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PROFESSOR: All right, I'm going to start
handing out assignment three.
And on the back of assignment three
are the changes that we've made to the syllabus, which
is mostly in the order of reading,
but also we've lifted some of the games that--
we've [INAUDIBLE] some of the games that that we're going to
[INAUDIBLE].
Because basically we change the assignment three
in the middle of the semester.
Who actually read ahead to figure out
what assignments are you on?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: How long ago did you read ahead?
AUDIENCE: Like two weeks ago.
PROFESSOR: Two weeks ago.
OK.
So whatever was online is different from what it is now.
AUDIENCE: OK.
PROFESSOR: But if you just read like the one line description--
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: It's that.
But all of the text that we wrote up completely changed.
So this is [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PROFESSOR: What?
AUDIENCE: Are there any [INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: It's mostly rearranged.
Mostly just scheduling, rather than the actual readings.
I don't think we introduced any new reading,
except for maybe [? MO ?] 7, which is [INAUDIBLE].
That's been on our website for a while now though.
AUDIENCE: I did all the reading.
PROFESSOR: Yep.
So I don't know if you've seen that one.
[INAUDIBLE]
Simulation 101.
It's like a series of webpages.
It's all online on the--
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
PROFESSOR: OK.
All right.
So you better read it.
So I'm just reading this because people are still
cuttting things up.
So I figure I might just talk.
So assignment three is going to be about applying everything
that you've learned so far.
Remember, assignment one was kind
of just getting used to this, the discipline iterating.
Of prototyping, of iterating.
I feel that you've all shown like a lot of good experience
and skill in doing this.
One thing while I saw those presentations it reminded me
that we actually have notes about all
of your individual write ups, that I should copy and paste
into the grading section of the [? fellow ?] webpage.
AUDIENCE: I'll do that next.
PROFESSOR: Oh great.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
PROFESSOR: That'll be some help.
Yeah, I just forgot to do that.
So you'll also be getting a little bit
more detailed feedback on your individual writeups.
Like, in terms of the game, designing things
are coming along pretty well.
And if you want more feedback on the individual elements
of each game that you worked on in the past
we could totally get that to you.
I'm just guessing a lot of you are probably
more eager to just move on to the next project.
So I can talk about that.
Remember, assignment one was about the skill
of prototyping and iterrating.
Assignment two was about trying to come up with,
on some part holistic aesthetic experience.
And assignment three we're asking you to apply that
to the end of trying to depict the perspective of somebody who
lived all this in the real world.
That person could be a very specific person,
like I'm going to bring up some examples here.
Campaign Manager 2008 specifically
states that you are the campaign managers of either the McCain
or the Obama campaigns, that you are-- that's one person.
Now, the powers of what you have in the game
is really a whole network of campaigners,
but you're the person who is calling the shots.
You are trying to win the electoral college though this.
We probably don't have time to play this, but anyone
who wants to take a look at what's in here,
all the bits, the way how each state is represented,
how the United States is represented,
the fact that you're basically just trying
to win points among demographics by raising hot button issues.
That's all this game is about, [? and it's ?] putting you
in the shoes of a very specific person who actually
exists in the real life.
An alternative will be something like Tulipmania 1637,
which is a game about--
anyone want to hear about the Great Tulip Crash of 1637
in the Netherlands?
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHING]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: One of the first bubble markets--
who [INAUDIBLE] bubble markets?
You've got to have heard about it in the past four years--
eight years.
2008 was a real long time ago.
Oh, geeze.
OK.
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHING]
AUDIENCE: It's OK.
Next one's coming up next year, so it's cool.
PROFESSOR: Oh, yeah, I read those articles, too.
So this is about prices of tulips, flowers,
being driven up by speculation to horrendous amounts
and trying to be smart and exiting at the right time
and often not being quite pulling it off
at the right time and losing your shirt in the process.
And this game puts you in the shoes of a [INAUDIBLE]
speculator, someone who is trying
to play this market at that time, when the market is
behaving in this very, very volatile, incredible increases
and yet even faster crashes.
[? It's ?] actually designed by a professor
in Syracuse University, Scott Nicholson, who
runs [INAUDIBLE] with Scott, and it's pretty awesome.
If you like playing it, you can see
the little token, little flower heads,
and you get to do things like try
to convince buyers to buy at a higher price than what you
had originally bought it at.
Things like that.
[? Care to talk ?] a little bit about E3?
GUEST SPEAKER: Yeah.
So I chose three games.
So what we're asking you to do is choose a real world
historical, political, cultural, economic situation,
so you might be choosing some problematic situations
like the conquest of Africa by Europeans.
So it's a game about African exploration
during the 19th Century.
It's made in the 70s.
They tried to be less problematic.
They were not entirely successful
because the point of view of this game
is entirely of the European explorer entering
this forbidden Africa and finding things
there, and basically finding Zulu tribes, which were not all
throughout Africa, of course, and fighting
other explorers who had died there previously,
biblical things like King Solomon's mine,
things like that.
But mechanically, it is an interesting way
to talk about exploration, not so much about
the bigger issues around what imperialism was,
what that kind of conquest was.
If you're thinking about doing a live action game,
we've got a couple of different versions
of how to do live action games.
It can be a live action playing game.
It can be a party game, a conversation game.
This is a book called Heads of State: Nine Short Games
About Tyrants.
We've got-- I haven't played many of these yet,
but we've got, basically, the first game here
it is called Coup D'etat.
GUEST SPEAKER: Basically, why are dictators what they are?
How did they become a dictator?
In this case, Gaddafi's idolization
of Egyptian president Gamal Nasser,
reading Nasser's philosophy of the revolution,
thinking about plots against the Egyptian monarchy,
but also entering into the Military Academy in Benghazi
in 1963, and then having other officers
in training with him organizing the group that's
going to overthrow the pro-western Libyan monarchy.
Basically your dictators in school,
learning how to be future leaders in one of these games.
So what this book is trying to do
is try to give you multiple different viewpoints of tyranny
and of those kind of problematic things.
There's communism in here.
There's maoism in here.
A game about the disappearances of people,
so if you're thinking about making a game about Argentina
in the '70s, good luck, but they tried it,
so you can see what they did.
And then another version is Dog Eat Dog.
It's a game about imperialism, in particular the assimilation
of the Pacific Islands.
The great thing about this game is
you've got people who are acting as the new colonizers,
but you've also got people who are acting
as the native populace, and the different interactions that
happen there.
Basically, if you decide you want to do
something that's coming to--
trying to do something more serious,
if you try to do something with more of a problematic tone,
you might want to consider having
multiple different perspectives, or saying
a similar perspective, but at least
understanding what the other different perspectives
are of the people who are inside of that system.
It's just good to take account of--
PROFESSOR: I think if every player
is taking on the perspective of a single person, that's OK,
even if different players in the same game
are taking different perspectives.
I think that might complicate things
a little bit because, again, you end up in the situation where
you're designing basically two very different kinds of games
that are interacting, but some of you
have had experiences with it and made it work.
So it's certainly not out of the question.
What we don't want is a situation
where you are simultaneously two people, right?
It's like I am controlling the survivors and the zombies
simultaneously.
That's a little bit weird.
Yep!
AUDIENCE: Can we use a circle persona
who has multiple personalities?
[INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: That is--
We can talk about that, but good luck.
AUDIENCE: So if it's really about the [INAUDIBLE]
interesting way of pulling it out?
Maybe there are multiple players playing
those individual personalities?
I think the biggest focus is the system, right?
PROFESSOR: It should be less about the individual person,
because I get the perspective of that person,
but more about the conditions in which that person lived in.
GUEST SPEAKER: Yes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] game before where
you could be the president of multiple corporations.
And like, in one corporation you'd
just like embezzle all their money [INAUDIBLE]
GUEST SPEAKER: That sounds like [INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: Yeah, and that's where ostensibly
on a lot of the [INAUDIBLE] games,
your actual role is one of a robber baron,
of a capitalist who lived in the 1800s, who owns
shares in multiple companies.
You're not really the president of a single company,
but you may take on that role somewhere
in the middle of the game, but your role is not
defined by being president.
Your role is being defined as being
a person with a lot of money in the 1800s,
and trying to increase that wealth through railroad
systems.
AUDIENCE: Can it be satirical?
GUEST SPEAKER: Yes.
PROFESSOR: Absolutely.
Just because you may take your game
to make a game about a serious topic
doesn't necessarily mean your game needs to be dull or somber
and I've got some examples of that.
So how many of you play Crunch?
[INAUDIBLE] Nope?
Two-person card game.
You are a CEO of a bank.
You are trying to get out of the bank
with as large a golden parachute as you possibly can.
To hell with the health of the bank itself.
This game encourages you to take advantage of the government's
generosity in bailing you out.
It encourages you to hide cards on your body
to secret fund your own personal wealth,
to be able to take money out of your own bank
and put it into your own personal accounts,
so that it becomes your fortune rather than the banks fortune.
To make really risky loans that may never pay out.
It came out in 2009, so you can understand
why this game was made.
This company, Terrible Games, basically
makes satirical games that comment on real world
situations, but this one is very, very clearly,
you are a banker.
Well, the satirical version vision of a banker.
They have another game called the War
on Terror, which I did not bring up
because it's a little bit unclear who
you are in that game.
You're supposedly a world power, but are you the President?
Are you the government?
Sort of like all of the government at once.
Or are you some sort of media construction of what
that country is because you can get branded as evil,
for instance.
[INAUDIBLE] evil in it.
But then that doesn't actually change your role
in the game, which is I think part of the point of game.
The point is that whether you are a terrorist state
or not you kind of all engage in the same sort of activities
anyway.
Just being branded as evil just let's you
do it with a little bit more impunity.
Anyway that game's not a great example
of what we're looking for because who you are in the game
is not quite well defined.
AUDIENCE: Are these games usually a set number of players
or do they have [INAUDIBLE] range like 2 to 4,
or is it [INAUDIBLE]?
PROFESSOR: This is a two-player game.
Specifically, Campaign Manager 2008, again a two-player game.
Tulipmania has a range.
It really depends on your ability as a game designer
to design for different people, but for this assignment
in particular we're asking for two
to four people, but a specific number.
So you can design a two-player game, a three-player game,
or a four-player game, but raid you don't need to make the game
playable by a range, and that means
you can tune it very specifically for a fixed
number of players.
The gentlemen of the South Sandwich Islands
is an absurd game of logic discovered in 1821,
which is not true at all.
It was really kick-started as a project about three years ago.
Four years ago, maybe?
Yeah.
This is interesting because this is probably
right at the edge of what I would consider acceptable
for classical.
This is a game about sort of fantastical courtship
where you are trying--
where you are two gentlemen trying
to win the affection of ladies who
are walking around this island, but and also there are--
there-- what's the word?
the handlers
AUDIENCE: What do you call it?
[INAUDIBLE] chaperone.
PROFESSOR: Chaperone.
Yes.
But the chaperones are also following them
around here trying to get them alone, so that they can
have a quiet talk with them.
Kind of the game of Jane Austen.
Now Jane Austen, of course, was writing about some
of the social situations, but every single character that she
wrote about was fictional.
But, the world that she was writing about
is at least plausible.
And it's based on [INAUDIBLE].
You want to look at something and make
the game set in Dickens' Oliver Twist or something like that,
you can.
You could be individual people in that setting.
Do pay some mind onto how grounded in reality
those things were.
The more grounded they are in reality,
the more different sources you can pull out for inspiration.
If it's just like, well this was just the fantastical invention
of one person in this game or something like that,
then you'll only have Scott Card's writing as a reference.
Whereas with Jane Austen, you can actually
look at real historical stuff to be
able to get more ideas about how that social system works
and actually Jane Austen's books are actually
these social systems.
And they're incredibly complicated.
But this game is really just about walking across bridges
and being on a very small island, so this
is a sort of a holiday island or just
trying to get quiet talks with ladies.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: Yes, I don't want a game
that takes more than four people to play definitely.
GUEST SPEAKER: For us to grade, it's
hard to get more than four people.
PROFESSOR: Yeah, you will be getting your grade in August
if you give me a game that requires six people.
I can't get that many people in a room.
GUEST SPEAKER: You want your team
to be no bigger than four or five still.
PROFESSOR: It's easier to test [INAUDIBLE] at least
[INAUDIBLE] the game.
Something to think about is agency.
Not just how does the world look like to that person.
Like for instance in Source of Denial
you are colonial European power for the most part right?
And you're seeing the continent of Africa
as this resource rich land to grab stuff out of.
That's the perspective.
But then what are the verbs?
What are the things you can do in that context?
In [INAUDIBLE], you are in communist Poland in the 1980s.
Poland?
Poland, right?
Yeah.
And the only thing that you can do
is stand in line for rationed goods,
but what you can do is you can affect
your place in line by let's see carrying around a cute baby
is one of them that are on here.
I believe you can knock somebody's hat off
or you can change which line you're standing on
so maybe instead of waiting for dry goods
you are waiting for furniture.
That's our thing.
It's kind of neat because all the goods that we actually
have in here are actually pictures
of the actual rationed goods that were available in Poland
in 1980s.
In fact this was a project that was
funded by some Polish historical institute.
But the only agency you have in this game
is, which line are you standing in and where in line
are you standing because that's the perspective that they
want to get across to you.
And so your whole game is all about jockeying for position.
And it's actually a pretty well-designed game.
We played it a few times.
That has both the perspective of this
is what the world looks like.
The world looks like a bunch of lines for rationed goods to me
as someone who lives in that world.
It's a kind of satirical lighthearted tone,
but it's grounded in reality as it's the only thing I can do.
What can I do about this world that's
going to give me some interesting decisions
to make, right?
And it's going to be which line do I want to wait for?
[INAUDIBLE] again, historical--
I can't remember which decade this is in, though.
AUDIENCE: 1890s is it?
PROFESSOR: I think that sounds right.
Somewhere in the rules they mentioned
it and it's about Manhattan.
It's about ruling New York where it
says it's a game of backstabbing, corruption,
temporary alliances and you're basically
just running for mayor.
And if you can't get mayor, you're
running for other city offices.
Turns out that actually as soon as you become mayor,
you have a giant target painted on your back and everybody
else who is in other positions, but you can become chief
of police, precinct chairman.
You then abuse those powers to sort
of place new immigrants in different worlds
and change the demographic makeup of different worlds
of different boroughs in New York
to be able to change the way how they vote.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: The object of the game
is victory points for the most part.
But the victory points you can get it by becoming mayor,
but then you're not staying there for long.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] machine and trying to control it?
And the agency that you have is really
just you were able to coerce people
to come to various locations and you're
trying to get the vote out.
So [INAUDIBLE] were 14 people [INAUDIBLE]
or doing things like having free food [INAUDIBLE] things
like that.
PROFESSOR: You could possibly evict people from boroughs
and move them into other boroughs
to create not ghettos, what am I thinking?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] the districts, right?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PROFESSOR: Yeah, instead of changing the minds,
they're actually moving people.
Yeah because you know if you're chief of police,
you can just grab people and put them somewhere else.
You can throw them off New York.
So that's their view.
Yeah that's a perspective they are
trying to place, this abuse--
they're asking-- they're saying that in this era if you're
one of these people you are actively
engaging in the abuse of power to sort of play
with the lives of immigrants.
So, yeah, it turns out that it's just more
of a game of territory.
When you actually play the game you
are looking at Manhattan as a bunch of resources
that get moving around, but it's a very specific perspective
and I think the game is played over a period of 16
years, which is [INAUDIBLE] or something that.
So check it out when you get a chance.
Any questions about assignment three?
Now one little wrinkle is on April 16th,
which is just two weeks from now we want you to come in here
and give us a pitch presentation on what you've decided
to do with your project and we want
to see a concise description of how you expect it to be played
at least two weeks into the project at what you decided
so far.
Because [INAUDIBLE] you want to create
so you want to tell us what kind of feel
you want to get out, whose perspective this is.
What type of agency that you're likely to have in the game.
Very important to tell us where you
are drawing your historical references from if it's
a history game, where you're drawing information from.
If it's a contemporary game what are you using to inform
this thing, your experience.
Now you could theoretically all make a game
about being an MIT student at MIT in 2014.
I'm going to encourage you to think a little bit broader
than that because you don't need any additional information.
And that's why it's kind of boring to get that degree.
You can draw inspiration from other games
but also books, websites news articles,
not just Wikipedia but Wikipedia can be a useful resource
to find other stuff but we want you to give that presentation
as if you were seeking green light as if you were going
to a publisher saying, please give me
money to be able to continue work on this game.
We're not going to fund you down we're not
going to cancel your project but we
are going to give you feedback both on how you can improve
the project on what we've heard, also
on your presentation skills.
That's going to be one of the few time in this class
where we're talking specifically about how
you deliver the presentation because you might have
to do that one day and there are other classes
especially [? CMS 610, ?] where you will get a lot of practice
doing pitching so this is a little taste of that if you
want to be able to get more practice
I encourage you to look at that class.
everything else at the end of the semester
you're going to do the same sort of a presentation
you gave today.
We expect change logs.
We expect a one page write up.
The one big difference is that everything
needs to be handed in at the same time.
Previously you could hand in your
write up the following week, I believe
that's the case for this assignment.
We can't do that for the final assignment in a MIT [INAUDIBLE]
because of MIT course rules.
You can't hand in anything late and only the class
can ask you to hand in anything later than that.
So everything is due on the 14th.
Finally, we have a bunch of guest lecturers
that will be coming in.
This is starting to segue into what
you do with the information that you're getting in this class
after this class is over.
April 9th, exactly a week from now,
will be the Game Makers Skill people
who actually are a collection of people
here in Cambridge who make board games and card
games for retail, but have been funded
through a range of different sources
all the way from traditional publishing
model to Kickstarter, and they all talk
about their experiences and what it
took to be able to take these ideas into something
that people could buy off the shelf.
We also have another guest lecturer
from The Geneva University of Art and Design.
These are mostly masters students and people
who recently graduated from masters programs
and are going to a design school that are
thinking about game playing.
They're mostly tech designs, so they're
digital games for the most part but because it's
an art school they're actually pretty
broad minded in what happens in the computer
and what happens outside of the computer.
So that should be fairly interesting.
They're gonna talk a little bit about their work.
[INAUDIBLE] will be coming in May 7th.
He is a theorist.
He actually currently teaches at a number of places,
including New York University.
He used to teach here at MIT.
He is probably best known among game scholars
for writing his books on the Art of Failure, A Casual
Revolution, [INAUDIBLE].
These are the three books that are about games and how--
not so much how designers think about games,
but how to analyze games from sort of abstract perspective.
[INAUDIBLE] If you're interested in those books,
please feel free to check out our library and game lab.
I'll be happy to let you have a look.
They're really, really easy reads
because he believes in padding out his books with images.
He has told us this very specifically.
He was like, "Well, I could write about half as much
and then just have larger images and then the book becomes
bigger. " He also makes games and he'll be here to not only
talk about his current work and what he's working on right now,
but also play test games on me, so I can give you some
feedback, because he's taught here before,
he's been part of this class a couple of years ago.
So please don't miss any of the guest lecturers.
They're great folks and give you an idea of what you could
do if you want to go to design school,
if you want to go to academia, if you wanted
to make your own games and publish them,
and make commercial product.
Just give you some perspective on what you can do.
All right who's games are actually
ready at this point in time?
Everyone's ready?
Awesome.
Let's play those games.