Wednesday, 28 February 2007

Week 1 - The Fundamentals of Games and its relationship to Learning

Write ho, well this lesson Jason asked us to draw upon our experience and logic and discuss what a game is... Where did gaming originate from etc. We talked about how young creatures have a natural instinct to play games and when we are younger we are always playing and interacting - how everything we do is in effect a game of some sort. Also on the flipside, Jason asked us to think of a game where learning was not involved, or where we did not partake in some sort of improvement. There is no such game.

I found it an interesting exercise to think of games in this way... perceiving life as a game, to compete; to fulfill tasks and reach goals; to imitate and replicate; to teach; to learn.

Jason took us to the park to play Bull Rush... I think this might have been to get us away from the computer and confinement of the classroom and into the outside world.
I learnt about how some people will rely on brute speed and endurance to outrun the opponent/s, whereas others will use tactics such as dodging and sidestepping, fake turns, shepherding by hiding behind another person [or using them as a shield/barrier], and other ways of outsmarting the opposition.

After that four of us [including myself] who considered ourselves writers / storytellers / poets were told to get up in front of the class, and tell an impromptu story.
When the first person ran out of thoughts for the story, they tagged the next person, and they continued the story, drawing from their own experiences and knowledge in order to colour the storyline. The same would happen when that person faltered and so on until we were askjed to wrap it up. Conclude if you like.

We all walked back to class and then brainstormed how to make the story more suited for a game storyline, more specifically, for a point and shoot game.
After throwing some crazy ideas around [many of which were sick, perverted, and potentially controversial] and assigning various roles to individuals, discussing character development and animation, the look and feel of the game [in this case anime] - we dropped it and played hopscotch: The classic primary school game.

So here are the rules of hopscotch:

Hopscotch is an outdoor game that is best played with a group of people.

1. Each player must find a suitable small rock or pebble - this will be tossed so take this into account.

2. Draw a grid using chalk onto a flat ground surface [like concrete, ashphalt etc].
It shall be drawn like so... 5 squares long with no gaps. The 3rd square shall have a square on either side, also with no gaps. The same with the last [5th] square.

3. You must throw the stone on the first square. Hop OVER the square the stone is in.
When you come to a junction (a square either side) then hop into the middle one, then jump with each foot in one of the outer squares, then hopping into the single square and repeat the process til you come to the other end.

4. Once all the players have completed this, they must throw it into the 2nd square. and repeat rule #3, bearing in mind you must hop over all the the preoccupied squares [squares that you previously threw the stone into].


You are disqualified if these things occur:

- The stone lands outside the grid of squares

- Your foot lands on a chalk line

- You jump in the wrong place / sequence, or in the stone occupied square.

1 comment:

ValHallen said...

Nice guesses Dude, but we played bullrush to learn about tactics and strategy, which sounds like it worked for you anyways =P

Try and get a little more self-reflection in here if you're comfortable doing it, how you felt, how you felt about others, the class, me, dodgey topics of game design, whatever. =D

Good stuff
Jason