Assignment

• paranoid
• beautiful
• hot

The group should publish the game as freeware.

Assessment

• Quality of game design
• Quality of execution

Note that missed deadlines will reduce grades (unless extension to the deadline is agreed beforehand).

Deliverables

• Design Document (deadline 27.10.2010)
• Art Bible (deadline 27.10.2010)
• Asset List (deadline 27.10.2010)
• Main Assets (deadline 8.12.2010)
• First Playable  (deadline 11.3.2010)
• Beta (deadline 6.5.2010)
• Learning Diary¹ (deadline 27.5)
• Work Amount Report¹ (deadline 27.5)

1. Each one return their own

To Get You Going

Lies and Seductions Unity project (C# code is freely usable in our games as long as the authors are acknowledged). The project includes

• Wayfinding (A* with NavMeshes)
• Dialogue engine (+ editor)
• 3rd person camera handling
• and some other possible handy code

We also have small budget to buy assets for the games.

I have been amazed about the US series revolving around lie detection such as Lie to Me and The Moment of Truth. In those, the truth-by-science fetishism bothers me; the idea that one can detect a lie without errors is suspicious using machines or just watching facial expressions and body language.

Even when this premise (that one can detect lies without error) is contested in an episode of  In Lie to Me, the way this is done is interesting. In that episode, the main character cannot spot lying of other character. The main character concludes that the lying character is psychopathic, because he did not react normal ways to the pictures (this is plausible hypothesis). After this, the main character assumes that this psychopath must be a serial killer (this suspicion turns out to be true later in the episode).

But, if all the people having psychopathic disorder would be serial killers, the world would be full of serial killers; it has been estimated that 1% of the whole population have psychopathic disorder (using  Wikipedia as reference here, but I remember seeing the same figure in Grossman’s book On Killing).

Lie detection may work with average population, but how the lie detection work with certain pathologies? Do they have similar psychophysiology as a normal person?  It seems that psychopaths have decreased fear responses. How about pathological liars (cf. people with gambling addiction do not have similar fear reactions to risky bets that average people; see Damasio, Descartes’s Error)?

Date: Sat 18.9.2010 klo 10–14 (alternative / re-exam dates will be announced later)

Enroll to exam to amanuensis at least 10 days prior the exam date.

MA in New Media is a 2-year degree programme focusing on design for interactive digital media. From the fall2010 on we will offer two specialisation areas: New Media Design and Game Design and Production. The education is project-oriented, combining practice with theory, hands-on with minds-on. The project modules emphasise interdisciplinary and collaborative work, while individual skills are studied in the tools & skills modules, in workshops and through tutored studio work.

This two-year programme provides unique possibility for building game design skills while building theoretical and conceptual undertanding on games. The education is project-oriented, combining practice with theory Student will deepen their existing skills in the areas of game design and productions based on a personal study plan. In addition to game design and production courses, the studies can be complemented with courses from related fields such as 3d animation, interactive storytelling, and interaction design.

The structure of MA degree studies, Game Design and Production specialization area, 2009-11

Studies begin with an orientative starting block entitled Understanding Media and Design. After completing that, through tutoring students choose their focus areas and start to participate in courses, seminars, workshops and study projects. Individual study planning for new students is tutored by a teacher one-on-one, in great detail.

More information about studies can be found at Oodi from Game Design and Production and New Media curricula as well as from the book Degree Requirements 2009-2011.

I have been busy to take care of various things such as booking teachers, designing courses and so. And I have still loads of things to do, but things start to take shape.

Our first game specific course is Game Design. The course will start with workshop focusing to gameplay design. Petri Ikonen from Digital Chocolate and I will be teaching. After that the course continues with lectures. Mikko Rautalahti (Remedy) will talk about narrative design, Petri Ikonen about level design for casual games, Jussi Holopainen (NRC, co-author of the book Patterns in Game Design) about game design & design patterns. I will probably talk about some general thing about game design and possibly about character-driven game design (if I am not able to get a level designer to talk about level design from some other angle than Petri Ikonen).

We continue with  the Game Analysis and Game Project at the autumn (Game Projects ends at the end of spring). At the spring we have planned lectures about role-playing games by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros (if we have money for this) that would be a part of the course Understanding Games (an exam or lectures about role-playing and exam). The spring ends with workshop Gameplay Evaluation.

The course Game Analysis consist of small analysis exercises in which we look at board and classic arcade games using different conceptual (and theoretical) tools and try to understand how the games work. In addition, participants write an essay about a game using these tools introduced during the course. The materials of this course include chapter 4 from Järvinen (2008) Games without Frontiers. I have earlier used also chapter about cybernetic system from Salen & Zimmerman’s Rules of Play and my essay Goals, Affects, and Empathy, but I might choose some other texts instead.

The exam Understanding Games include the book Tavinor (2009) The Art of Video Games. 2009 and two books from the following list (the lectures on rpgs can be taken instead of a book):
•    Juul (2005) Half-Real
•    King & Krzywinska (2006) Tomb Raiders & Space Invaders
•    Perron (ed. 2009) Horror Video Games
•    Perron & Wolf (eds. 2009) The Video Game Theory Reader 2
•    Sigart (2009) The Ethics of Computer Games.

The second year continues with the game courses Advanced Topics in Game Design, Game Research Project, and MA Thesis Seminar as well as with MA Thesis.

In parallel within these two years, there will be obligatory courses of MA in new Media. These courses include Understanding Media and Design (5 ECTS), New Media Exam (1 ECTS), Software Studies for Media Designers (3 ECTS), Media Art and Culture (3 ECTS) as well as possibility to take other new media courses or complement the studies at the department of Media Technology etc

Meanwhile, you can read the degree requirements for Game Design and Production below. The official requirements can be found at the Oodi later.

(The linked course pages are still rather empty; the course descriptions are not yet public, only the course headings.) Edit 22.6.2010

Obligatory Studies (20 ECTS)

The Obligatory Studies are as defined in the MA in New Media Curriculum and are as follows

• Understanding Media and Design (5 ECTS)
• New Media Exam (1 ECTS)
• Personal Study Plan (1 ECTS)
• Software Studies for Media Designers (3 ECTS)
• Media Art and Culture (3 ECTS)
• Media Design Research (3 ECTS)
• Master Thesis Seminar (4 ECTS)

Advanced Studies (60-100)

The Advanced Studies in Game Design and Production include the following courses:

• Game Design (5 ECTS)
• Game Analysis (5 ECTS)
• Game Project (6-15 ECTS)
• Master’s Thesis (40 ECTS)

The master’s thesis in Game Design and Production should be a game and written part.

In addition, courses at least 10 ECTS is selected from the following list:

• Advanced Topics in Game Design (6 ECTS, not in 2010-2011)
• Understanding Games (6 ECTS, book exam OR lecture series + exam)
• Game Research Project (6 ECTS)
• Playability Evaluation (3 ECTS)

Courses from the School of Economics, the department of Information System Science, and from School of Science and Technology, the department of Media Technology can be included as agreed in the study plan.

Optional Studies (0–40 ECTS)

The Optional Studies are as defined in the MA in New Media Curriculum.

BA Level Language Studies

The BA level language studies are compulsory as defined in the MA in New Media Curriculum. The credits of the language courses are not included in the MA degree.

Misc

The courses in Game Design and Production is primarily intended for the students of New Media, Game Design and Production specialization. We also take students students from other departments in the following order :

1. The department of Media New Media, New Media & Sound
2. The school of  Science and Technology, the department of Media Technology
3. The school of economics, Information System Science.

In courses involving practical work students, groups must be able to develop something. In order to ensure that groups have students with a suitable set of skills, students are prioritized based on their skill sets and suitability to the groups.

Although the incidences of violence, particularly school violence, linked to video games are alarming, what should perhaps surprise us more is that there are not more VVG-driven violent episodes. Given the number of youths who regularly engage in VVG play and the general concern regarding this media, it would seem likely that resulting violent episodes would be a regular occurrence. And yet, daily reports of mass violence are not reported. It appears that the vast majority of individuals exposed to VVGs do not become violent in the “real world.” (pp. 90.)

Is there hope for more nuanced media effect studies?

Markey & Markey 2010. Vulnerability to Violent Video Games: A Review and Integration of Personality Research. Review of General Psychology, 14: 2, 82–91. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/gpr-14-2-82.pdf (DOI=10.1037/a0019000).