EDPX 3120 Making Critical Games
Rafael Fajardo, Associate Professor
University of Denver
Winter Quarter 2014
Fridays from 12:00–6:00 pm
The Lab, The Cloud, and The Hypercube of C-cubed Studios
in the Shwayder Art Building
SAB 226

Syllabus

Description

EDPX 3120 Making Critical Games (4 qtr. hrs)

This course is a time intensive practicum offered once a year on Fridays, and may be available in Summer terms. Students will be challenged to create games (board, physical, video-, and hybrid games) that respond to social conditions in a critical manner while still maintaining an essential ludic quality. Public Good and Civic Engagement projects are welcomed. The course may be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor and when projects vary. Prerequisite: EPDX 3110 and either EDPX 3100 or COMP 1671, or permission of the instructor.  Lab fee.

which meets with

EDPX 4120 Making Critical Games (4 qtr. hrs)

This course is a time intensive practicum offered once a year on Fridays, and may be available in Summer terms. Students will be challenged to create games (board, physical, video-, and hybrid games) that respond to social conditions in a critical manner while still maintaining an essential ludic quality. Public Good and Civic Engagement projects are welcomed. The course may be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor and when projects vary. Prerequisite: EPDX 4110 and EDPX 4100 or permission of the instructor.  Lab fee.

Objectives

This course is intended to expose students to — and to give students experience in the creation of — critical games. Students will be exposed to a set of precedents that may serve as models for their own practice. Students will be challenged to make between one and three games that exhibit excellence in their depth of critique, their visual presentation, their acoustic dimension, and their technical stability.

Organization, Methods, Strategies

This course is organized as an intensive practicum that meets once per week for six hours, with a break in the middle. The model of practice will be that of a production studio, where students will be expected to be present and productive during in-class contact times, and to pursue the completion of milestones outside of class meeting times. Course effort is expected to balance in-class time commitment with an equivalent out-of-class time commitment. Students whose effort, behavior, and outcomes do not reflect this expectation will fail.

This will not be a class in which new software skills are introduced by the professor. Nor will any technical assistance be available from the professor. The ability to program interactive  applications (mouse and keyboard input) in Processing, Java, MaxMSP, Actionscript, or some other  language, is assumed. It is assumed that students will make use of technical competencies they have already learned; or, they will undertake new competencies — as needed — on their own and at their own risk.

Outcomes

Participants will be expected to create one or more games; either as the result of solo work, or as the result of collaborative effort with other students enrolled in the course, at a very high level of polish.

Assessment

We will seek excellence in the dimensions of Performative Critique Through Gameplay, of Visual Artwork and Presentation, of Technical Competence Through Stability of Artifact. We will seek both internal peer review, and invite external assessments. Dimensions include:

Depth of Critique:

subtlety vs blatancy, clarity vs ambiguity, multi-layered or multi-valent or multi-dimensional (complex? compound?) vs singularity of focus. We are exploring meaning in gestures, or their conspicuous absence.

Visual Presentation:

cosmetically or superficially beautiful, visual strategy reflects and harmonizes with one of the critical components, visual decisions reinforce and amplify rhetorical and critical dimension(s)

Acoustic Dimension:

diegetic vs non diegetic sound.

Technical Stability: for videogames,

technical stability will mean that the game runs without errors for a random sampling of players at any given time, as a baseline. Excellence will be signalled by a videogame running without errors for a wide variety of players purposefully stress-testing the systems.

Technical Stability: for tabletop or board games,

technical stability will mean that a random sampling of novice players can be observed to read the rules and successfully complete a play through without experiencing confusion, and without aid of the designer or her docents or agents, as a baseline.

Polish:

polish and refinement are outcomes of time investments. Polish is evident in small details as well as the interrelationship between details and macro-scale structures. Polish in this case is not limited to surface gloss, it is also attention to the parts and to the whole, it is attention to the seen and to the unseen elements that comprise to form the work. Polish may also involve the need for material investments by the students.

Readings

an up to date bibliography is maintained at:

https://www.zotero.org/rafaelfajardo/items/collectionKey/2HVWC6XJ

Undergraduate students are required to purchase and make use of:

●    Bogost. How to do things with videogames. Minnesota. 081667647X

●    Flanagan. Grow-A-Game app or  card deck. http://valuesatplay.org/ http://www.tiltfactor.org/growagame
●    Fajardo. Pixels Politics and Play, (PDF).

Graduate students are required to read all of the above, and one or more of the following:

●    anthropy, anna. The Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. Seven Stories Press, Paperback, 9781609803728, 208pp. 2012
●    Bogost. Persuasive Games. MIT Press
●    Flanagan. Critical Play. MIT Press
●    McGonigal. Reality is Broken.
●    Frasca. Videogames of the Oppressed. Georgia Tech MA Thesis. (online)
●    Frasca. Play the Message: Play, Games and Videogame Rhetoric. IT University PhD Dissertation.
●    Swain, Chris. "The Mechanic Is The Message".

Games

an up to date ludography with links to games is maintained at:
https://www.zotero.org/rafaelfajardo/items/collectionKey/RNKNEJHX

anthropy, anna.
Barr, Pippin. Art Game.
Bogost, Ian. Fat World.
Bogost, Ian. Disaffected.
Yang, Robert. Queer Games.
Gasperini, Jim. Hidden Agenda.
Intellivision. Utopia.
Fajardo, et al. Crosser.
Fajardo, et al. La Migra.
Fajardo, et al. Seeds of Solitude.
Fajardo, et al. Fifa! Fo! Fum!
Fajardo, Leutenegger, Depper, et al. Squeezed.
Fishburn, Josh.
Flanagan, Mary. (match 3 on under employment)
Darfur is Dying
Frasca. September 12.
Frasca. Madrid.
Molleindustria. Oiligarchy.
McGonigal, Jane and Bogost, Ian. Cruel 2B Kind.
Monnens, Devin. Giant Tank.
Monnens, Devin. Fight With Clubs.
Monnens, Devin. Commandopede.
Ortega-Grimaldo. Crossing The Border.
Thatgamecompany. Journey.
FoldIt (critiques of gamification itself)
Romero, Brenda. Train.
Lumosity Trial
Brain Age
Games for Change a selection from GamesForChange.org
Wright, Will. SimAnt.
Wright, Will. SimEarth.
Crawford, Chris. Balance of Power.
Crawford, Chris. Balance of the Planet.
Free Rice
Real Life (sic?)
Rohrer, Jason. Passage.

Other works where critique is embedded in gesture
Osman Kahn. Net Worth (video)


Interactive Fictions

Resources

An up to date list is maintained at:
https://www.zotero.org/rafaelfajardo/items/collectionKey/88NUIUXJ

Schedule

We will meet 11 times, inclusive of the first day of class and the final exam period. Each meeting will be six hours in length with a scheduled break. Students are free to arrive before, and/or remain after each meeting. Individual work schedules and milestones will be variable. There should be individual, concrete, milestones set for each meeting.

1.    Models of practices. Settle in, brainstorm, get to work. Design exercises with Values at Play Grow-A-Game card decks. Paper games as design exercises.
2.    Have read first half of Bogost
3.    Have read second half of Bogost
4.    in-progress check-in
5.    Mid term check-in, what do you have to show? Is it playable? Has it been playtested? Can you turn your attention to polish?
6.    in-progress check-in
7.    in-progress check-in
8.    in-progress check-in
9.    in-progress check-in
10.     in-progress check-in
11.     Playtest Festival Show and Tell Arcade

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(NB: This is the second time this course is offered. The first time was 2014 03.)