design courses, syllabi, schedules, resources and policies
My 22$ Amazon Prime Day label maker is likely the most valuable thing I own. I have touched so many lives and printed so many hilarious low-resolution pictures with it.
For this experiment, I broke apart a video of NFL All-Pro Justin Jefferson’s trademark celebration the “Griddy” into individual frames, printed those out and riddled them about Wheatley.
Man I sure hope these play!
My original idea for these loops was basically to have busy crowd shots that looped, and then draw focus on one member of that crowd by highlighting them in a color.
Crowd.
Emphasis on one using a color.
I quite like Adobe Aero, all things considered.
I don’t know how they intended the feature of being able to use the pre-set 3D forms as masks to be implemented, but I really like using it as a way to constrain an environment to what appears to the viewer as a 2D plane.
This idea of extending one image into faux walls, floors and ceilings was something I first attempted in a middle school architecture competition. I won.
Youtube VR doesn’t like new ideas. Kuula doesn’t either, but it was more workable.
Host Copy
https://kuula.co/post/5KsX1/collection/7XbZW
Viewer Copy
https://kuula.co/post/5K2sm/collection/7XbCh
I want this to be more of a tool than a game. Every football team interested in winning charts out their players for a given week. This would allow a group to see those plays as they would on the field, as opposed to X’s and O’s on paper.
I’m going to make an animated version in Keynote to serve as my Immersive Narrative, housed in the dome.
The VR plugin in Premiere is scuffed.
After some trial and error, I am now able to update a 2D Photoshop document with an offensive and defensive formation I want to see, and those updates will show up in a third dimension in Premiere.
For this class, I want to try and combine that with Youtube’s annotation feature to make a simulated offensive drive.
Dumb Ways to Die
I never played this game as a kid because – as the name suggests – it looked dumb. I understand its objective and how it appeals to the people who would be playing mobile games and using public transportation. But it’s just so babyish.
Pepsi Man
I’d love to know who the first of the “brand superhero”s was, and why so many brands after thought the morph-suit-with-company-logo on the chest persona was so useful. It was neat to learn that the Subway Surfers format of gameplay is thirty years old.
Sneak King
I still can’t believe that this game made it anywhere past a pitch meeting. The “Sneak King”/”sneaking” pun hardly seems funny enough to develop an entire game for. This had to have been one of those tax writeoff games that they knew would perform poorly.
Chex Quest
Like I’ve said 1000 times before, I don’t play video games. But I know Doom, and I think Doom is awesome. But replacing Doomguy with Chexguy… that’s genius.
Getting Over It
As someone with above-average internet literacy, I know all about this game. Never touched it, never met someone who has, but I could tell you every obstacle in it. I think the little cavern where you have to hook on to the light is the coolest one. You kind of lose me up in the troposphere where you go backwards on all the shipping containers.
Painstation
We played this all the time at my buddy’s house in middle school.
Cow Clicker
I actually did have Cookie Clicker for like a day. I think all games are pointless – imagine how I feel about these ones. I will say, though, some of the cow avatars are insanely creative.
The Graveyard
I would never make it to the mausoleum in this game.
Oregon Trail
I love the Oregon Trail. If I’m on a desert island and you allotted me one video game, it would be the Oregon Trail. It’s so funny and can vary so much.
Townscaper
Is this really a game, or is this more of a drawing tool? I thought this game would be more like one of those ones where you have to make a 2D bridge within a budget constraint. Like with the wood and metal and ropes. That was not the case.
That’s supposed to be a gif. I don’t know if it plays on here. I hope it does.
I think there’s too many games in the world. I think there’s too many games that are commentaries on that fact.
Even so, I’m in a class where I have to make games. And I exist to please.
Sisyphus game is a game akin to cookie clicker, as there is no end in sight. But, boy, do you want to keep clicking. Every tap inches Sisyphus forward, but every so often fate sends him backward.
You get drachmas for every significant distance you travel, and those can get you new characters and balls to push.
This was when I started the game.
Originally I wanted the markers to look like little highlighted bubbles, and for a few people to be able to play markers per round.
That was not nearly enough symbols to convey anything fun.
I moved up to 7×7. I think the strongest additions were the body parts.
I did want to see if terms rather than symbols could help, but in actually playing the game, the ambiguity of the symbols allowed them to – interestingly enough – symbolize more than just one word.
I still wanted more symbols.
This is the final board. At least digitally. I thought the mixed up version would look a lot cooler, but having the semi-related symbols by each other did help out. At least in terms of finding the right symbol for what you wanted to express.
The final markers work as “are”s and “aren’t”s. Can you guess which is which? You get to place 6 for any one term.
I think we brought up the connection between sodas and advergames in class. I don’t personally agree, but the consensus is that all sodas taste the same, and that it’s the experience that comes along with the drink that differentiates them. Video games give the unique opportunity to create a totally unique and fantastic experience that exists outside of our real life, so in a world where a semi-made-up “experience” sells your product, a made-up video game experience seems like a no-brainer. That’s my takeaway from this.
I don’t think there was anything in this reading that wasn’t obvious. You can have all these ideas of what a game should look like and play like and be received like, but you really won’t know any of that until you make the game and hand it off to someone who didn’t make the game. Even if you’re not consciously influencing what’s happening in your gameplay – you’re still influencing it to fit your idea of your game. Passing it off to other people allows them to not only play your game in ways you didn’t account for. Especially when you play the game for the sake of testing it, people who know to look for errors or ways to expand the game can offer insight and critiques that you couldn’t think of yourself.
I think I could be an awesome streamer, and playing this game only supported that belief. I speak a language that everyone speaks. As mayor of that island town, putting beer before box and fish was a decision that needed to be made. But nobody else had the gumption to sign those papers.
But seriously, as someone who thinks there’s more games out there than our species was ever designed to have, this game didn’t do anything to make me think otherwise.
Dr. Jones brought up Full Spectrum Warrior in one of his classes last year. I’m a guy that tries to find everything funny. It makes everything easier. Hard to find something funny about any of those military training games.
I’ve never been one for shooting or gore in games or movies. It kind of makes my stomach sink. And it’s one thing when it’s sweaty teenagers digitally shooting their friends from up the street. It’s another entirely when games using basically the same engine are used to train our nation’s military.
I know there’s more to it than that, and that they’re an effective teaching tool and save on resources and time. But knowing the people I know who play those kind of games and have been through that kind of training – killing is fun for them. That doesn’t make them all ax murderers and threats to society as a whole, but the value they assign to a human life that isn’t their own does unnerve me.
Factorio looks terrifying. It looks like one of those Minecraft modpacks where they add oil and nuclear reactors. My weirder sister loved those. So, naturally, I did not love those. I’m pretty sure I have seen seventeen games that look exactly like Outer Wilds. I remember a bunch of people played the one a few years ago. You work in a fire tower and your brother dies. Or something like that. Gris looks like the scene in Blade Runner 2049.