---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 10:24:27 -0400 (EDT)
To: ivanhoe@lists.village.virginia.edu
From: Geoffrey Rockwell <grockwel@mcmaster.ca>
Subject: Fwd:
Dear all,
Here is a course outline - reading list I came across on computer
games. It has a number of useful references and is a good check on
what we have gathered.
Yours,
Geoffrey R.
>
>STS 145/HPS 163.
>
>History of Computer Game Design:
>
>Technology, Culture, Business
>
>Source: Softline 2 (March 1983). Front cover.
>Instructor: Henry Lowood Office: M 9.30-11; W 2.30-4, Green Library 321C
>TA: Casey Alt
> Grader: Rene Patnode
>Lecture: T-Th 2.15-3.05 Room 380-380C
> Discussion section 02: W1.15-2.05, Meyer 142.
>
>Discussion Section 03: Th 11-11.50, 60-62N
>
>
>
>
>
>Schedule of Lectures
>
>Please be prepared before every class session by completing the
>reading assignments. Articles listed as being "available in
>Coursework" are in PDF format and found on our Coursework page under
>"Course Materials." Download the free acrobat reader here: .
>
>January 8. Introduction
>
>January 10. Game Research: What, Why, How?
>
>Geoffrey R. Loftus and Elizabeth F. Loftus, "Why Video Games Are
>Fun," pp. 10-42 in Mind at Play: The Psychology of Video Games (New
>York: Basic Books, 1983). Available in Coursework.
>
>Brian Sutton-Smith, "The Toy as Machine: Video Games," pp. 57-75 in
>his Toys as Culture (New York: Gardner Press, 1986). Available in
>Coursework.
>
>Henry Jenkins, "Art Form for the Digital Age," Technology Review
>(Sept.-Oct. 2000). Available here:
>http://www.techreview.com/articles/oct00/viewpoint.htm
>
>January 15. Origins: Spacewar! and Pong
>
>GUESTS: Steve "Slug" Russell and Al Alcorn. Steve was one of the
>original "MIT hackers" and played the lead role in programming and
>designing the original Spacewar! for the PDP-1. Al was the circuit
>designer for Pong and VP for R&D at Atari, in addition to working at
>Apple and Ampex.. For some information about his career, see
>http://bb.vg-network.com/arcadehistory/aainterview.html.
>
>Steward Brand, "SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the
>Computer Bums," Rolling Stone (7 Dec. 1972). Available here:
>http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html
>
>J. M. Graetz, "The Origin of Spacewar!," Creative Computing (1981).
>Available here:
>http://www.enteract.com/~enf/lore/spacewar/spacewar.html.
>
>January 17. Origins: Adventure, Interactive Fiction and RPGs
>
>GUEST: Prof. Eric Roberts, Charles Simonyi Professor in the School
>of Engineering, Department of Computer Science. Eric was gamemaster
>of the Mirkwood Tales, a long-running Dungeons and Dragons game that
>nurtured a community of players including Will Crowther, author of
>Adventure. Eric has since that time encouraged work on
>computer-based interactive fiction by students at Swarthmore and at
>Stanford.
>
>Graham Nelson, "A Short History of Interactive Fiction," from The
>Inform Designer's Manual, 4th ed. Available here:
>http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/short.html.
>
>Explore the Colossal Cave Adventure Page here:
>http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/. Read the brief "History of
>Adventure" here: http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html
>
>P. David Lebling, Mark S. Blank, and Timothy A. Anderson, "Zork: A
>Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game," IEEE Computer 12 (April
>1979): 51-59. Available here: http://mud.co.uk/richard/zork.html or
>here: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/ieee.html.
>
>January 22. The Business: Trends and Competition <lecture notes>
>
>David Sheff and Andy Eddy, Game Over: Press Start to Continue.
>GamePress, 1999. (Available in Bookstore.)
>
>Richard Dyer, "Masters of the Game," Boston Globe Magazine (May 6,
>1984). Available here:
>http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/globe84.html; and Johnny
>Wilson, "The Rise and Fall of Infocom," Computer Gaming World (Nov.
>1991). Available here:
>http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/rise.html.
>
>January 24. The Business: Game Production.
>
>GUEST: Dan Irish, Executive Producer at Relic Entertainment, Inc.,
>located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dan was most recently
>producer of Myst III: Exile for UbiSoft.
>
>Chris Crawford, "The Art of Computer Game Design." (1982). Available
>here:
>http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html or
>in PDF here: http://www.erasmatazz.com/free/AoCGD.pdf. (Also for
>next week's topics.)
>
>January 29. Criticism: Games as a Communication/Entertainment Medium
><lecture notes>
>
>Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment
>Revolution. Arcade, 2000. (Available in Bookstore.)
>
>January 31. Criticism: What Role Does it Play?
>
>GUEST PANEL: Kevin Toyama, writer, Next Generation; Rob Smith,
>Editor-in-Chief, PC Gamer.
>
>February 5. Military Gaming and Simulation
>
>James F. Dunnigan, "Genealogy of Computer Wargames Technology" and
>"Designing Computer Wargames" from The Complete Wargames Handbook
>(1993, rev. 1997) Available here:
>http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/6-3-gene.htm and
>http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/7-design.htm
>
>Timothy Lenoir, "All But War is Simulation: The
>Military-Entertainment Complex." Available here:
>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/TimLenoir/MilitaryEntertainmentComplex.htm.
>
>Mark Pesce, "The Trigger Principle," FEED Special Report (Feb. 3,
>2000). Available here:
>http://www.feedmag.com/essay/es288_master.html.
>
>February 7. Competitive Gaming and First-Person Shooters
>
>GUEST: Dennis "Thresh" Fong. co-founder and Chief Gamer, gamers.com.
>Dennis is widely acknowledged as the best tournament Quake player in
>the world and as the first prominent professional gamer..
>
>Marc Laidlaw, "The Egos at Id," Wired (Aug. 1996). Available here:
>http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/4.08/id.html.
>
>Geoffrey Keighley, "Blinded by Reality: The True Story behind the
>Creation of Unreal." Gamespot. Available here:
>http://www.gamespot.com/features/makeunreal/index.html
>
>February 12. Sims, God Games, Games of Life
>
>NOTE: First Assignment Due Today!!
>
>John Horton Conway, "The Fantastic Combinations of John Conway's New
>Solitaire Game 'Life'," Scientific American (1970): 120-23.
>Available here:
>http://ddi.cs.uni-potsdam.de/HyFISCH/Produzieren/lis_projekt/proj_gamelife/ConwayScientificAmerican.htm
>
>
>Ted Friedman, "The Semiotics of Sim City," First Monday 4, no. 4
>(April 5, 1999). Available here:
>http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_4/friedman/
>
>Wagner James Au, "The Lord of Game Developers," Salon.com -
>Technology (May 5, 2000). Available here:
>http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/05/05/molyneux
>
>February 14. Sims, God Games, Games of Life, part 2.
>
>GUEST: Will Wright, co-founder and chief game designer, Maxis
>Software (now Maxis Studio, Electronic Arts). Will will talk to us
>about the psychology of computer game design.
>
>Daniel Sieberg, "The World according to Will," Salon.com. Available
>here: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/02/17/wright/index.html.
>
>Geoffrey Keighley, "Simply Divine: The Story of Maxis Software,"
>Gamespot. Available here: http://www.gamespot.com/features/maxis/.
>
>February 19. Technology: Shooters and First Person 3-D Perspective
>
>Rene Patnode will take the lead on this topic. His case study from
>last year's course, "Id as Super-Ego: The Creation of Duke Nukem
>3D," is recommended reading for this topic.
>
>Tom Hall, The Doom Bible. Revision no. .02 (Nov. 11, 1992).
>Available in PDF format here:
>http://5years.doomworld.com/doombible/doombible.pdf. This is the
>design document for the original Doom game, as transcribed by John
>Romero. See the explanation here:
>http://5years.doomworld.com/doombible/
>
>Marc Laidlaw, "The Egos at Id," Wired (Aug. 1996). Available here:
>http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/4.08/id.html. (if you did not
>already read it for the Feb. 7 meeting.]
>
>Optional. View: "Quake: A Post-Mortem and a Glimpse into the
>Future." Michael Abrash's talk at the 1997 Computer Game Developers
>Conference. Available in Media Collection: ZVC 14527.
>
>Optional, for the technically inclined: Michael Abrash, "Ramblings
>in Realtime." Especially Chapter 1, "Inside Quake." Available here:
>http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/
>
>February 21. Technology: Graphics
>
>GUEST: Kurt Akeley, Stanford Univeristy and NVidia Corporation. Kurt
>was one of the founders of Silicon Graphics, and its Vice President
>and Chief Engineer of the Advanced Systems Division of Silicon
>Graphics. He was responsible for architecture of high-end graphics
>accelerators and for SGI's software library that utilized these
>graphics systems.
>
>Alan Akin, "Microsoft and 3D Graphics: A Case Study in Suppressing
>Innovation and Competition." Available here:
>http://www.vcnet.com/bms/features/3d.html
>
>Optional. For historical background about earlier graphics
>technology, read these essays from SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics in
>this order: Owen R. Rubin, "Memories of a Vector World," Steven
>Collins, "Game Graphics During the 8-Bit Computer Era," Noah
>Falstein, "Portrait of the Artists in a Young Industry," and Richard
>Rouse III, "Do Computer Games Need to be 3D?" The issue of SIGGRAPH
>Computer Graphics with these contributions is located here:
>http://www.siggraph.org/publications/newsletter/v32n2/index.html.
>Feel free to read or browse through the other contributions in this
>issue, as well.
>
>February 26. Culture: The International Scene (Europe, Japan, Korea)
>
>Ernest W. Adams, "Eurostylin': An American Game Designer in Europe,"
>from Game Developers' Conference 2000. Available here:
>http://hometown.aol.com/ewadams/Lectures/Eurostylin_/eurostylin_.html
>
>Michelle Levander, "Where Does Fantasy End? Why All of South Korea
>is Obsessed with an Online Game Where Ordinary Folks Can Be Arms
>Dealers, Murderers ... and Elves," Time Magazine 157, no. 22 (June
>4, 2001). Available here:
>http://www.time.com/time/interactive/entertainment/gangs_np.html
>
>
>February 28. Culture: Gender, Violence and Game Culture
>
>Loftus & Loftus, "The Arcade Subculture," pp. 83-111 in Mind at
>Play: The Psychology of Video Games (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
>Available in Coursework.
>
>Henry Jenkins, "'Complete Freedom of Movement': Video Games as
>Gendered Play Spaces," pp. 262-297 in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat:
>Gender and Computer Games, eds. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins
>(Cambridge, MIT Press, 1998). Available in Coursework.
>
>Allyson D. Polsky, "Skins, Patches, and Plug-Ins: Becoming Woman in
>the New Gaming Culture." Genders: Presenting Innovative Work in the
>Arts, Humanities, and Social Theories 34 (2001). Available here:
>http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_polsky.html.
>
>Optional. Janese Swanson, "What's the Difference? From the Research
>on Play Preferences of Boys and Girls." Available
>here:http://www.girltech.com/Press/PR_menu_frame.html
>
>March 5. Creating the Game: Synthetic Characters
>
>GUEST: Barbara Hayes-Roth, Senior Research Scientist & Lecturer,
>Computer Science, Stanford University, and founder, Extempo Systems.
>Barbara will speak about aspects of her work on smart interactive
>agents and the Virtual Theater Project. A summary of this work can
>be found here: http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/people/bhr/
>
>IMPORTANT! Please complete the Workshop assignment described here by
>Monday at midnight. The Workshop demo is located at the Extempo
>website.
>
>Janet Horowitz Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of
>Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press, 1997. (Available in Bookstore)
>
>March 7. Creating the Game: Sports Games
>
>GUEST: Yorgos Panzaris. Yorgos is a graduate student in History at
>Stanford and has been working on the development of motion capture
>as part of the How They Got Game project.
>
>March 12. Virtual Worlds I: Narrative Structures: RPGs and MUDs
><lecture notes>
>
>Brenda Laurel, "Toward the Design of an Interactive Fantasy System:
>Description and Functional Requirements," Pp. 56-87 (Adobe Acrobat
>page numbering) in: Atari Research Memos on the Subject of
>Interactive Fantasy and Related Topics." Atari Sunnyvale Research
>Laboratory, March 1982-November 1983. Available in Coursework.
>
>Richard A. Bartle, "A Voice from the Dungeon," Practical Computing
>(December 1983): 126-130. Available here:
>http://mud.co.uk/richard/avftd.htm. If you have time, take a look at
>other early papers on networked MUDs in Bartle's web archive,
>especially "MUD Advanced Project Report" (1983), here:
>http://mud.co.uk/richard/mapr.htm, and the background on this report
>here: http://mud.co.uk/richard/maprbg.htm.
>
>Howard Rheingold, "Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities,"
>chapter 5 of his The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the
>Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley, 1993. Available here:
>http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/5.html.
>
>March 14. Virtual Worlds II: Massively Multiplayer Games
>
>GUEST: Ken Karl, Product Manager for Asheron's Call Live!, Microsoft
>Corporation. Ken is responsible for the day-to-day operation of
>Asheron's Call and oversees the monthly update process, much like
>the producer of a game or movie project.
>
>
>
>Toby Ragiani, "Postmortem: Turbine Entertainment's Asheron's Call."
>Available here:
>http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000525/ragaini_pfv.htm.
>
>Look at the Asheron's Call zone at msn.com:
>http://www.zone.com/asheronscall for information about Asheron's
>Call. Also browse the "Crossroads of Dereth" fan site,
>http://cod.xrgaming.net/, for information about the game and
>especially about the Asheron's Call "community."
>
>Lev Manovich, "Global Algorithm 1.3: The Aesthetics of Virtual
>Worlds: Report From Los Angeles" CTheory - Global Algorithm 1.3 (22
>May 1996). Available here:
>http://www.ctheory.com/ga1.3-aesthetics.html.
>
>Optional. Nicholas Yee, "The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of
>Everquest." Available here: http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/report.html.
>Fascinating study based on survey data and responses.
>
>March 18. Case Studies Due Today, Monday, March 18, 4pm !!!
>
>- Henry Lowood, 5 December 2001
>
>--
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