I know that Valve games have been commonly known as the pinnacle for shooters with integrated narrative elements, but their replayablity emerges for me only online, and less in story-mode. One reason for this is a poor understanding of ramping up Valve games for more experienced players. While a game like Modern Warfare can be WAY too hard for a beginner, Valve games can be way too easy for seasoned players.

This leads me to Rainbow Six, which to me, is the most replayable and widely accessible shooter franchise. The system of leveling up is alone something that other shooters (and, frankly, other games in general) should adopt.

So, until I get news about what Ubisoft is going to don on its followers, I will probably just keep playing Zenonia 2 on my iphone… oh Diss!!!!!

As my own personal tenure at UCLA’s Cinema and Media Studies program comes to an end, my legacy organization LUDUS, is putting on a phenomenal event next Tuesday April 20th. Avant-Game, curated by Harrison Gish and Andrew Hall, will be the most amazing event that UCLA has ever hosted.

Read our review in the LA WEEKLY and from the UCLA Graduate Student Association website (GSA).

“Melnitz Movies, Los Angeles Filmforum, and the student gaming organization Ludus proudly present a program of video game based experimental shorts. Expanding the boundaries of machinima (in which “machine cinema” is made from the appropriation of video game content), each of these works makes use of a virtual gaming world such as Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, or Tomb Raider and re-contextualizes it, commenting on issues of gender or militarism, identity or representation. Alternately playful and contemplative, these pieces collectively illustrate the ever-growing diversity of possibilities created by this still young source of found footage.” -From the GSA site

My original thought was: great, more Epic (pun intended) cut scenes about characters I don’t care about, and half-built game mechanics screaming: FUCK-WE-GOTTA-SHIP-THIS-THING-BUT-WAIT-ITS-STILL-BUGGY-OH-WHATEVER-JUST-ADD-ANOTHER-CUTSCENE-THERE. Okay fine… im being snarky when I said I wouldn’t be. I think this might be a good opportunity to have a little chuckle at the fact that this “leak” is, again, such a gigantic deal. I mean, its not like penguins are dying over this leak, and really, the only people that get in trouble when something is “leaked” are usually the NDA signing employees. Okay fine, so this leak was just some kind of technical malfunction… but still.

Oh! ButWaitWhat?! Wasn’t it Gears that got me out of my online-scrabble and online poker bender, and launched me back on a console for the first time in over a decade!? And WHY was that you ask? CO-OP, collaboration, self-discovery, building community, and learning about others. Oh mi!

Sometimes I connect with a part of a story, and then I land face first in the uncanny-valley of emotions. Climbing out of the valley, I feel violated and am forced to ignore all future in-game expository attempts. As you progress through their heavy-handed narrative, the Gears people (and other mega game developers other than VALVE) like telling you who/how/when to care. Does this work for you? It never does for me. Due to the narrative limitations of cutscene-heavy shooters like Gears, my in-game story is identical to yours. Why do I hate this so much? I think it’s because it makes me feel like less of an individual, less unique, less special. WEH!

So why am I even talking about this silly game that I claim to have nostalgia for but don’t even like playing? I guess its because my experience of playing the game cannot be separated from the physical embodiment and act of playing. Where was I?… Who was I with?…. How long did we play?…. Did it become a nightly routine until we beat the game?

I would argue that my nostalgia today came from my memories of playing co-op shooters with ex-boyfriends, or friends… at home, or at parties… through my projector, or at a conference booth with strangers. People like playing with other people… building a self reflective yet collaborative, (hi)story. But honestly, sometimes we don’t want to play with the other children. That’s when I pull out my iphone –(#nowplaying Zenonia 2, & Lilt Line).

The soon-to-be-released single player PSP game Where Is My Heart depends upon character-collaboration as part of its core mechanic. Other than creating a cool-looking and fun-to-play game, what are the Heart developers doing? The PSP, a naturally single player device, is a unique place to ask/answer a question about collaboration. If it was a three person party game, the game might looks the same to an onlooker; but the player experience would be immensely different. Essentially what the game is “saying” is that collaboration (in Where Is My Heart) is the only way to progress.

I guess that I’m just looking for more. Its not you, Gears of War 3, Its me. Oh, I mean, Its not me, its you. You are no longer exciting, innovative, engaging, or “immersive.” I feel like you don’t even know me anymore… or care about MY needs, Gears. What I’m trying to say, is that I think we need a clean break, and that, yes, we can be friends in the future… but probably not in the near future…

Moving on…

I am really excited to play Jason Rohrer’s newest game, Sleep Is Death (play the intro!), which basically combines two (out of three) of my favorite activates: interacting with or meeting people online, and playing games. With customizable rooms and behaviors, this game is rife with emergent gaming possibilities and potentials. WANT~!!!

The following image I took of Jason Rohrer at the Serious Games Summit Keynote at the GDC last month. Paolo Pedercini and Jason Rohrer’s talks dominated bitches, flowing from Baudrillard and Vertov (things I know!) to the nash eqilibrium (know!) and some super-uncomfortable mathy stuff (fail).

So thanks, indy game people, for challenging my brain and doing unique things. You all rule. Who said games cant have lofty, pedagogical, and/or politically charged goals?!

So WELCOME!  You are invited into my universe!

With nearly three decades of digital and analogue gaming experiences, mixed with a decade of online dating, I suggest that online dating might be the ultimate role-playing game (RPG), sharing common traits of fantasy, quests,identity creation, and rule subversion. In particular, this writer found that the dating site OkCupid.com to be particularly playful, brimming with remediated game elements and terminology. Essentially, the goal of my project is to examine similarities between games and online dating communities as well as possibilities and potentials for “emergent” forms of play.

Noting the recent popularity of “emergence” game scholar Jesper Juul defines it: “Emergent gameplay is usually taken to be situations where a game is played in a way the game designer did not predict.”1 If we are relating this to our examination of OkCupid, than we must imagine that the web developer is the game designer. While some features and terminology within the website overtly allude to the gamelike nature of online dating, the “game” element of dating encourages alternate uses of their product perhaps altering the original intention of the web developer a.k.a. game designer. Juul suggests that in a game with many connections between objects and rules players are more likely to discover unpredicted rule combinations. A game with many connections and many people or users would be considered more a game of emergence than a game of progression. When playing the dating game on the OkCupid site, matching with a potential partner is just one of the goals and one of the many “endgame” conditions.

(to read more DOWNLOAD PDF HERE: Emergent Gaming in the Internet Dating Site OkCupid )

Here are some (clickable!) UNITY tutorial links courtesy of Steve from our NOVEMBER 17th ucla game lab meeting:

unitytutorials.com

reddit.com

learnunity3d.com

3dnemo.com

learnmesilly.com

unifycommunity.com

THURSDAY, june 4 at 7:30
in James Bridges Theater

PLAY TIME (1967)

124 min
directed by jacques tati
writers: tati, Jacques Lagrange
cast: tati, Barbara Dennek
co-sponsored with Melnitz Movies
70mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive
2002 restored version

LUDUS and Melnitz Movies are proud to present Jacques Tati’s masterpiece PLAYTIME, screened in its original and stunning 70mm format. Tati’s comedy about confusion in the age of technology provides one of the greatest gamelike viewing experiences. With its super large frame packed with inventiveness, the film gives viewers a dense perceptual play and an array of audiovisual gags, encouraging us to participate in a playtime of moviegoing.

“A film from another planet.” –François Truffaut
“Perhaps the greatest film ever made.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
“A peculiar, mysterious, magical film.” -Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
“With PLAYTIME’s monumental decor and complex choreographed gags taking place simultaneously in a constantly mutating space, Tati explored the possibilities of 70mm as they had never been utilized before.” -Elliot Stein, VILLAGE VOICE

Programing & Film notes by Daniel Steinhart

We might, I think, understand tonight’s film as occupying a similar position as the franchise does as a whole. Degeneration can certainly be understood as a film, as it has an unchanging narrative structure and doesn’t allow for viewer interaction on a diegetic level, and it has bravura effects sequences that effectively contend with the violent spectacles on display in the Resident Evil movies. However, Degeneration’s computer-generated nature clearly distinguishes it from the live-action film trilogy, making it seem more like an overblown cut scene from one of the video games than a Hollywood-produced film text. Indeed, Degeneration, being computer generated, resurrects characters exactly as they appear in the video games, notable here in the appearance of Leon Kennedy, who is visually indistinguishable from his presence as interactive agent in Resident Evil 4. And though it certainly isn’t a video game, I contend that Degeneration encourages a form of playful recognition from fans of the game series, encouraging them to identify narrative elements not only from the game’s story, but also from the game’s play itself – for example, characters seem limited in their potential movements, the careful targeting of zombies’ heads is valorized, and the spaces in which the action sequences unfold are visualized in advance, much as different stages are frequently mapped prior to gun battles during video game play.

Degeneration, as such, raises some interesting questions for both the study of films and the study of video games, and the moments when the two mediums intertwine. What counts as adaptation, when franchises are multi-modal in design? What elements of play exist when we encounter a film text that draws its influences from other media, specifically video games? Does “survival horror” simply become “horror” when we remove the possibility for interaction? While I don’t propose that Resident Evil: Degeneration actually answers any of these questions, it at the very least gets the blood stirring in that general direction. Thank you for coming!

Makato Kamiya’s 2008 Resident Evil: Degeneration exists as an odd hybrid of video game and film. Entirely computer generated, it visually resembles a cut scene of epic proportions, yet it has a comprehensive narrative that develops the video game franchise’s characters, and an eerie presence that asks the viewer to non-interactively experience survival horror, qualities the preceding live-action film trilogy notably lack. A virus outbreak following an airplane disaster requires zombie-killer Leon Kennedy’s steady trigger finger and lighting quick reflexes, as the government’s collusion with the villainous Umbrella Corporation is revealed. Notably, Degeneration is itself a zombie, reanimating, reinvigorating and crossbreeding known stories, games, and media.

Film notes by Harrison Gish

programed by daniel