CMS.608/CMS.864  Game Design

2012 Imagine Cup competition

Just spreading the word about the Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition. Games are included in a pretty diverse range of software project categories. You compete against design teams from all over the world for cash, prizes, and grants to help bring games to market. The finalists get a free trip to Australia in 2012.

http://www.imaginecup.com/

Announced on 12 December 2011  9:56  a.m. by Philip Tan

GAMBIT IAP 2012 Events

Check out the gaming related 2012 IAP events and classes being offered by the folks here at GAMBIT. (NOTE: some classes require an advanced sign up as space is limited so do sign up soon)

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Alternate Reality Game (ARG) Creation Workshop
Scott Nicholson (Visiting Professor, CMS / GAMBIT), Remlee Green (MIT Libraries)
Mon Jan 30, 09am-01:00pm, 4-145
Tue Jan 31, Wed Feb 1, 10-11:00am, 4-145
Thu Feb 2, 10-11:00am, 4-265
Fri Feb 3, 10am-01:00pm, E14-633

An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is an activity where players enter a fictional world, discovering more and more of a hidden story, characters, and challenges as they move through the game. During this workshop, groups of students will develop an ARG for the MIT Libraries to use as an orientation activity. On Monday, we will talk about ARGs and present some basic ideas, and the constraints and resources for the game will be presented. Students will be working on their own throughout the week to plan out the ARG, and there will be a time each day for the class to meet and groups to present on their progress and get ideas. On Friday, each group will present their ARGs to each other, library staff, and other MIT faculty. By the end of the workshop, participants will understand what an ARG is, will have created the structure for an ARG, and will also know more about key resources in the library.

The focus in this workshop is on the game design and not the programming of game software, so no programming expertise is required. The final product will be a paper-based plan and prototype that may be accompanied by digital media as a demonstration.

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Discovering Madden History
Abe Stein
Wed Jan 25, Thu Jan 26, 10am-04:00pm, NE25-373

"Are you ready for some football!"
In this two day course, participants will help to chart the history of the Madden videogame franchise. We will play every title of Madden, starting with 1988's John Madden Football for the Apple II and continuing to this years Madden NFL 12. Together we will chart significant features, design choices, platform specificities, and other aspects that have informed the development of the game in the 20 plus years of its existence. By the end of the session we will have developed a public collection of data about the history of the Madden franchise to serve as a starting point for further sports videogame research.
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Unpacking Super Serious Serious Games
Konstantin Mitgutsch (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab), Narda Alvarado
Tue-Thu, Jan 10-12, 17-19, 10am-03:00pm, NE25-375
Level: U 3 units Standard A - F Grading Can be repeated for credit

Once upon a time games were played for enjoyment and to engage players in social, physical and cultural activities. But in recent years a new trend of "serious games" with "serious purposes" arose. These games claim to raise awareness about social and political issues such as injustice, poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, oppression, and global problems, reaching specific purposes beyond pure entertainment (raise funds, sign petitions, form opinion, etc). In this workshop, best practice examples of serious games for social change will be played, discussed and analyzed.

Game designers will be invited and recent research papers on the impact of serious games will be discussed. The workshop will focus on the question of what serious games are, what their potential is and where they reach their instructional limit. The question being, do serious games meet the high expectations that designers put into them? Participants with an interest in Super Serious Serious Games, no matter what the level of experience and expertise in video games is, are all welcome.

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GAMBIT Presents Two New Gaming Documentaries (with director Q&A)
Generoso Fierro
Thu Jan 12, 07-09:00pm, 10-250, "GOING CARDBOARD" screening
Fri Jan 13, 07-09:00pm, 10-250, "GET LAMP" screening

The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab presents two new films about the world of gaming. Both screenings are with the directors in attendance who will run a Q and A after the completion of the film. On January 12th is Lorien Green's new documentary, "Going Cardboard" which takes you into the world of "designer" board gaming, from the community of enthusiastic fans to the publishers and self-publishers, and of course, the designers. On January 13th is the documentary by Jason Scott entitled "Get Lamp" Get Lamp is a documentary that will tell the story of the creation of "computer adventure games", in the words of the people who made them.

"Going Cardboard" trailer: http://vimeo.com/30215745

"Get Lamp" trailer: http://www.getlamp.com/trailer/

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You might also be interested in classes and events being offered by our parent program, COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES:

Non-Credit: http://student.mit.edu/iap/nscms.html
Credit: http://student.mit.edu/iap/fccms.html

Announced on 06 December 2011  9:09  p.m. by Philip Tan

Fall Evaluations

Fall 2011 Online Subject Evaluations are now open at http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation. Students have until Friday, December 16 at noon to complete their surveys.

Philip will try to keep the class a little shorter today so that you will have time to fill out the online evaluation form, either on your own laptop or on one of GAMBIT's computers.

Announced on 05 December 2011  9:29  a.m. by Philip Tan

12/1/11: The Aesthetics of Games - Frank Lantz

Thursday, December 1, 2011 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Room 4-231
Presented by MIT Comparative Media Studies

This talk will explore what it means to consider games an aesthetic form -- something akin to literature, music, or film. That this is the most appropriate category within which to place games seems like an emerging consensus. But what does it actually mean? Are only video games an aesthetic form, or do non-digital games also deserve that status? Are the aesthetics of games a hybrid blend of other forms or a distinct form unto themselves? Do they express a new aesthetic fresh-born of the computer age or a primal, fundamental aesthetic that computers have amplified and brought into focus? The talk will examine these and other related questions.

Frank Lantz is the Interim Director of the NYU Game Center. For over 12 years, Frank has taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He has also taught at the School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design. His writings on games, technology and culture have appeared in a variety of publications. In 2005 Frank co-Founded Area/Code, a New York based developer that created cross-media, location-based, and social network games. In 2011 Area/Code was acquired by Zynga and is now Zynga New York. Frank has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting Area/Code, Frank worked on a wide variety of games as the Director of Game Design at Gamelab, Lead Game Designer at Pop & Co, and Creative Director at R/GA Interactive. Over the past 10 years, Frank helped pioneer the genre of large-scale realworld games, working on projects such as the Big Urban Game, which turned the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul into the world's largest boardgame; ConQwest, which featured the first major application of semacodes in the United States, PacManhattan, a life-size version of the arcade classic created by the students in his Big Games class at NYU, and many other experiments in pervasive and urban gaming.

Announced on 01 December 2011  2:39  p.m. by Philip Tan

Global Game Jam applications

GAMBIT is hosting a Global Game Jam site at our lab January 27-29. More details are here at the IAP site:
http://student.mit.edu/searchiap/iap-b106.html

Our site will be a mix of professional video game developers (indie and otherwise), GAMBIT staff, and students from a few local institutes. We'll be making both digital and analog (board, card, etc...) games!

Registration is required and currently limited to MIT Affiliates from now until December 15th. We have 5 slots guaranteed for MIT affiliates before the waitlist is invoked, so register today!
http://gambit.mit.edu/ggj2012-iap

Video from last year's jam is here:
http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/gambitgamelab/videos/15454-global-game-jam-2012-trailer

Announced on 29 November 2011  4:09  p.m. by Philip Tan