Nothing ventured nothing played

  1. Why should we develop, buy, play, and teach specific games?
  2. Convey experience (the what, what it is to experience archaeology), VERSUS
  3. Show how systems, methods, findings interact to produce experience, OR
  4. Reveal what is unknown or debated (how knowledge is established or contested).
  5. Can game genres or games as interaction modes be compared to what is learnt?
  6. Can a schematic framework show what can be communicated and why it should be done?  
  7. Plus criteria revealing when useful? Avoids banal gamification?

Roger Caillois: modes of play?

Challenge modes Engages because you Archaeology Pros and Cons
Competition Agon (competition / strategy) Compete against people, long-term decision making Civilization? All those build empire games.. -Means to end
+Strategic
+ Engaging
Chance Alea Humour, handle unpredictability Could Spore be an archaeology game? -No causality
+ Engaging
Vertigo Ilinx
 
Mastery of commitment, mental focus, multi-tasking The extreme parkour of Assassin’s creed? -Distracts
+Ergodic appreciation
+ Engaging
Mimicry mimesis
 
Observation, control and humour and roleplaying If Sims 4 was used as anthropological machinima? -Difficult for interfaces
+Build empathy
+ Engaging

Turin August 2018

CAA2017 movie of slides

 

CAA2017 Stuart Eve talk

Types of Mechanics

  1. Game progression mechanics (mechanics to progress the player through the game)
  2. Performance mechanics / Rewards and skills mastery mechanics (mechanics to encourage the player to improve and extend their range of skills and judgement)
  3. Narrative mechanics (tools to progress /unfold or bring together one or more apparent story threads in relation to game play). Are dramatic mechanics a subset?
  4. Behavioural & Role assimilation mechanics (mechanics become habit through repeated gameplay, accustomed to see things in certain ways)
  5. Insight and reversal mechanics (mechanics that disrupt the in-game or real-world expectations and presumptions of the player acquired previously or during the game in order to reveal to them a viewpoint taken for granted, or to supplant the view created by gameplay but a view the designer wants them to suddenly by alienated from).
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