ENG101, section 7. Spring 2020. Emory University.
Let’s stick with TaskMaster for our Side Quest 9/second #hometasking task, even though our due date is a little later:
Feel free to check out some of the examples on Twitter: #hometasking 2
Also, I’ll have a poll posted where you can vote on the most spectacular examples of throwing a paper into a bin before this task is due. Make sure you vote over the weekend!
Edited to add: Don’t just drop a link to the video. Embed it!
Tomorrow we’ll discuss Gris when we meet via Zoom (same link we used on Tuesday should remain consistent the rest of the semester). You should expect it to take a little more than three hours to complete the game. If you don’t finish it completely before class tomorrow that’s okay, but please make sure you’ve played for a couple hours so you have a pretty good sense of how the game functions.
The game itself has a pretty simple set of mechanics. It’s classified as a “platform game,” so it derives ultimately from such games as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and Sonic the Hedgehog. However, Gris takes the basic mechanical structure of the platformer and turns it into a comment on not only surviving but healing. The protagonist is a heartbroken woman who has literally lost her voice and wanders through a desolate world. As such there is no dialog. As you move through the game, you more or less explicitly move through the stages of grief and slowly bring more and more color into the world around you.
Here are some basic question that I’d like you to think a bit about before we meet:
Note that you should be thinking about your side quest 8/#hometasking no. 1 where you will throw a paper into a bin … spectacularly. You should post those videos to your sites by Friday and then we’ll vote on a class winner over the weekend. Please comment on each others’ posts and as you do think about not just what this activity means as your own solo work but what it means to be part of a community engaging in this ridiculous activity together, while also apart. I’m going to ask you to write about that question some time soon.
Now that we’re all social distancing and trapped in our homes, we’ve decided that as a community we’re going to follow along with the Taskmaster #hometasking tasks as side quests.
Your task for this sidequest is to throw a piece of paper into a bin. Most spectacular throw wins.
Post a video or gif to your website, no longer than 1 minute. Write a brief paragraph about why your throw is spectacular. Please make a special point to comment on your peers’ throws as well. On Saturday, I’ll publish a poll to vote on which was the most spectacular throw.
In this episode, we will be analyzing Smite, and its portrayal of mythological deities as playable characters within the game. How dedicated has the game been thus far in accurately representing cultural gods and goddesses? Have they held true to the original lore and depiction in ancient artwork? Does this contribute to the gaming experience? Listen to today’s podcast to hear our thoughts!
Producer: Austin Carter
Assistant Producer: Rachel Vellanikaran
Line Producer: Zamirah Martin
Special thanks to Dr. Katrina Dickson
“Bastet,“ Egyptian Myths.
“Bastet,” Encyclopedia Britannica.
“Skylla,” Theoi.
“Kali,” Ancient History Encyclopedia.
“Hindus Upset At Online Video Game Using Kali And Other Gods As Combat Tools,” Eurasia Review.
“Village Consort” by Kevin MacLeod
“Plain Loafer” by Kevin MacLeod
SMITE – Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer | Heimdallr, The Vigilant
In this episode we’ll take you on a trip down memory lane to a game you probably played when you were younger: minecraft. We take a qualitative analysis of how the game has provided us with nostalgic memories and impacted our lives for the better. We explore different ways that the game has affected us past and present, and how minecraft can spark collaboration and creativity.
Producer: Winslow Wanglee
Assistant Producer: Michael Mariam
Line Producer: Greg Lawrence
Sources:
Banks, Jaime, and Nicholas David Bowman. “Emotion, Anthropomorphism, Realism, Control: Validation of a Merged Metric for Player–Avatar Interaction (PAX).” Computers in Human Behavior, Pergamon, 24 Aug. 2015.
Bowman, Nicholas, and Tim Wulf. “Finding Nostalgia in the Pixelated Video Games of Decades Past.” The Conversation, 27 Aug. 2019.
Bailey, Dustin. “Minecraft Player Count Reaches 480 Million.” PCGamesN, 11 Nov. 2019.
Music sources all by Chad Crouch:
This episode analyses the game Risk, created by Albert Lamouise in 1957. We look at the game’s history, its connections to the Cold war, and key strategies in winning the game. We examine how Risk sheds light about Cold War-era thinking and pause at key moments in the game to zoom in on important plays. Come join us as we discover the crucial combination of skill and luck and smart strategic maneuvers players can master the game and ultimately take over the world. See you on the map!
Producer: Will Knight
Assistant Producers: Sadie Schwartz and Giovanni Ponzio
Line Producer: Giovanni Ponzio
Sources:
“Risk (Game).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Jan. 2020, .
“The History of the Board Game Risk.” UltraBoardGames.
Mason, Paul. “Why the World Is like a Real-Life Game of Global Domination.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Dec. 2014.
Rogers, Scott. “What I’ve Learned Playing Risk.” Medium, 3 Jan. 2020.
Since I'm making all of you do some 3d printing, I decided to do some too. I brought a group of .stl files to the TechLab on Tuesday afternoon, then picked up my completed prints on Thursday. The image at the top of this post shows my Unnamed Goose along with a one-eyed raven (the wizard in my D&D campaign has a raven familiar). Die included in photo for scale.
I also printed a giant elk and a couple of other miniatures for my D&D game. Note that these are straight off the printer, so there are still supports attached. The TechLab can help you clean up the supports or provide cutters to do so yourself. I'll bring mine home and do that this weekend, then paint them hopefully sometime soon.
| 7 | 2/25 | Play either Mansions of Madness or Betrayal at the House on the Hill | |
| 2/27 | Watch the first 15 minutes or so of the walkthrough of the Untitled Goose Game.
Ian Bogost “Don’t Play the Goose Game: Untitled Goose Game is fun. The problem is, all games are also work,” The Atlantic. Optional additional reading: Ian Bogost “Video Games Are Better Without Characters: The real legacy of SimCity is its attempt—and failure—to make complex systems the protagonists instead of people,” The Atlantic |
||
| 3/1 | Side Quest 7: 3d print a game piece
Podcast episodes 5 & 6 |
We’ll discuss Mansions of Madness and Betrayal at House on the Hill in class today (Tuesday). We’ll also go over logistics for playing Fiasco and I’ll distribute dice and other materials you’ll need.
On Thursday we’ll discuss Untitled Goose Game, and in particular Ian Bogost’s assertion that “playing a game is a chore. That’s the big problem with video games: To enjoy them, you have to play them. And playing them requires exerting the effort to operate them. Games are machines, and broken ones at that. The player’s job is to make them work again.” Untitled Goose Game became such an unexpected hit last year, Bogost argues, because it offers “a counterintuitive way out of the quandary of game-play’s fundamental aggravation: Someone has to play the game, but that someone needn’t be you. It might even be more fun not to play the game than to play it. Untitled Goose Game is a game about work’s ubiquity in the guise of a game about leisure’s frivolity. And like all labor, the best way to get it done is to farm it out to others. Let the memers honk their geese so you don’t have to.”
Your next side quest will require that you visit the TechLab and 3d print some sort of game piece.
Hi there! Have you been seeing a beautiful anime girl with long, coral brown hair and emerald green eyes? Yes, I’m talking about one of the main characters in the visual novel game Doki Doki Literature Club! Big spoilers ahead. Stop reading if you haven’t played the game. In this episode we will be analyzing the role of the fourth wall in this specific game. We’re not Monika, but nor are we so different from her. We are real to you only when you listen to us.
Producer: Wenyi Shao
Assistant Producer: Kimberly Kurniawan
Line Producer: Cherie Lou
Special thanks to Abhijay Mudigonda
Bell, Larryn. How to get the good ending in Doki Doki Literature Club. January 3, 2018.
D’Argenio, Angelo. Top 10 games that break the 4th wall. October 16, 2018.
Jackson, Gita. Doki Doki Literature Club’s Horror Was Born From A Love-Hate Relationship With Anime. October 20, 2017.
Lee, Otter. We Interviewed DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB’S Twisted Creator, Dan Salvato. January 3, 2018.
Sanchez, Miranda. Doki Doki Literature Club Creator Discusses His Next Projects. January 13, 2020.
Hello, my name is Dan Salvato. I created Doki Doki Literature Club. Accessed February 20, 2020.
Doki Doki Literature Club!. Accessed February 20, 2020.
Background music from: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Original Soundtrack) on Spotify.
