This document provides an overview of the class schedule and assignments for the upcoming week. It discusses setting up a fantasy football league and joining a HabitRPG guild. Students are instructed to play assigned games, reflect on their gameplay experiences online, and submit a 4-5 page analysis essay on their personal theory of play. The class will discuss Juul's definition of games and apply it to different titles. Students are reminded to play League of Legends, adjust their fantasy lineups, and read several authors in preparation for the next class.

1. August 29, 2014

2. Today
1) Announcements: FFL and draft, HabitRPG,
bloggin’
2) Gameplay experiences: overview
3) Analysis 1: YOUR theory of play
4) Discussion: Juul, circles and playing
5) Homework

3. Football
You should have received an invite to the Fantasy
Football league. If not– talk to me near the end of class.
We will auto-draft Saturday night or Sunday (ESPN is
weird about allowing times to be set). Please rank your
players and positions as you wish by Saturday at 5pm.
I’ll make sure the draft isn’t before that.

4. HabitRPG
HabitRPG made a chump out of me. The inviting didn’t
work (sigh). So I’ve created a new guild that I triple-checked
for public status. Please login to Habit and join
the guild “Dr. Phill’s AoP”
I will set the challenge for class over the weekend, and
we’ll join up and get started with that on Wednesday.

5. Blogging
Also, your blog requirement won’t start until next week.
So your first post is due next Wednesday.
Remember that Wednesdays are posts about
something interesting from class/related to class and
Fridays are responses to the readings.
You’re welcome to do a reading response this week for
practice and the love of the game.

6. Gameplay Experience
I want to take some time to go over our gameplay
experiences again and talk about the “goals” for
them.
There are three goals:
1) Play and observe
2) Reflect
3) Discuss

7. Gameplay Experience
The “playing” part will be assigned in various ways.
The reflecting and response should happen on the
course website, where the gameplay experiences are
posted. You can respond to each post. As long as you
are logged into Facebook or Twitter, it will import your
name. Just post, respond to other posts, etc.
I will grade these every couple of weeks. They don’t
have hard/fast due dates, but you need to reflect no
more than a week AFTER you play.

8. Analysis 1
This leads us to your first analysis essay. The prompt is
deceptively simple: I want you to detail your personal
theory of play.
What does that mean? It means answer this question:
“what does PLAY mean to you, and why do you value
play? What does play do?”
This should be 4-5 pages. It’s due Sept. 26th

9. Readings
I want to start by looking at the Juul reading, as he
offers us a tool that while we might agree or disagree
with it (oooh! Let’s do that!) is easy to apply.
Juul’s definition is on the next slide.

10. Game per Juul

11. And remember…
We also learned about the “magic circle.”

12. Sooo…
Let’s test a few games with Juul’s definition.
The question: does the definition work?

21. If time permits…
With our remaining time, let’s begin the task of defining
the word “play.” As we do so, feel free to fire up League
of Legends (or use the time to create your account so
you can play later).

22. For Wednesday
Remember to play! You have fantasy football to adjust
for a draft then to set line-ups for (we’ll discuss line-ups
in class Wednesday). You can and should League, and
you can get your photo-bombs going.
Read: McGonigal, Caillois, Rodriguez, and Frasca (see
schedule and Niihka)
Enjoy Labor Day weekend!