Featured Image: Phone Story Screenshot from Phonarena.com

Attendance Activity (5 minutes):

Talk with your partner about a game that wasn’t just entertaining, but had a moral, philosophical, or political message to it. Did this make the game more or less interesting to you?

Workshop (30 minutes): Let’s Play Videos

Download: Apowersoft Screen Recorder. It works for Mac and for PC. Some caveats.

• The free version only records for 3 minutes.
• If you want to buy the recorder, it costs 40 dollars.
• The free version is fine by me. I don’t care if you use another program, but this is the one I know and can offer help on.

Record: After installing, you’ll get a screen like this:

• Go to Audio Input.
• Make sure to check “System sound and microphone.” That will allow you to talk while hearing the sound of the game.
• After you open Steam, start the game, and make sure the game is in a window rather than full screen, go to “Record” and press “Full Screen.”

Note: It would be great to have a webcam attached so that it can take a video of your facial responses as you play the game.

Using the webcam isn’t required, but it does make it slightly more complicated to manage all of the windows, because a lot of games want to go full screen. This thread helped me when I had that problem.

Once you have all of your windows properly placed, click on the webcam icon on the recording toolbar that will appear once you start recording. I made this video last night and talk a little about all of these issues there.

Once you’ve completed recording three-minute videos for all of your group members, you can start the upload process.

• You’ll need a YouTube account. If you have a gmail or a Google account, you’ll automatically have a YouTube account.
• The program will automatically export your file as a .mov file (or a QuickTime file). You may then open the file in QuickTime, select File > Share > YouTube.
• You will then probably have to sign in to YouTube in order to start uploading your video.

Since the videos are only 3 minutes long, they shouldn’t take too long to upload. Be sure to have a stable and relatively fast internet connection, otherwise it may take longer to upload.

In the description, list the full names of all of the members of the group, and tag it with DTC 101. Then copy and paste the URL into a new blog post where you write one 300-word post to go with all of your videos. See the Blog Assignments Page for more information on what to write for the post. Overall, have fun.

Play in Your Groups and Discuss (20 minutes — let everyone in the group have a turn): Darfur is Dying and Phone Story.

1. What are the procedural elements of these games and how do they convey an artistic meaning?
   • See Bogost, chapter 1: Bogost defines procedural rhetoric as “work[ing] by modeling its processes in the process-native environment of the computer rather description (writing) or depiction (images).”
2. Compare the use of strength in many more popular games to the procedural demonstration of weakness in Darfur is Dying! and Phone Story.
   • For examples of how strength is modeled in popular games, consider Batman: Arkham Asylum, Grand Theft Auto Series, or Street Fighter 5. What is the purpose of modeling strength or weakness?
   • See Bogost, chapter 2, particularly towards the end, Bogost argues that game companies have used the failure of the E.T. game to suggest that characters should always be strong.
   • What are the consequences of only playing games where the characters are strong instead of weak?

Group Work (20 minutes):

Get back into your groups. Figure out the following:

• What are the group members’ favorite games?
• What is it about the procedural elements of the game (see the discussion we just had about Bogost), that made them fun or interesting?
• Ask each member of the group to come up with a different game. Then, have someone take notes. Come up with 5 different things you can incorporate into your game.
• Finally, figure out a pitch for your game. What kinds of games is it like? How is it different from those games?
• The theme of your game might follow a text we’ve read, an idea we’ve discussed in class, or a game we’ve played. If you have a particularly good idea for a game that doesn’t follow these ideas, see me.
• Post your pitch on the class blog, put all of your group members as authors, and tag it with “Game Pitch.”

As you start to plan your game, consider these great introductions to creating your board game. Some things to remember:

• Your first idea will be really bad. There’s no way around this. The point is to get an idea, refine the idea, then refine some more.
• You’ll need to prototype (in paper) the board, the rules, etc., the refine the rules as you learn what works and what does.
• Mechanics are more important than how good the art looks. Get your ideas down, make them work, then worry about how the board looks.

Reminder 1: First blog post is due by midnight, next Tuesday, September 13.

Reminder 2: On Thursday, I’ll ask your groups to give their first presentation for the initial project. This will require you to outline:

• The basic concept, basically your pitch you developed today.
• Major rules, can be connected to the procedural elements you like from other games.
• Major parts of the game, including game pieces, a rough sketch of the layout of the board.

You should meet with the other members of your group before Thursday and come up with a rough outline of your project. Each group will present for 5 minutes.