Author: kgrivalsky

1. “Walk in Their Shoes”

• Concept: This narrative-driven role-playing game invites players to experience a day in the life of a character facing unique challenges, such as someone from a different cultural background, a person with a disability, or a refugee.
• Gameplay: Players make choices that affect their character’s day-to-day experiences, navigating obstacles like social misunderstandings, discrimination, or physical challenges. The game would highlight the emotional and practical struggles these characters face, aiming to foster empathy by showing the world from their perspective.
• Objective: By engaging with these experiences, players gain insights into the complexities of different lives and the emotional weight carried by those in marginalized situations.

2. “Perspective Shift”

• Concept: In this cooperative game, players control two characters—each from opposing sides of a conflict or disagreement (e.g., two people in a tense relationship or people from different cultural or political backgrounds).
• Gameplay: Players must solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, and collaborate while switching between the two characters, forcing them to see the world from the other’s point of view. Each character has unique strengths, weaknesses, and biases. Players must communicate and work together to solve problems, realizing that empathy is key to overcoming conflict.
• Objective: The goal is to reach mutual understanding and collaboration, encouraging players to embrace the challenges of seeing and appreciating the perspectives of others in order to resolve conflicts peacefully.

3. “Emotion Cards”

• Concept: A card-based game where players take turns drawing cards that represent emotional scenarios (e.g., a person who has just received bad news, a child who is trying to make friends, someone experiencing a great success). The other players must guess the emotional state of the character based on limited clues.
• Gameplay: Players engage in conversations about the scenarios, interpreting body language, tone of voice, and written clues. The game encourages reflection and discussion about how emotions shape behavior and interactions.
• Objective: The goal is to identify emotions correctly, but also to understand the complexity of those emotions and why people act the way they do, promoting empathy in understanding human feelings.

4. “The Giving Game”

• Concept: This cooperative, story-driven game focuses on players working together to help people in their community or environment. The game revolves around different scenarios where characters face emotional or material hardship (e.g., a friend in need of support, a neighbor facing loneliness, a colleague dealing with stress).
• Gameplay: Players are tasked with finding ways to give help—whether through time, understanding, or resources—and must navigate the consequences of their decisions. The game includes challenges like time management, emotional intelligence, and resource allocation, all while keeping the needs of others in mind.
• Objective: The game encourages players to think about how empathy and selfless actions affect relationships and communities. The aim is not just to help but to truly understand the other person’s needs and offer thoughtful support.

5. “Empathy Quest”

• Concept: A quest-style adventure game where players must embark on a journey to help others, each representing different walks of life. Along the way, players encounter individuals who need help with personal, emotional, or social issues, requiring players to listen, understand, and act thoughtfully to provide solutions.
• Gameplay: The game offers dialogue options, where players choose their responses, each revealing a different level of empathy. For example, players might need to choose whether to comfort someone, offer advice, or simply listen. These decisions will influence how the other characters view the player and whether they trust or feel supported.
• Objective: The goal is to build trust and relationships, with success tied to the player’s ability to understand others’ emotions, provide appropriate help, and make the world around them a better place through empathy.

Dumb Ways To Die: I think this is the first game that was shown in class that I have actual played. I remember playing this game on my ipad as a child. Though I used to play it as just a form entertainment rather than thinking about what the game’s actual purpose.

Cards Against Humanity: To be honest I am not really sure if I have an opinion on this game. I wasn’t really totally sure what was going on while I was watching this game be played. It doesn’t really seem like a game I would enjoy either.

Cast Your Vote: This is another game that I wouldn’t really choose to play. I don’t know why but I have never really enjoyed games that were like this.

From Chapter 1:

• How does mary flanagan’s definition of game differ from chris crawford’s as well as the definition crafted by katie salen and eric zimmerman? Chris Crawford contrasts what he calls “games” with puzzels. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman among other game scholars, note a wide variety of definitions of the term “game”. Salen and Zimmerman (2003) also discuss the designer’s ability to create situations for “meaningful play.” 

• What is an activist game? Activist games can be characterized by their emphasis on social issues, education, and, occasionally, inter-vention. In other words, they are not purely conceptual exercises, but rather, games that engage in a social issue through, most commonly, themes, narratives, roles, set-tings, goals, and characters; and less commonly, through game mechanics, play para-digms, interactions, or win states to benefit an intended outcome beyond a game’s entertainment or experiential value alone. 

From chapter 3 :

• Go and chess are examples of games that feature “perfect information”, what other games share that feature? Checkers, and tic-tac-toe

• Why might chance or gambling games hold spiritual or religious importance to ancient cultures? There is evidence that ancient games involving chance often held spiritual and
• ritualistic importance. Senet offered board designs for two players and rules incorporating chance. Hounds and Jackals, or Fifty- Eight Holes, appeared in Egypt in the Middle Kingdom around 2000 BC and consisted of two parallel tracks of twenty- nine holes assembled in groups of five. 

• When was the earliest battle between government/ religious groups and games? what modern games can you think of that have been banned or demonized? In 1254, St. Louis IX of France forbade Tafl at court, calling the game “inhonesti ludi.”33 Thus the battle between government or religious groups and games is at least as old as this event, if not much older. I am not really a gamer so I can’t really think of any games that have been banned.

• What is a fox game, and what would be a modern example? a group of board games featuring unequal opponents, one player is the fox, or aggressor. Other players control or play the numerous geese, sheep, or prey the fox tries to eat while the fox attempts to avoid the traps his opponents set all around him. Fox games are characterized by an unbalanced set of game goals and a rather abstract board. These “unbalanced games” paralleled the popularity of chess, Go, and backgammon, and their rules of play were relatively stable.

• What was the purpose or intent of the game: Mansion of Happiness? Players compete to be the first to reach “happiness,” or heaven, a large square in the center of the board.

• Why do artists from the Fluxus and Surealist movements play games? Why did Surealists believe games might help everyone?  Artists, especially those who followed the Surrealist and Fluxus movements, also tend to play games as a form of recreation and research. Surrealists believed that games might help everyone—artists, scientists, politician, even farmers, tap into the spiritual realm and the human unconscious. 

• Changes in what can signal profound changes in games? How were pinball games reskinned during WW2? As seen in fi gure 3.20, the typical wildlife featured in the original game is replaced with a changeover unit to make the game politically relevant during the Second World War. 

• What statements did Fluxus artists make by reskinning games like monopoly and ping pong? Fluxus artists were deeply interested in breaking down the boundaries between art and everyday life, and by reskinning games like Monopoly and Ping Pong, they made statements that challenged traditional notions of art, culture, and social structures. Fluxus, which emerged in the 1960s, was a movement that sought to blur the lines between art and life, using games and interactive actions as platforms for artistic expression and political critique.

• How are artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco and Ruth Catlowusing war games? Artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, and Ruth Catlow engage with the concept of war games in different ways, often using the format of the “game” as a tool for exploring themes such as power, control, violence, and the absurdity of war. These artists might either directly reference military conflicts or use the structure of games to critique traditional notions of war. 

• Why is it important for players to have agency in a critical or serious game?

Games, such as Catlow’s chess game, expose the possibilities of player agency in other ways: fi rst, by empowering the pawns, thus imbuing traditionally conceived pieces/ roles with new power; second, by opening up the possible outcomes of the game in terms of widening the possible win states, thus rewriting the original in visionary ways. Metaphorical or actual, the game design must embody action, and depending on how active a game feels, its critique may be more or less apparent. 

Was it fun? Yes, it was still fun despite it being very unfair

What were the player interactions? Players would land on each other’s properties and pay rent. In my case some of my opponents were paying me to buy properties for them since I would land on properties that they wanted.

How long did it take to learn? Did not take too long since it was the same as the original game with a few different rules per player.

Would you play it again? Yes, I would play it again

Analyze the game using the 3 act structure. 1 – Players roll the dice to see what character they get and they see what type of rules they have for that character. 2 – Players start to buy properties and collect rent when opponents land on their properties. 3- Players start to run out of money.

What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? Players exchange properties and compeate to collect the most properties and end up with the most money.

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The game’s metaphor is that life isn’t always fair or equal. The rules for each character I thought were very unique because it made the tradional game a lot more challenging rather than just the simple boring game.

• What advergames have you played? did they influence a purchase?
  • I don’t think I have ever see or played any advergames personally, besides the ones that were showed in class. From what I have seen the games haven’t made me want to buy the products anymore than before.

• Why do the advergames tooth protector and escape work? What makes chase the chuckwagon and shark bait fail?
  • The reason that Tooth Protector and Escape worked is because they had a strong sense of realism and graphics. On the other hand Chuckwagon and Shark Bait both had very poor graphics and left the audience nothing to relate to.

• What does volvo’s drive for life accomplish? 
• Stress the importance of safety to drivers and educate them.

• What company used in-advergame advertising?
  • Walmart, IKEA, Lego, McDonald’s, and M&M’s. 
    
• What was one if the first home-console advergames and what beverage was it for? 
  • Kool-Aid man, for Atari VCS

• What makes the toilet training game sophisticated and do you agree?
  • The game was sophisticated because it was described as “strange attractor that draws and repels the players curser to mimic a lack of control.” In one sense I agree, in another sense I think it is dumb because who would call something like this sophisticated.

• What do advergames and anti-advergames have in common, and what principles do they share?
  • Advergames and anti-advergames both use interactive digital games to engage players, but for different purposes. Advergames promote products or brands, while anti-advergames challenge advertising and consumer culture. Both rely on entertainment to keep the players interested. Advergames target specific audiences aiming at potential consumers. Both types also encourage players to think about the influence of advertising.