Game Design as Cultural Practice

Hey, its a game!

Hey, its a game!

    I want this blogpost to be about the context and purpose of games. Sure in the readings are things that define games such as this quote from Games as Art, written by Celia Pearce, "[g]ames are first and foremost about play. A game is a dynamic system, a system designed to create what Alan Kay, the original designer of windows-based computer interface, calls 'hard fun.'" And this does say something about the purpose of a game being "hard fun" but lets look at several of the examples of games and gaming in this subject of alternative game movements. To be alternative to me means that you provide a new and different apporach, technique, purpose, or outcome to an action or system. I think all games do that because to me "to game is to entertain" be it yourself or others. SpaceWar, Knots, Chess, Monopoly, and other games all have a purpose when played but to call them alternative we have to look a bit more at why they exist as a "game".
    I think these systems of rules and objectives exist as a game because the creaters either wanted to provide themselves with a method, avenue of creation or wanted to use a "game" as a medium (which is of course the message). To call them "alternative" is to make a judgement of the context around its creation or ressurection as a game. Certainly I think that SpaceWar was "alternative" because it was a brand new way of interacting with the world of computing. I think that Rock, Paper, Scissors TAG! is also "alternative" for slightly different reasons than SpaceWar because its a "new" way of playing a game already around or you could say a merging of two games to provide a commentary on community and group psychology if you wanted to get technical about it. Knots is alternative to me but Ii don't know how unique the idea of working together in physical contact is when the normal mode of work for people is phyiscal labor. I think that knots is "alternative" because the industrial revolution changed the way people perform tasks.
    So this blogpost is pretty much over but I wanted to take a quick overview of the spacewar article in the Rolling Stones because of this line i just recently reread in it "His account of the invention of Spacewar is not only intriguing history, it's the most,sophisticated analysis of good game design I've ever run across - elegant work. But that's in retrospect; back then it was just kids staying up all night." I agree. I do so because the following points that are iterated in the article*:
1. By picking a world which people weren't familiar with, we could alter a number of parameters of the world in the interests of making a good game and of making it possible to get it onto a computer
2. We made a great deal of compromises from some of our original grand plans in order to make it work well. ( This is a mandatory step in a development process if it is ever to be acceptable. If you're interested in a mass media example explore the iterative development of Warhammer Online where they went from having many many capital cities to explore to two at release of the game.)
3. One of the important things in Spacewar is the pace. It's relatively fast-paced, and that makes it an interesting game. It seems to be a reasonable compromise between action - pushing buttons - and thought. (Game Balance!)
4. (And finally an example of iteration) "Having a background was important to give some idea of range and so on. Our Spacewar did not have gravity affecting the torpedoes - our explanation was that they were photon bombs and that they weren't affected by gravity. Subsequent versions on newer computers have got enough compute time so that they can afford to use gravity for the torpedoes, and that makes it a more interesting game."
*all of this material can be found at http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

    These are just some of the points that were put into the article and since I have essay i'm currently writing about my experience as a CM i thought I'd harp on what I consider one of most important elements to the major which is learning the process of design. As I'm mentioning in my essay I think that the design process is extremely important because it can be used as a skill set and generalized to any number of applications in life.

Have fun.
Jerald Parker

Player vs. Game Values

One issue I take with the majority of early readings, callois and dekoven especially, is that games do have impact on our lives.  They do create product, unlike what callois says, typically in the form or credibility or bragging rights, and can even construct the social order of a group.  Although possibly unfair, this credibility bears impact on business opportunites, relationships, and many other aspects of life.  These products both shape and respond to the values of the players.  I've found myself pondering in class about the next game of Super Smash Bros. that my roommates would undoubtedly be playing when i arrived home, and how i would need to crush them.  In contrast, I've had games of killer hack with the same room mates where all that was important was improvising impressive feats, not individual success.  Here we see that obsessive commitment to individual victory is accepted in smash bros yet not as desirable in killer hack.  clearly, values can be intrinsic to a game, yet these will clash with that of the players.  The versatility of games demonstrates this, from the fairness centered gym-class game of basketball to the bloodthirsty, swagger-filled professional game.  Cheating is another example of how one's personal values transcend those of the game.  Still, games can possess a value, purpose, and lesson.

In class we played several "new games."  Knots, rock/paper/scizzors tag, and parachutes clearly held a common theme in their interactions.  These all require heavy amounts of communication to progress.  In our sessions, we found central leadership arise in one player that was very sensitive to the other players, allowing for speedier victory.  This was true for both knots and tag; parachutes allowed for a much more ad-hoc system of play, but still cooperation and listening.  These games also employed touch, from the binding of knots to the huddling and contact of tag.  Knots did this particularly by needing players to contort themselves to victory.  This, like the communication, sought to get players to drop their boundaries and connect to eachother.  Parachutes rarely had contact, but we did sometimes run into eachother underneath.  It was unique in using an absence of rules to enforce this same principle, needing others to come together to cooperate.  These interactions directly challenge the jaded feelings of urban life.  The apathy towards and shutting out of others cannot be carried into these games if one is to play them well, as dekoven would observe.  Still, they could be, and the game would fall victim to its players, but that doesn't negate the values intrinsic to games.

As side comments relative to the reading, I was intrigued to discover space war's use as an educational practice in computing; it's therefor interesting that an iteration of its source code is packaged with Microsoft's XNA platform as Space War Evolved for educational purposes.  Also, principals detailed in the Well Played Game stand in parallel to the Positive Coaching Alliance, an organization that encourages athletes to reach their personal best in every competition, completely removing the emphasis on winning.

Max Groves

New Games

The New Games movement is something we all took part in without even knowing we were involved. It includes many games that have been developed to inspire such principles as teamwork and equality. In 'Games as Art,' Pearce mentions the significance of board games (like Monopoly) that have persisted above many other forms of media throughout their existence. It seems to me that New Games have persisted in this same way, but much more inconspicuously. When we all took part in playing these games again it was often clear that the experience was a flashback to our early childhoods rather than an introduction to something new. Many people have experiences Knots, the Circle Game, and Rock/Paper/Scissors Tag in some form or another and most everyone had experienced the Parachute. It is clear that these Games had a strong cultural impact for one reason or another and because of that impact they have managed to persist throughout the years.

Both Knots and the circle game seem to reflect the same concepts and cultural ideas of the time. They focus almost entirely on the equality of every individual and the importance of each person in order to complete the given task. Every person involved in the game is an integral part in reaching the goal of the game. Take any one person out mid game and there can be no more game. Interestingly, the larger the group, the more difficult the task is to perform. In this way these games make the group the obstacle and working together the solution. These ideas are clearly inspired by the equality sentiments that were important to the time in with they were created. Every person, despite race/gender/age is on equal footing and is of equal importance.

Rock/Paper/Scissors Tag was probably the most obvious anti-war game of all the games we played. This is because it is set up to be a somewhat war-like simulation with one important change: if you are tagged by the other side you must join that side. In this way players see how easily they can suddenly be fighting for the team they were conspiring against. Being one of the weak runners, this was a lesson I quickly learned. Once I joined 'Team Rock' (after the very first round) I found myself quickly falling into the excitement of being on their side. We were winning game after game and the team was getting excited. However as soon as the streak ended I was again lost to the other side. And again. And again. It wasn't long before the game lost its excitement for me. I saw it happen to others in my same situation as well. However, the 'leaders' of each side, or, those who were strong runners and consistently belonged to one team, seemed only to gain excitement. To me this game seemed to show us a lot about the nature of war and group mechanics. Both lessons that were very important to those who apposed the war.

Parachute was the final game that we played. It was unlike the others in that there were no set rules or clear goals for game play. We were given our resources: the parachute and lots of people (and later on some shoes) and we created our own rules, obstacles, and goals. All constantly changing and developing. This game was a combination of the other two in that the group was important to keep the game going, but there were also clear leaders who took charge of the game development. The most interesting and unexpected part of this game was that it attracted a stranger to come join in our play completely unprovoked. This is exactly the kind of sentiment that the New Game developers had in mind. Teamwork, equality, and now community.

Emily Gantt
gtg288w

The Fluxus Movement and Games

The Flux movement began in the 1950's and started a wave of innovative reactions within the art and game communities. Fluxus was influenced by the Dada movement, which was created as a direct reaction to the first world war, and thus carries on the idea of celebrating creativity while adding in a cheer for social awareness and interactivity. The focus on social art and play let to the creation of highly interactive multi-player games, including electronic creations such as Spacewar! and very alternative games such as the “Human Knot” and “Rock Paper Scissors Tag,” which use no tools or systems outside of the players themselves.

Spacewar! (or simply Spacewar) is a computer game (one of the earliest known) that is not only multi-player, but also ended up having a strong focus on creativity outside the realm of the original creators. In the version of the game featured in Steward Brand's “SPACEWAR” article, five active players choose different ships to shoot at each other until the game ends. Each player earns points for killing other players and for surviving rounds, and loses points if they are defeated. Ships can use thrust for a quick boost (and to survive being caught in orbit) and can fire at other players, usually with powerful torpedoes. Spacewar's setup allows for a variety of people to play in a variety of ways, usually bringing out their personality in their playing style. Some may play in a more shy manner, “avoid[ing] early dueling,” others may loudly drive straight into battle, “singling out individual opponents,” and some may remain silent and stealthy, “impervious to surprise attack” as they study the motions of the game (Brand). Thus, as the game is being played, it is the players themselves that are creating the most important aspects of the game. With Spacewar, it has been taken several steps further. Programmers and hackers have taken the game and added on to it; such variations of the game include hyperspace, changed perspective, and an “electric shock to go with the explosion of your ship,” all done with full permission and support (Brand).

The Human Knot and Rock Paper Scissors Tag are both games stemming from the New Games Movement that use no other tools besides the players. In the Human Knot game, players (usually a large amount of them) organize into a circle and grab someone else's hand in the middle (at random with both hands). The game is played by working as a team to untangle back into a circle (or sometimes two), whether at their own pace or in a race against another group. In Rock Paper Scissors Tag, two groups of people stand in opposing lines. Each team plays a game of “rock, paper, scissors,” and the winning team of that game runs town the losing team, tagging whoever they can. Those tagged join the winning team, and the game ends when all players are on one team. Both the Knot and Tag games are extremely social and dependent on players following the group's rules. The players become a “fun community,” working together to “assure each other of a common intention and mutual respect for  the willingness to play,” trust, and help each other (DeKoven, pg. 15). As the games are played the rules turn completely to the players' whims. For Tag, why not try three groups? Or stand in a circle? For the Knot, why not try starting in different shapes and sizes, with many small groups or one gigantic mess? The rules of these games can be changed, but “the only framework that is keeping [them] together is [the player's] intention to play well” and follow the new sets of rules (DeKoven, 57). With this, every player is invited to become a “co-creator of the work” of the group, much like the style of viewer-engaging art found in the Flux movement (Pearce, 5).

While it is now obvious that these games share the Fluxus ideas of social interaction and player creativity, the question remains “why.” These mechanics are a critique on culture, on the blandness of “dormant” art whose value is lost without the use of its “potential energy” (Pearce, 5). In Spacewar!, the players become absorbed into the game, shouting and cheering while playing in their own style. In the style of play from the New Games Movement, the players are the game, creating their own experience every time they play a round together. With such Fluxus game-play, there is liberation, creativity, a sense of personal and social freedom in a world raked by wars and prejudice.

Emily Cribb

Games and Culture

    A game serves as a panoptic mirror, giving us an insight into the past that almost no other artifact can give us. An insight into how people played their games and how they had fun tells us a great deal about that particular group of people. During the 60s and 70s as the nation was reeling from political turmoil of the Vietnam War the nature of the games during this era shifted drastically to reflect his change. Born out of this was a movement was a series of games referred to as the “New Games.” Heavily influenced by the fluxus ideas of accessibility, they were designed to remove the competitive, and more warlike, aspects of games and enforce the ideas of cooperation and teamwork. This falls closer in line with DeKoven’s idea of a “fun community” where the members work willingly towards a mutual goal with a bond of trust to arrive at some sort of shared fun. A great example of this is the “sitting game” where a large group would form a circle and at the same time slowly lower themselves into a sitting position where each person places a portion of their weight on the person behind so that no one falls. It places a great deal of emphasis on the trust that generation had with one another and not only in their “fun community” but also within the generation itself.

 The Human Knot is another example of a fluxus game that requires participants to work together towards some sort of communal goal. Players must place their hands into the center of the group and take hands with two random people, the result being that there is now a huge knot of hands in the center. The object of the game is for these players to unravel themselves so that they are no longer knotted without separating their hands. The idea that this represents is that no matter what mess the world is in, it can be sorted out and that despite everything we are all united by our common humanity in our global community.

A contemporary example of a game that has this sort of collectivist idea is the game “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” As a fighting game, one might think that it tosses out DeKoven’s idea that a well played game is one where players can enjoy the game without the concern of who will win and who will lose, it does not necessarily do so. While it can be played as such, the game was designed with specific random events and outrageous items and familiar pop-culture characters so that players will be removed from competitive play and focus on the actual experience of play with one another. Being a console game, it does not allow for the level of modding that most PC games offer, but the community that surrounds this game has found, very much in the fluxus tradition, ways to “hack” this game’s engine to create play styles never envisioned by the game’s designers.

Brett Holmes

 

Fluxus movement

While the idea of Fluxus closely followed the trends and ideas of Dada before it, the shift from absurdity and procedurality to more readymade, usable art is what seems to have made it more popular and able to transcend different genres. From the 1950’s and still now in computers, the idea of things transformed and shifted in many different ways lives on, but the usable aspect really sets it apart.
        One example of the Fluxus idea in games is the flux timekits that people like George Maciunas, Robert Watts, and other artists created.  The idea of the timekits is that they were kits for games that anybody could buy cheap. The idea that anybody could play the game, and based on who was playing it, the maker had the choice to assemble it how they wished was something that fit very well into games. People previously had classified games as being something that was not extremely limited by specific concrete rules, but more of a tougher roundabout way of doing things; this idea that people started with the same toolkit and followed the basic guidelines in making and using it but were able to do what they wish follows that idea of playing well.       
        As time went on, the ideas for software and art fueled by the internet followed this trend of do-it-yourself play. With things like open-source or even simple graphic and programming tools, it is easy for almost anybody to modify something for their own tastes. Open source software are basically flux timekits for today’s programmers and artists, giving access to anybody using it for modification and play.
        One of the most successful examples of modding in computer games and the idea of the new play tools that you can create yourself, which is mentioned in Celia Pearce’s “Games as Art”, is Counter-Strike. While Half-Life was an award-winning and revered game itself, the mod community around the game was more popular that the game itself. As one of the people who bought Half-Life simply for its mod Counter-Strike, I spent more time on user-created content than I did playing the game itself. I spent hours creating levels and playing games such as Day of Defeat, Frontline Force, and of course Counter-Strike, while what I bought was Half-Life and its mod toolkit. The idea that with that game, the mod options were limitless is essentially what the idea about flux timekits were centered around. Computers are amazing at what the art is about, which is procedurality, and in a digital world with limitless amounts of resources, more is possible.
        With computers, even full games don’t need to be modified for the idea to get across. Instead of timekits from scratch like mods, people can switch out resources like textures or small bits of code in a game to make a statement. The switch from what was previously there compared to the changes can allow artists to make some large statements easily. “Female skin pack excerpts” by Sonya Roberts does this, replacing textures on a male model with those of a female. The juxtaposition of the new textures on the old models shows how often women are more feminine, and females similar to those in the game are almost never seen in video games.

Andy Korzik

gth707g

Culture and Gaming

Games have been around for nearly all of humanity. There are not only affected by the culture they are being played in, but can actually become part of the culture itself. Considered by many to be the first videogame, Spacewar! was created in 1961 by a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology hackers. The team used a Digital Equipment Corporation Programmed Data Processor-1 (DEC PDP-1) to create the game which took approximately 200 hours to create. Stewart Brand in his article, “Space War, Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Burns”, the author discusses his amazement on how well the team created the game. Brand states that “Spacewar is not only intriguing history, it’s the most, sophisticated analysis of good game design I’ve ever run across – elegant work. But that’s in retrospect; back then it was just kids staying up all night.” 

What I find most amazing about this encounter is that the team did not create the game for profit or admiration. They created the game simply to discover what they could do with the given technology. By encouraging other hackers to not only play the game, but to also modify it and play it with others, the team was facilitating social interaction and increasing the quality of the game. In a way, this game could be considered one of the first open-source programming efforts.

In Celia Pearce’s piece, “Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity,” the author discusses her research on the comparison between different types of games. In her research, Pearce studied a wide range of game genres and types including board games, strategy games, card games, sports games, children’s games, and finally computer games. Through her research, Pearce found six common features of games that separate them from activities. These six principles explained by Pearce’s research are listed below.

 

· Parameterized play: consisting of rules that the users agree to

· A goal: possibly a series of sub-goals leading to a meta-goal

· Obstacles: these create challenges leading eventually to the goal

· Resources: initially given but can also be given later during game

· Consequences: come in form of rewards or penalties

· Information: known and unknown to users

 

During our outdoor game gay, we engaged in many games that represent are an accurate reflection of these principles. In the case of the “Rock, Paper, Scissors Tag Game” (RPSTG) the principles are straightforward. The game involves two teams and unites the two common games of rock, paper, scissors and tag. Both teams line up in two parallel lines facing each other and each team independently chooses which sign to throw (rock, paper, or scissors). Once a signal is given, the team who wins the RPS match tries to tag the losing teams’ players before the losing team reaches a safety zone. The game ends when one team has all the players.

 This game is only an example of the parameters that all games share. Though games can be created or used through different and varying mediums, they all share common features.

Games reacting to Culture

What people do with their free time is very indicative of the culture they live in and the major ideas and morals they tend to adhere to. The games they play are focusing lens to those social mores, which is why it will be useful to examine the constraints of Spacewar, RPS Tag, and Prui in order to get an idea about the culture they were played in. The latter two were born of a different culture, but a related one.

 

Spacewar was a game born of a marriage between brand new computing power married to brand new graphics equipment and a subculture of computer programmers. Whole groups of programmers would hang around at their computer labs well after hours to play Spacewar against each other and other programmers at other companies. The interesting thing about this subculture of programmers is that they would work hard to develop and modify the game. This means that the game could change and evolve over time. There was no set plan to the direction it took. Any single programmer could take it in any direction. Adding lives, hyperspace, and even a gravity well were all evolutions that were unintentional, unlike the typical American attitude of the day which would look down on unforeseen outcomes. Spacewar subculture was all for this serendipitous view on their work, which was often hard to develop outside of pure research facilities since personal computing wasn’t feasible at the time. 

 

Another subculture of games lay with the New Games movement. Their major purpose was games that had a strong sense of cooperation and social interaction. The first game I’ll talk about is Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tag. This game does have a competitive element to it, but because captured players have to switch teams, very few people develop any kind of loyalty to a particular side of the game. It also requires each new team to decide on what hand to throw together. Such unison is pushing back on a country that is divided over an unpopular war and a time of increasing change. It no longer mattered what team you played for, so long as you were playing.

 

The last game, Prui, is about an interesting social interaction that is generally not American. Physically, Americans can be very squeamish about their personal space. They typically prefer at least 2-3 feet between them, and are not very tactile between each other. In Prui, they are all supposed to touch each other, but more than that, they have to find each other’s hands with their eyes closed. That means they have to feel each other to find the hands. Barring anything inappropriate, it draws people to each other in a closer manner than they would be used to. The fact that everyone eventually becomes a Prui also combats the idea of a winner and a loser, which was deeply ingrained in the Cold War mentality many people were entrenched in at the time, which was the height of the Cold War.

Gabriel Halley

halley@gatech.edu

New Games Movement: new forgotten fun

It may come as no surprise that the 60s, known for its expression of love, peace and cooperation, modified the games built around competition, aggression, and production of winners and losers into creation of play community, cooperation, and a shared experience of enjoyment. Take for example the games Knots, Giants, Wizards, Elves (variation of rock, paper, scissors), and the Lap game.

Knot involves two very important dynamics. First is that it provides players with fun physical experience of being game pieces, holding each others hands, crawling, and stepping over each other. Second is that it is based on cooperation. The players create a problem and solve it together. There are no winners or loosers. Everyone is part of one big puzzle, and everyone has a role and a stake in solving it.

The game Knots, Giants, Wizards, Elves, or a variation played in class—rock, paper, scissors is just as fun and just as physical. Players get to agree on a strategy, and then they execute it together. They get to run around tagging the opposing group if their combination is more powerful. Players retain a sense of a common goal and a common fate. In this game you win as a group and you loose as a group. However, there is no defeat. The interaction with each other creates a community of people who enjoy playing together.

The Lap game is another game of cooperation and trust. The task of sitting on each other’s laps reduced the distance between people. Strategizing and making it possible to sit down is rewarded by the outcome—it is not too difficult after all to support your neighbor.

All three games are cooperative, unifying, and creating a play community. It is through play community, DeKoven noted, that a well-played game happens. Playing together is more important than winning or loosing. A well-played game is a result of how well players were able to play it together (DeKoven, p. 12). These games critique the culture promoting competition and personal success by focusing on developing the will to play together, having fun together, caring for each other, and being “at our best” while supporting each other and not at each other’s expense. New Games movement reminded people that it was possible to play together and that they forgot about these values.

Irina

Blogpost3: Play with Parachute, LevelHead, and Exquisite Corpse

The three games that I will discuss are the play with parachute during the class, "levelhead" by Julian Oliver (http://julianoliver.com/levelhead), and the game of Exquisite Corpse.

 

The play with parachute is my first experience to play a game without any rules ahead of time. It is from the New Games Movement that use political intervention to take typical military training exercises and their props, like parachutes and cage balls, and essentially use them to make his own

Woodstock

(Ludica, 2005). During the game, there is no commander or coach, the players are voluntary. Using the term from DeKoven's book, the game is based on a "play community", to maintain the balance of the game, and constantly negotiate between "game-as-it-is-being-played" and the "game-as-we-intend-it-to-be" (page 54, DeKoven, 1978), to create a "well-played" experience. During our play, the most interesting phenomenon for me is that the game rules are changing as the game keep on going. DeKoven discussed that a game need to be changed when the game is too easy or too hard, the "equilibrium" need to restored by changing the game, which is totally reflected in our play experience. We made several changes during the play. At the very beginning, we are just coordinating the huge piece of cloth to move up and down by 20ish players. Once we achieved the goal of coordination, we are bored. Someone suggested to catch a shoe from the center hole of the parachute, and Celia contributed hers. After the player in the center of the parachute achieved the goal, we realize that it is not a game that most players feel involved, we decide to throw all the shoes of everyone onto the big net. Although it is crazy to see our shoes moving up and down on the net, we found that it is not a sustainable play. And at that time, someone proposed that we try to "catch" people when they are moving under the parachute. It turned out to be a good core mechanism. More rules are added to this basic "run and catch" rule, such as moving by color and direction. The gain is that everyone has a more even chance of getting involved in the play. We also decided to start walk clockwise and counterclockwise to make this game harder. The most amazing part of all the changes is that, we did not have a centralized cooridnator, all the negotiation are done within the play community. The willingness of play is all based on freedom of how much each player want to devote to the experience, they are also free to quit and rejoin if they would like too (which was also happening during that day, in which some girls decided to be a spectator during the game.) The game itself does not exist without the play community, the rules are flexible and can be changed when it reaches the timing of seeking for more fun, which brings people back to the play itself, including the trust, safety, familarity, convention, the willingness to play, instead of focusing on winning (page 20, DeKoven, 1978).

 

Levelhead is an augmented reality game, in which three cubes made of trackable patterns are used as the probes to interact with the game world. The game world is made of rooms that have doors connecting with each other. The avatar, a little person that the player control, need to find her way to exist. A player control the avatar by tilting, rotating or selecting the cubes. It is a memory game that a player needs to remember which room leads to which; some doors lead to nowhere so that the avatar is sent back to where she begins. The reason why I want to discuss about this game is that it is a balance between the interactive technology and the spatial memory systems practiced as an art. Corresponding to Fluxus, in which the making of FluxKits and FluxGames is a kind of game: create play patterns from found, e.g. "readymade" objects (page 72, Pearce,2006), the fun of this game lies in the internal memory process of the players. The probes, cubes with markers, introduced the familar interaction style of manipulating tangible objects. The tactile maniupulation and spatial memory process become where the challenge lies and where the art of play gets generated. Another interesting point about this game is that it is based on the other toolkits, such as ARToolkit and ARToolkitPlus, which was used for tracking the markers on the surface of the cubes. They were built by other researchers and were released to the public. Other game developers can write code by using this toolkits without worrying about the low level computer-vision based tracking issues. Different from the skinning and modding on top of spacewar (Brand, 2001), the development of levelhead is more independently with the lower level framework. But as a relatively new game, with the source code open to the public, it has the potential of being modded ater.

 

Exquisite Corpse is a surrealist game. It is a game of folded paper which consists of having several people compose a phrase or drawing collectively, none of the participants having any idea of the nature of the preceding contribution or contributions. I choose to discuss about this game is that I happened to play the similar game with my friends before. We invented the game ourselves, with the same idea of drawing by introducing a lot of randomness and absurdness. The only difference is that we did not fold the paper so that it's a simutaneously cooperative work. Everyone had the awareness of what is absurd, harmonic or contrasting. No matter what relationship we decided to reflect on the drawing, different parts of the artwork are still related somehow. The highlight of the experience of creating a exquisite corpse art piece is that it is a process of negotiating, sharing, enjoying the fun together, or to say, a play experience with a play community instead of an  inner mental process.

Yan Xu

yxu7@gatech.edu