This course is about making videogames for mobile devices to better understand local place. You may think this takes programming skills and lots of money. But thanks to some easy-to-use tools, including ARIS which I help design, normal people can do this too. If game design sounds interesting but out-of-reach, this might be the class for you. Go check out ARIS now:
There’s more at http://arisgames.org. You don’t need wait for this class to start making games.
Another reason to sign up is to know more about this city and connect to it in a new way. This course is about finding what’s hidden in ABQ and making it visible. Games may sound like a funny way to know a place, but there are natural advantages. To make a game about a place or issue, you need to know that thing deeply and from a variety of perspectives, and you need to know how to make it interesting to someone else. Here are a couple videos that may give you a better idea why games?
Jane McGonigal Games can make a better world
Kurt Squire How Video Games Can Encourage Civic Engagement
Using mobile games to explore place, sometimes called augmented reality (AR), isn’t exactly a new idea, but it’s new enough. This field has not yet seen its Einsteins, Eisensteins, Shakespeares, Curies, or Kubriks. With a good idea, hard work, and some luck, you could be the first genius of AR. You can see some of the ideas that past students have tried here. Beyond the limitless possibilities of a new medium, there are groups on campus and across the world who are looking for AR game designers help them connect people to places and ideas.
Not everything is a game, but games give us a good language for creating interesting experiences. In this course, we will learn about and practice game design. We’ll go outside the classroom and into the community. And the next time you are looking for a way to recruit participation in any endeavor, you’ll look back to those experiences and find something useful.
Past students have presented on their work in this class at national conferences, and and large grants have been based upon their designs.
You will need to produce at least one form of interactive mobile media that connects its “players” to the city around us. This is pretty open-ended and likely new for all of you, but don’t worry, we’ll get there. The most important things you’ll need this semester:
Game Design Experience Seriously, beginners welcome. No programming necessary. You will make games.
Express interest in local place Go places, meet people, read about issues, get involved.
Practice game design Make, play, analyze, and read about games.
Work with others Make design teams, get feedback and recruit help from classmates, find and work with relevant community stakeholders, join the AR gaming community.
Write Design documents and post-mortems for your games, analyze game mechanics and dynamics.
ARIS We will gain familiarity with ARIS, an open-source tool for creating mobile games and stories. There will be opportunities to contribute directly to this project used by thousands across the world.
Communicate and Collaborate We will work closely with other scholars and community activists working in some of the same places, dealing with the same problems, and using the same tools. Collaboration and cross-pollination are highly encouraged.
Game Design and Game Studies e.g. The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
ABQ (the city and things written about it) e.g. The Orphaned Land by VB Price, and Duke City Fix
------------for the suits, but FYI--------------
Game design can be a powerful focus for research. One must not only acquire information, but do so in the name of using it to produce a meaningful experience for someone else. The methods of design-based research are sought particularly in cases where researchers wish to engage directly with the complexity of a situation (like a city or a classroom) and simultaneously have a chance of improving those environments. This is directly applicable to the context of local places, because we seek not only to understand but to improve. Game design can function as a tool for both organization and empathy.
Mobile devices are a relevant tool due to their portability, location sensitivity, customizability, and ubiquity of use. Unlike physical signs, handheld computers have the ability to give you different information about a place depending not only on where you are, but who you are, why you are there, and what else you know or want to know. It can then give you different information at a later date and time depending on what you've seen here, and it goes with you so later it can help you remember what you saw and heard. They can connect you to others along any imaginable axis of shared interest.
Students will also have the ability to participate broadly in the growing local and international community around the creation of augmented reality content. Common stakeholders include academic departments within the university with an existing connection to local place, professional artists, games researchers, community activists, museums, and libraries.
Thanks to the developers of the software we will be using, the technical requirements for this work are negligible and well within what we expect of all students. The act of game creation is one of non-linear, illustrated writing. Although quite demanding cognitively, it is closely related to the overall goal of understanding the subject at hand rather than arcana of computer code.
Learn about a local place, particularly encountering the complexity of competing interests and social change
Speak directly with relevant stakeholders
Become technically competent in the production of mobile place-based games
Organize their knowledge about a place into a coherent narrative in the form of a place-based mobile game
Distribute knowledge, expertise, and responsibility for production of the game across a small cross-functional team
Practice the research methodology of design-based research - in addition to making something, this means learning in a systematic way from your creation.
Understand the signifying representational practices typical of new media environments in their relation to producing and sustaining local culture.