Extra Credits Is a video series by a game critic that attempts to critically analyze the gaming industry. Some of the more relevant video topics include “Choices and Conflict”, “So you want to be a game designer?”, and “Choice and Conflict”. I think this video series provides an interesting overview of some of the topic we are learning in class, and will likely get more relevant as the semester progresses. The analysis he provides sometimes leaves me wanting a little more information on a given topic. The “Choice and Conflict” video gives a meaningful definition of choice as “overcoming internal conflict,” and he asserts that good games seek to provide choice rather then simply offering calculation problems. This ties in well as a counterpoint to Koster’s definition of gaming as a form of pattern recognition. Being able to find a pattern or optimal strategy in a game implies a lack of choice since there is little internal conflict involved when there are clear external rewards (winning).
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I really enjoyed watching this video. It introduces a lot of things that go into game design that I never realized and I don’t think many people even realize.
@sonia Thanks for the comment.
That is an interesting experience to have, I remember having similar experiences with other mediums of art. Until I had a good highschool English class my opinion of books and stories was “they don’t put all of those literary devices in there intentionally, people are just over-analyzing it.” Once I was able to step back and view books with authorial intent they became impressive works of art that I would never be able to imitate in a million years. Both books and video games remained, for a while, in this realm of “whoa how do they do all that.” But I think such a view of the art-forms is equally misleading, because in classes (and in the video) we tend to analyze the masterpieces or the masters of the art. Even the masters had to take intermediate steps like writing fan-fiction, or creating a MOD for a game in order to learn their trade.