(Due: Nov 20 Status: Not Completed)
1.8 New and Alternative Genres
1. Computer and video games are a young medium in a media continuing to undergo rapid technological change. Atari’s home Pong System was released in 1975, and the Apple II home computer in 1977. About 35 years. Movies had been around for at least thirty years by the time of The Jazz Singer (the first widely successful sound film), and it would be about another decade before Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and The Wizard of Oz, two definitive early color movies.
2. Sound film was around before The Jazz Singer, and color film had been around for over twenty years by the time of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and The Wizard of Oz. In short, it often takes a while for people to take full advantage of new technology. So, even if computer technology comes grinding to a halt tomorrow, people will probably keep coming up with new things to do with it for centuries – at least.
3. Changes in how people use computers (and, to a much lesser degree, in the technology itself) has led to several “new” genres in the past few years. These include “Flash” Games, Webgames, and, very recently, a boom in Social-Network or “Facebook” Games. Many of the games in each of these genres could also be considered to be Casual Games.
4. There are also a number of “alternative” genres of games, driven by the intense interest of small communities, ethical rather than commercial goals, and/or a sense of pride in what computer games could be. These alternative genres include Interactive Fiction, Roguelikes, Art Games, Retrogames, and Games for Change.
5. Watch Jane McGonigal’s TED talk “Gaming Can Make a Better World:”
6. Consider:
a. Is McGonigal right about the potential of gaming to come up with real-world solutions?
b. Would you get involved in one of McGonigal’s games, or something similar to them?
c. Is this an answer (the answer?) to the questions posed by the short film about video game addiction that was part of Perry’s talk?
7. Games Extra: Read the “Games for Change” about page:
Then play Molleindustria’s darkly sardonic game “Oiligarchy:”
8. New perspectives on what games are and can be are continuing to emerge, and the dream of a game-world where the player can do “anything” and which is also rich in story seems simultaneously closer than ever and more impossible than before. One of the most important potentials of gameplay is “nonlinearity” – the ability to do different things in different ways, in a different order, and (hopefully) to produce a different outcome. In being more-or-less nonlinear, games are unlike film, TV, or novels, though they have something in common with “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type books.
9. Read Game Writing Ch. 4
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