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CTIN 482: Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments
Fall 2008 Tuesdays 7:00-9:00PM
Instructor: Steve Anderson
sanderson@cinema.usc.edu
213-743-1933
Teaching Assistant: Bjorn Littlefield-Palmer
Contents |
Prospectus
This course proceeds from the belief that it is in the realm of online multiplayer games that some of the most powerful and important work in game design is currently taking place. The potential social impact of online multiplayer games is vast. And while there are many genres of multiplayer games, this class focuses on games that pursue an overtly educational or activist social agenda. The course is structured around a design challenge that is at once broad and specific: Design an innovative learning space and a set of game-based learning resources for the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Working as a design, production and development team, class members will collaborate on all aspects of conceiving, implementing and evaluating a virtual learning environment based in the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life. Any platform that we might select for this design challenge would offer both strengths and drawbacks. And while it brings significant limitations, Second Life offers key affordances that are available in few other MUVEs. In addition, it has emerged as by far the dominant online environment for educational applications; developing our virtual campus in Second Life will provide us with instant access to a robust network of educators, designers and real-world users. For the duration of the semester, this class will have full access to a newly established 64-acre parcel of land in Second Life, which we are free to design and build from the pixel up. This tabula rasa starting point for the class offers us the opportunity to reimagine all aspects of the learning environment we want to create.
To start with, we may ask ourselves: why do so many Second Life spaces look the same? Are palm trees, fountains and sandy beaches – or replicas of physical buildings – really the most provocative way to reimagine the world we inhabit in data space? When designing virtual worlds, we are inevitably working with systems of signification, in which every choice has meaning and significance. How can we imagine a space that will best support the ideological commitments of our virtual environment? Which design decisions support or dissuade the kind of social or communal interaction we are aiming to achieve? Working in teams, we will move through iterative stages of discovery, design, development and evaluation, modifying our strategies and goals at each stage in response to feedback from players and users. By the end of the semester, this virtual campus should be ready for real world implementation by a distributed network of students around the globe.
Unit I: Discovery
Week 1: Introduction
Present design challenge
Introduction to Second Life and IML2
Read: Linden Labs Policies, Guidelines and Standards
Link from class discussion on Wii developing surgical skills
Steve Johnson on Colbert Report
Week 2: Games and education
Read: Anderson & Balsamo, “A Pedagogy for Original Synners”
Account setup, Avatar creation, Orientation Island
On the web:
Bjorn’s design blog: http://imlslislanddesign.blogspot.com
Design Share - awards for innovative learning spaces
Funderstanding - definition of Constructivism in learning
More on constructivist theories of learning
Week 3: Learning theory
Read: Gee, “Pleasure, Learning, Video Games and Life”
Read: Brown and Thomas, “The Play of Imagination”
Explore in Second Life:
Ivory Tower of Prims
EDTech Island
Unit II: Design and Prototyping
Week 4: Architectures of the Metaverse
Read: Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”
On the web:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~dharry/infospaces/
http://interactivearchitectures.blogspot.com
A Vuvox document of the last two weeks' reflections and building experiments
Week 4 exercise:
Working in teams, collectively create a simple learning object. You may each take one of the boxes Bjorn has created as a model, but please start from scratch when making our own object. The object may be nothing more elaborate than an information delivery system describing how to create and modify an object in Second Life or as elaborate as a fully animated, responsive, scripted, sound-designed object that may serve as a prototype for your pitch-object in next week's class. At the end of the class, someone in your group should take a snapshot of your object and add it to the course wiki, along with a simple explanation.
The goals of this exercise are twofold:
1. Group dynamics: in anticipation of next week's project pitches, your group should begin functioning as a team, figuring out skills, communication styles and basic workflow patterns. How will you decide what shape your object will be and what skill to teach? Will everyone work on the object at the same time or will different people work on different pieces that are combined at the end? Will everyone acquire all skills at the same level together or will individuals specialize and then teach each other?
2. Basic skills acquisition and troubleshooting: by the end of this exercise all members of your group should know how to do the following:
-create a basic object and modify its shape
-set permissions for the object to be edited by others
-alter the texture, color, size, position, opacity (etc.) of your object
-upload and add a new texture to the object
-attach a note card to the object
-attach a URL to the object
-attach a sound to the object (experiment with different triggers for sound files)
-attach an animation script to the object
-attach a particle effect to the object
Learning objects are due in class on Week 5! Please come prepared to show your learning object and add it to the class gallery.
Week 5: Information spaces
Read: Armitage, “Playing Together: What Games Can Learn From Social Software”
Explore in Second Life:
MIT Sociable Media Infospaces
The Port
The Particle Laboratory
Data Visualisation
Week 5: Project workshopping
During this week's class we will focus on workshopping the project ideas with your groups.
Unit III: Development
Weeks 6-11: Virtual campus building, playtesting, iterating
Censorship
Melissa Claire Erik David
Music
John, Maria, Jon, Tim, BenX,
Technique
Jeff, Warren, BenR, Edouard, Akshai
Week 6: Project pitches
Pitch format:
Your group will have 15 minutes to present your project idea to the class as convincingly as possible. Some questions to consider:
Who are your primary and secondary target users?
What are your top two learning objectives (i.e., what do you want people to take away from the space)?
Which of the learning theories we have discussed in class (e.g., conceptual blending, projective stance, etc.) will you deploy and why?
Describe the intended social dimensions of your project space. What kinds of interactions will people/avatars have there? Should it be an individual or group experience?
How will your space incorporate gaming conventions or elements of play? Will it be fun?
What are some inspirations or points of reference that you are responding to (emulating, refuting, modifying, borrowing from, aspiring to, etc.)? These do not need to be from within Second Life.
How will you test and/or evaluate your space?
Unit IV: Implementation and Evaluation
Week 12-15: Virtual campus playtesting, refining, documenting
Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared and to participate actively in class discussions and project creation. As a design-oriented class, readings have been kept to a minimum, so it is especially important to engage thoughtfully with the contents of each reading both in class and on the wiki. During the discovery stage of the project, each student will be responsible for researching and defining some key aspect of the design specifications, such as user profiling, learning objectives, evaluation rubrics, etc. During the design and development phases of the class, students will work collaboratively according to a division of labor that is decided upon in consultation with the instructors. You will be graded on your contributions to the class project through a peer-review process that includes input from other students in your design/working group. Each student is responsible for making 5 substantive wiki posts over the course of the semester. These may take the form of a design journal or reflections on readings, Second Life explorations, or class discussions. In addition, each student is responsible for creating a final documentation of some aspect of the group project using video, audio and or still images.
Grading
Attendance and Participation 10%
Project preparation 15%
Project contribution 25%
Wiki reflections 30%
Final documentation 20%
Syllabus formalities
Links
This is a great video about the lead UI designer for Office 2007 talking about what it's been like working for the last 4 years and having to redesign the UI for a program that has more than 500 (I believe) functions. The video is downloadable in a standard or in an iPhone/iPod format as well. -- Edouard
Wiki help
Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.
