Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
I don't know much about video game design or programming but I still found Noah's lecture interesting. His interest in the relationship between the game designer and the player is a topic that I had never really thought about before. I was particularly interested in the idea that the game designer could, in essence, be having a conversation with the gamer as he showed with the example of Sim City. The idea behind Sim City is that there is an ultimate city construction that would run smoothly and efficiently and be self-sustaining and in order to do that the player must continue to learn through trial and error the rules of the game. It was also cool to see how some defects are created with his guided tour through the Star Wars X-Box game. I've seen these types of problems occur in some games that my brother used to play, and always enjoyed the games with the most elaborate plot lines so it is interesting to see the method behind creating the story lines. Noah made game design seem a lot less foreign to me and may have peaked my interest in playing some new video games to try to understand more about the inner workings.
I agree, those defects in that Star Wars game was hilarious, probably the most amusing part of that lecture! Granted, it made me aware of those issues, since I would have never experienced something like that (especially since I don't play video games...)
ReplyDelete-Victoria
Seconded. The only times I've ever watched people play video games with actual plot lines, the player actually skipped over the narrative to get to the part they could control. They had either heard it before, or just weren't interested, so I guess I'd always viewed it the same way. But after his lecture, I like the idea of video games as interactive narratives.
ReplyDeleteWhat interested me the most,is the dialogue between the gamer and the game designer. The idea that these narratives can be tracked, not just within the framework of video games but within other verticals of new media really interests me. I think these new mediums create narratives which are not only important but telling of the way in which we are headed both socially and culturally
ReplyDeleteI always loved the narratives in video games. You can't have a really successful rpg with a crappy storyline. Gamers simply won't sit through it, at least not the ones who are hardcore into rpgs. It's people who prefer shooters or just like to beat up pretend people that tend to skip through the story bits.
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