Thursday 8 March 2007

Week 5

In the fifth week we analyzed three factors that have impacts on the player’s psychology. The first factor is reward which is something that all the humans seek out. All the games have reward, which are for example money, guns etc, and they don’t have only one reward but a lot of them. The second factor is flow that is something needed in order to make the players keep playing without being bored, if the game is too easy, or anxiety if it is too difficult. The last factor is irritation. Irritation is to perform actions again but not the same, with differences each time. Irritation is not boring in a game because you are aware of the possible consequences of your actions.
An example of irritation in games is in the game Icewind Dale 2 , in that game I used to play the parts many time in order to find the right way to do thinks and find my way or not be killed and every time I did it again I was more excited because I wanted to see what was about to happen.
Week 4

In the fourth week we examined the meaning of the word “play” and “game”, we also examined the “Magic Circle” that someone enter while playing a game and the “Lusory Attitude” that someone takes while playing a game.
The term “Magic Circle” is the boarders of a game and the rules that the player has to follow, it can be both physical, for example: screen, or psychological, for example arm wrestling. We can see an example of “magic Circle” in the game Warcraft 3 where you have to build structures in order to create army and with that army destroy your enemy, and you can’t do anything else, like find a house to leave or get married.
The term “Lusory Attitude” is the attitude someone has when playing a game. It is like the player becomes a part of the game, he has to accept the rules. For example in the game “The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion” the player becomes a warrior who casts spells and fighting monsters in order to become stronger and defeat the greatest enemy.
Week 3

In the third’s week lecture we examined the theory of rhetoric, we also examined a murder that the victim’s family was believing that it was because the murderer was effected by a violent game named Manhunt that its purpose is to kill some guys that want to kill you with anything you can use as a weapon, finally it appeared that it was a murder for drug money.
Rhetoric is a type of language that tries to persuade and convince the audience/reader in order to make them believe more in what it says. Rhetoric can be verbal, written, visual and behavioural.
We can find rhetoric can be found in games as well, for example: Red Alert 2, it’s objective is to build army so you can destroy your enemy, it emphasises combat and strategy, the values are: destroy your enemy or you will be destroyed and build big army in order to win, the rhetoric in this game is: manage your army so you can destroy the enemy, but playing Red Alert doesn’t mean that you will become a great general.
Week 1

In the first lecture of the module “Playing the Game” we saw Wittgenstein’s theory about the word “game”. Wittgenstein wasn’t interested in games but he was interested in how to give a definition to word. He stated that games share some similarities but they are not the same, like a family as he said, because family members have similarities sometimes facial features and sometimes body type. In the games we were given to look at in the lecture, doom 2is a shooting game, civilization 2 and Samarost 2, Wittgenstein’s theory comes true. Doom 2 is a game that you walk through rooms and you have to kill anything that moves otherwise it will kill you first and to do so you have to find weapons. Civilization 2, a turn based strategy game, you have to build cities, advance them and build army in order to conquer the world with your nation. Samarost 2, an online adventure game, you have to solve puzzles in order to save you dog. As we saw it is really difficult to give the definite meaning of the word “game” because they are all games but they are differ from each other.

Thursday 8 February 2007

Delimitas Eleftherios

Studying Playing the Game