This document provides an introduction to a class on videogames and art. It includes the class schedule, objectives to introduce game design and address social issues, and requirements to design an original game. The teacher is William Wong and the class format will involve presentations, lectures, tutorials, workshops and gameplay testing. It also briefly defines play, games, and key concepts like competition, chance, simulation and vertigo from seminal works. Finally, it mentions some early videogames and provides alternative art examples that use gaming like Pong adaptations and game music compositions.

1. GDCV1845/GDSS1845 – Videogames and arts
Class 01
Introduction
Class website
http://gdss1845.wordpress.com

2. GDCV1845/GDSS1845 – Videogames and arts
Schedule
Class introduction
Teacher
Students
Facilities
Class activities
Assignments

3. Objectives
The course aims to provide an introduction to the study of
games, videogames as an art form in particular, as well as
understanding games as a business, a cultural phenomenon
and a technological invention.

4. Benefits
The game design process will be introduced as a way to
enhance problem solving skills and creativity.

5. Requirements
Students will be required to design a new game using the
principles learnt in class and at the same time to address
social issues that related to their everyday life experience.

6. Teachers
William Wong
william@i-for-interactive.com
http://www.i-for-interactive.com

7. William Wong (http://www.i-for-interactive.com)

8. William Wong

9. William Wong

10. Class format
Presentation
Lecture
Tutorial
Workshop
Screening
Play test

11. Activity
CONNECTING STORIES, a self-introductory game
Have everyone divide into small groups of 6-8 people. Ensure
each table has several post-it notes and pens. The goal of the
game is to connect mini-stories in an interesting way. Each
person must share at least one item that connects to the other
mini-stories. The longer the chain of items that can be created,
the better. Write down a few words on a post-it note to keep
track of each part of the story.
From https://www.icebreakers.ws/small-group/connecting-stories.html

12. Before we work on with videogames, we start
with games. Before we start with games, we look
into play.
Definitions

13. Homo Ludens – Johan Huizinga (1872 – 1945)

14. What is PLAY?
…a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life
as being not serious,… It is an activity connected with no
material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds
within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to
fixed rules and in an orderly manner.
J. Huizinga
Definitions

15. No profit can be gained?
Definitions

16. Not Serious ?
Definitions

17. What is PLAY?
…it creates no wealth or goods, thus differing from work or
art.
Roger Caillois
Definitions

18. Differing from work or art?
Definitions

19. Differing from work or art?
Definitions

20. What is PLAY?
An activity that is fun, voluntary, intrinsically motivated,
incorporates free choices/free will, offers escape, and is
fundamentally exciting.
Brian Sutton-Smith
Definitions

21. What is PLAY?
A free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary”
life.
Johan Huizinga
Definitions

22. Second Life
How many lives do you have ?

23. Properties of PLAY
Voluntary act
Pleasurable
Challenging mentally or physically
Separated from reality
Mary Flanagan
Formal properties

24. Must play have rules?
Definitions

25. What is a GAME?
A form of art in which participants, termed players, make
decisions in order to manage resources through game
tokens in pursuit of a goal.
Greg Costikyan
Game vs. Play

26. Properties of a GAME?
It is a system.
It is artificial.
It has players.
It has conflict.
It has rules.
It contains a quantifiable outcome/goal, and ending state in
which players can either be considered the winners or the
losers.
Properties

27. Man, Play and Games, Roger Caillois, 1961

28. Types of game?
Agôn
Alea
Mimicry
Ilinx
Roger Caillois

29. Types of game?
Agôn – competition
Alea – chance
Mimicry – simulation
Ilinx – vertigo
Roger Caillois

30. Competition

31. The equality of chances is artificially created.
A rivalry which hinges on a single quality, such as
speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill,
ingenuity, etc.
Inevitably imbalances are negated or modified by
drawing lots at the beginning, then by strict
alternation of favored positions.
Competition

32. Sustained attention
Appropriate training
Assiduous application
Desire to win
Competition

33. Chance

34. Based on decision independent of the player, an
outcome over which he has no control, and in
which winning is the result of fate.
Chance

35. Reveal the favor of destiny. The player is entirely
passive. He risks his stake. Fair play lies in being
compensated exactly in proportion to the risk
involved.
Result is necessarily uncertain and paradoxically
must approximately the effect of pure chance.
Chance

36. Negate work, patience, experience, and
qualifications.
Games of chance are not as important to children
as to adults.
Chance

37. Simulation

38. Simulation

39. Simulation

40. Temporary acceptance of an illusion, then at least
of a closed conventional, and in certain respects,
imaginary universe.
Becoming an illusionary character oneself, and of
so behaving.
Simulation

41. Children imitate adults, for example, with toy
weapons and miniatures.
Simulation

42. The basic intention is not that of deceiving the
spectators. It is only the spy and the fugitive who
disguise themselves to really deceive because
they are not playing.
Simulation

43. Competition or Simulation?
Spectator sports

44. Vertigo

45. Vertigo

46. Vertigo

47. An attempt to momentarily destroy the stability
of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous
panic upon an otherwise lucid mind.
Vertigo

48. Desire for disorder and destruction, a drive which
is normally repressed.
Kind of pleasure from the intoxication stimulated
by high speed …
Vertigo

49. Next, we move to the very brief introduction of
videogames.
Videogames

50. O X O
X X O
O X
Tic-Tac-Toe, Alexander Douglas (1952)

51. Tennis for Two, William Higinbotham (1958)

52. Spacewar, Steve Russell, 1962 MIT

53. Spacewar, Steve Russell, 1962 MIT

54. ADVENT, Colossal Cave Adventure, 1967

55. ADVENT, Colossal Cave Adventure, 1967

56. Magnavox Odyssey, Ralph Baer, 1972

57. Programmable Logic for
Automatic Teaching Operations –
an early computer network
platform. He developed the ‘online’
version of the Spacewar.
Image from http://www.classicgaming.com/
Spacewar, Rick Blomme, 1969

58. Alternative?
Videogames and Art

59. Pong - Outdoor pong game with mobile phone interface
Blinkenlights

60. Blinkenlights

61. Mario Brothers, ITP NYU

62. Game Boy Music, Haeyoung Kim

63. Electroplankton, Toshio Iwai, NDS

64. Feng Mengbo

65. Velvet Strike, Anne Marie Schleiner

66. 3D Movie Maker

67. Adam, a real-time rendered film by Unity