Strong Language Age 17+ Seven different worlds with 60+ sub- chapters to explore Massive multiplayer mode Easy to confuse parents and buy for young kids

Conker Screens

New Conker on Xbox

Controversial Games (photos removed) Sega’s Night Trap (1992)

DOOM School shooting----Doom?

Flight Simulator

Flight Simulator Again

Grand Theft Auto Teaching how to hi-jack?

Game and Violence Study from National Institute on Media and the Family Concerns  Children are more likely to imitate the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games the player is often required to take the point of view of the shooter or perpetrator.  Video games by their very nature require active participation rather than passive observation.  Repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral rehearsal for violent activity.  Rewards increase learning, and video games are based on a reward system.

Concerns Warranted? Exposure to violent games increases physiological arousal Exposure to violent games increases aggressive thoughts Exposure to violent games increases aggressive emotions Exposure to violent games increases aggressive actions Exposure to violent games decreases positive prosocial (i.e., helping) actions

Results on 9 th Grader By David Walsh

Culture Issues Culture acceptance is hard to predict Stereotypes  may backfire  but also may pay-off, should we avoid? Foreign policies  Try to understand other cultures  Have some sensitivities Culture acceptance is hard to predict

Requirements of Our Projects We will mimic ESRB and rate your games Vote from the class Please do some research about your games: culture issue, violence? IP? Avoid controversies

MMORPG Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game World of Warcraft (8M worldwide, 2M North America, 1.5M Europe, 3.5M China) NavyField MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) Counter Strike: online first person shooter game (>200K simultaneously) EverQuest Second Life (virtual world)

Examples

Society Issues with Online Games Improve society and provide fun Some people make a living through adding stuff to online games Bad things can happen  Play too much, mess real life or cannot separate real from virtual  Security problems, cheating, hacking Deindividuation In-game regulatory tools

What is a game A game is a form of art in which participants, called players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal. (Greg Costikyan) A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. (Salen and Zimmerman)

Game Design Early game design practices resemble the authoring of folk tales:  The game elements and rules evolve over time by the effort of countless nameless “ designers ” Game design has developed towards systematic practices, games designed on purpose Craft vs. Design  Characteristics of a craft product: combination of the methods and materials available as well as the situations in which the product has been used over a longer period of time  Characteristics of a designed product: the result of a trying to reach a design goal by using methods and materials available From The Book’s slides

Factors (Crawford) Crawford: The Art of Computer Game Design (1984) Identifies four common factors between all games:  Representation  Interaction  Conflict  Safety

Features (Costikyan) “ I Have No Words & I Must Design ” (1994) Identifies design choices that have to be made when games are designed And the main features necessary for games:  Decision making  Goals  Opposition  Managing resources  Game tokens  Information

MDA (Hunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek ) Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics Three main components:  Mechanics that describe the parts of a game at the level of data representation and algorithms  Dynamics that describe the run-time behavior of the game  Aesthetics that describe desirable emotional responses evoked in the player during gameplay Sensation, game as sensory pleasure Fantasy, game as make-believe Narrative, game as drama Challenge, game as obstacle course Fellowship, game as social framework Discovery, game as uncharted territory Expression, game as self-discovery Submission, game as pastime Provide a framework to span game design, development, game criticism and research

400 Projects (Rules) The rules consist of five parts  An imperative statement of the rule  A description of the domain of the rule  Rules which take precedence over the rule  Rules that the rule takes precedence over  A description of examples and counter- examples The rules are meant to be tools which can be used in different phases of the design process

Areas and Challeges (Adams, Rollings) Three different areas  Core mechanics  Interactivity  Storytelling  Narrative Categorizing different types of challenges:  Pure challanges (logic and inference, lateral- thinking, memory, intelligence-based, knowledge-based, pattern-recognition, etc.)  Applied challenges (races, puzzles, exploration, conflict, economies and conceptual challenges)

Basic Elements (Game Design Workshop) Identify eight basic formal elements:  Players  Objective  Procedures  Rules  Resources  Conflicts  Boundaries  Outcomes The design method is to use the formal elements to describe the current design and make sure that all aspects of a game design are taken into consideration

CSCE 552 Spring 2009 Understanding Fun

What is Fun? Game is all about fun Dictionary: Enjoyment, a source of amusement It is important to consider underlying reasons Funativity – thinking about fun in terms of measurable cause and effect

Why fun? It ’ s deep in our evolution root, and we must look to our ancestors (200 yrs of tech advancement haven ’ t changed our instinct) Cats, dogs, etc play to learn basic survival skills (physical and social) Games are organized play Human entertainment is also at its heart about learning how to survive Social rules are also critical to us

Surviving Life is all either work, rest, or fun To survive, we must work  Our ancestors were those who survive  The survive skills are passed down Who is more likely to survive?

People working too hard?

People resting too much?

We must play to gain skills

Learning is fun Fun is about practicing or learning new survival skills in a relatively safe setting People who didn ’ t enjoy that practice were less likely to survive to become our ancestors

Hunting and Gathering Basic skills are hunting and gathering Current popular games reflect this It ’ s a good start point to design games Shooters, wargames = hunting Powerups, resources = gathering Sims, MMO = social, tribal interaction

Gathering and hunting

Natural Funativity Theory All funs are derived from practicing survival and social skills  Key skills relate to early human context  Often in modern guise: play chess, football, dance, etc Three overlapping categories  Physical  Social  Mental

Physical Fun Sports  Enhance our strength, stamina, coordination skills  Winning is also a mental fun Exploration  Knowledge of surrounding areas  Explore unknown Hand/eye coordination and tool use are often parts of fun activities – crafts Physical aspect to gathering “ stuff ”

Social Fun Storytelling is a social activity  First virtual reality  Learn important lessons from others Gossip, sharing info Flirting Showing off

Social funs

Mental Fun Humans have large brains Abstract reasoning practice Pattern matching and generation  Music  Art  Puzzles Gathering also has mental aspect, categorizing and identifying patterns Gambling

Multipurpose Fun Many fun activities have physical, social and mental aspects in combination Games that mix these aspects tend to be very popular Incorporate ways to practice these skills to increase the popularity of games