Mad Alfie

It is fair to say in nowadays almost every video game has stories more or less, games like Tetris has become less popular over the years.

From the author’s point of view, ludology doesn’t reject narratives. Quite the contrary, games have their similarities with narratives. Any debates about the conflicts between these two concepts have been fueled on misunderstanding and vague definitions.

In my opinion, ludology cannot be separated from study of traditional medium in order to develop. Narratives are essential to many medium forms, such as film and literature. Thus, narratives are important parts of games. Narratives can intrigue players and trigger all kinds of emotions. In addition to narrative, there is also game mechanic and interactivity in games.        

Games like Pokemon Go will play a more important role in the future, there will also be more and more VR games or games I cannot even imagine about. When these non-traditional video games appear, will they bring any hazard. I think the ethics behind games are blind spots in nowadays study. The ethics that I am talking about include many things, such as endangering gamers both physically and mentally, jeopardizing gamers’ information security. Games should not cause such things even intentionally.

1. 

I have played “Darfur is dying”. In my opinion, this game is very effective in conveying a compelling message by the means of engaging gameplay.

When you open this website, the first thing you will learn about this game is that it is based on real world issues. This increases the intensity of gameplay almost immediately.  

For most games, you can’t choose a child with an specific age in a live or die situation. This game is mainly about foraging for water to stay alive. Players need to hide from military Jeeps. When you control a child character running on desert with a bucket in his/her hands, there is a certain amount of cruelty in it. But when you have been found by the militia, that is the saddest part.

Firstly, this game will tell you the blunt truth about what will happen to your character, the little girl.

Secondly, when you enter the character choosing screen again, you will find that the little girl you chose for the first time is not there any more.

In conclusion, all these well-designed details in this games make players want to play this game more and better, to help these men, women and children. When the players play more and more of this game, they will feel all the emotions of sympathy, sadness and anger. It sends out a pretty strong and compelling message to whoever played this game about a serious real world issue.

2. 

Serious games are certainly fundamental elements of education and social change, although they don’t necessarily have to be. 

In P.E. class, teachers will teach students how to play the game of basketball. Students start to like playing the game, meanwhile they not only excercise but also learned about  teamwork and etc from the game. 

But if we see the aim of playing basketball as exercising or learning about teamwork, basketball becomes boring. It is the pure joy when we score, assist, rebound, steal and block, keep us playing the game.

Playing with the magic circle or blurring it can be progressive and dangerous at the same time. On one side, if game designers do it well, it will influence people to help solving the real world issue. On the other, it can be used for some criminal activities. For instance, we do those delivery missions all the time in games. Mr Rodriguez suggests that random life event can be a part of game. What if someone designs the game to use players for drug transportation?

Serious games have the power to influence everyone’s life, but as any progressive thing, it’s a double-edged sword.

3.

After watching Jane McGonigal's TED speech, I think we may “save the world” by playing games online in the future, but there are certainly some issues.

Firstly, Ms McGonigal described the online game world as a utopia, I personally disagree. There is cyberbullying, abusing and cheating happening every single day. People swears at you when you failed in a cooperating mission. People cheats(especially in online FPS games) by using all kinds of tools. These things will not make you feel the joy that you suppose to have.

Secondly, as Ms McGonigal said in her speech, gamers who may be very good at online games don’t necessarily believe in themselves on real world problem solving. There is this magic circle, its line maybe blurred but it’s still there.

Take any of these games and do a quick mockup reinterpreting it in a digital environment, while adding one or more properties, unique to the digital realm. Avoid plain and uninsightful literal translations. A couple descriptive paragraphs or diagrams should suffice. 

Let’s reinterpreting Liar Dice in a digital environment. 

Liar Dice is a classic drinking game about bluffing. We can develop an app for smartphone. Instead of casting real dice, we will be using virtual dice on our own phones, thus there will be no cheating.  

Understand the basic notion of ‘unit operations’. Identify the basic unit operations in 2 of your favourite games (one digital and one nondigital) 

 In a digital game like NBA 2K16, basic unit operations can be ballers playing basketball by taking the action of running, shooting, stealing or blocking. NBA 2K16 is a unit-operational videogame about the theme of playing basketball. If the players, such as I, are basketball fans, then they will be naturally immersed into the digital basketball games. When I play this game, there are five ballers for me to control in a single game, I don’t know eventually if I can win or not. Those different actions which I command different ballers to take are all focused on playing basketball.