Just met with Beth, Suri and Zaida. Beth had some great feedback on my thesis proposal, asking what altruism means to me and how I want to define it is important. She also noted that it could be interesting to see altruism with plants and animals. Another thing to take into consideration is which mechanics are more fun, or “reward” us more. For example, are competitive mechanics more fun, or altruistic ones within a game?
Hey friends,
Just had my 3rd meeting with Sarah. Great discussion as always and she helped me think of ways to reframe my main thesis question, and pointed out some assumptions that I was making that could use evidence through something like interviews. Something I thought was fun that she brought up was a general “thesis breakdown”:
10-15% pure research
75% making things and doing some research along side it
10% chunk that is just production
1-5% to research again
Made me think a little bit about if and how this reflected my process.
Toodles till next time!
Ai
Another great meeting with Sarah. I feel like I had a lot of discombobulated thoughts in my head and she was able to help me straighten them out a bit. She gave me the courage to start creating a framework for iteration, then actually doing it in terms of the game that I want to make. And in that process, I could find the “thing” that I’m looking for or resonates.
She also helped verbalize this feeling I had of “is creating the art for it’s own sake, or making that feeling of connection enough?” The past week I’ve been struggling to imagine what the setting would be for my game because I wasn’t really sure if there was a deeper meaning I was explicitly trying to express alongside with thinking of innovative ways to use video games and networks within them to create an emotion.
My next steps are to think more about this framework and some more janky games, which was a struggle for me before. I also want to continue looking into Jane McGonigal’s work, check out the materials for empathy in games Sarah sent me, and schedule a time to speak with Margaret!
Fun session with Beth and co today. They suggested some games with really simple mechanics such as Universal Paperclip and this one about catip: [https://kittensgame.com/web/](https://kittensgame.com/web/)
This made me think about the simplicity of gameplay – games like QWOP and Getting Over It introduce difficulty not through multiple controls but the level of difficulty in those controls. Or just thinking where the difficulty may lie:
– is it a matter of practicing it over and over again? like getting over it?
– is it a matter of having to collaborate with others? a bit of pico park (synchronously) and death stranding (asynchronously)
Also loved listening & talking to Chelsea, Jheanell, Sehmon and Jaye about their projects – got a lot of insight into their thought process and how they’re doing right now!
Hello friends,
This week we talked about what our ideas were for thesis, and it was really interesting seeing what my classmates were doing. It was helpful having some sort of accountability, since the other commitments (1:1s and entire class meetings) are not weekly so it’s easy to put thesis aside for days at a time. I think while it was good to have a free-flowing session, I would find it more valuable to have some structure so we can have a productive space to give and receive feedback.
Hello friends!
I just had my first meeting with Sarah. Feeling really excited because she gave me some great tips, resources and assignments on how to continue my thought process. I was feeling a little bit like I didn’t know where to go next.
I definitely want to a game, and here are some general words around the themes: agency, empathy, collaboration vs competition, emotions, beliefs, experience
I also want to make something that can be experienced online by many people but also be able to be experienced in a physical space with the people around you.
Here are the assignments:
1. Review 3-5 games that do something similar but articulating what it doesn’t do (in terms of what you want to make)
What do you “like” vs “dislike,” what is “it” vs “not it”?
2. Construct a few low tech/ low fi games, such as rule based games
– mafia – gamified version of trying to figure out who’s lying
– green light red light – one rule
– musical chairs
3. Think of moments in the real world that are the kind of moments you want to create in the game
4. Imagine that you are writing a review (you are an xyz reviewer, critic) and write a dream 200-500 word review of your own project after it’s done.
Also, it’s been very fun reading everyone’s posts 🙂
no thoughts