Bogost and group work.

1. September 10, 2014

2. Today
1) Icebreaker – uno mas
2) Gameplay for this week: Hearthstone
3) Posting ‘bout the football!
4) Discussion: Dat Bogost, tho
5) Form Your Groups of 3
6) Name thyselves, pick thine mascot
7) De-Volver discussion
8) Homework

3. Icebreaker: what was your first video game?

4. This week, I want
you to spend at
least an hour
playing
Hearthstone, the
WoW themed CCG
from Blizzard.
The game is free,
and is on all the lab
machines, but you
will need an
account at
battle.net

5. Football
After this week, we have one game in the books. So you
won or you lost, and you got to see how your players
perform.
Make sure to make a post to the Gameplay Experience
page about your fantasy football experience this week.
And check your line-up to see if you need to make
changes.

6. The readings
For today, I had you read two pieces by Ian Bogost.
Bogost, relatively speaking, is a huge deal in game
studies, to the point that people will ask why you didn’t
cite him in some cases.
His work is a nice foundational place to go if you need a
way of looking at things, though with the explosion of
new game scholarship,

7. Bogost
“In this sense, the
people who play
video games
develop values,
strategies, and
approaches to the
practice of play
itself.”

8. Bogost
“In other words, video games make claims about
the world, which players can understand, evaluate,
and deliberate. Game developers can learn to
create games that make deliberate expressions
about the world. Players can learn to read and
critique these models, deliberating the implications
of such claims.”

9. Bogost
“Instead of understanding play as child’s activity, or as
the means to consume games, or even as the shifting
centers of meaning in poststructuralist thought, I
suggest adopting Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s
useful, abstract definition of the term: ‘play is the free
space of movement within a more rigid structure.’”

10. Mo’ Bogost
“Procedurality gets its name from the function of
the processor—procedurality is the principal value
of the computer, which creates meaning through
the interaction of algorithms.”

11. Bogost
“Video games depict real and imagined
systems by creating procedural models of
those systems, that is, by imposing sets
of rules that create particular possibility
spaces for play.”

12. Bogost
“I suggest the name procedural rhetoric for
the practice of using processes
persuasively…”

13. A shift…
Today I want you to form your groups for the presentation and
De-volver assignments. Take some time to talk to each other.
You’ll want to find people with similar interests and ideas so
that your groups run smoothly.
Groups of three (3). Not 4. Not 5. Maybe 2, if you really want.
Not 1.
Pick your group, pick a name and a mascot, and email that
info to me.

14. Let’s discuss…
The De-volver and the
presentation. I’m going to
hop to the course website.
Follow me!

15. If we have time…
Let’s play the McDonald’s game! Mcvideogame.com

16. For Friday
Read: Gee and Steinkuehler
In-class: more game theory/some play time