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Make a Difference

Given what I’ve been talking about over the past few weeks with agency, you know I could let this latest post from our boys over at Penny Arcade go without a mention. For those of you that don’t want to read the whole things here’s a quick cut of the parts that caught my eye:

[Gabe] is philosophically opposed to what he perceives as the series’ communist ideals: between the game’s aggressively random nature and its deep-seated compulsion to reward mediocrity, he hardly feels like he’s playing a “game” at all. Rather, he feels as though he is flipping a coin via some elaborate, unaccountable mechanism - a single coin that takes an hour to flip. It is his belief that there are other things he could be doing.
….
He and I play games for different reasons, as long-time readers are aware, and even when we like the same game we typically don’t like the same things about it. At a very high level, he likes to win games and I like to play them. So I love the series, sometimes for the same reasons he detests them: the random elements keep the balloon in the air a little longer than a purely skill-based mechanism would.

Mario Party represents a unique social proposition, one of the key virtues I endorse in the medium.

So, another interesting “confirmation” of what I refer to as agency theory, and further proof that agency theory falls apart when you start talking about games in the social space. What makes Mario Party awesome (I assume, I’ve yet to play the game) as a social game, the fact that the game tries to keep everyone on close footing so that there’s this constant tension (and lots of crazy yelling moments), makes it feel as if your actual skills are completely meaningless, hence the lack of a feeling of agency, which Gabe is against.

Just thought it was interesting and needed a mention. I’ve got lots more to write on this, but I’ve got a pretty hectic schedule with some major changes coming down the pipe very soon, so, unfortunately, you’ll just have to wait.

Also, I’m having problems with WordPress not emailing me when comments are made, so forgive me if I haven’t gotten back to a recent comment. Does anyone know what might be causing this, and the possible solution?

By: Jeff | 01/31/07 | Agency Theory - Games / Design | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

3 Responses to “Make a Difference” »»

milkfilk

Comment by milkfilk | 02/06/07 at 3:12 pm

Hi. Milkfilk here, local DC IGDA lurker (member if I knew the chapter was not dying) and generally the target audience of your “breaking in” categories.

The setting for wordpress that you need to click on is Options, Discussion and then the section

E-mail me whenever:
* Anyone posts a comment
* A comment is held for moderation

The important one is the second one which is a comment that is not posted yet. After you approve it, the 1st checkbox enables another email to be sent. I find only the 2nd one is useful day-to-day. Your call.

Enjoying your blog. Stumbled upon it while researching DC IGDA activity. The forums are super quiet. Hope there’s a meeting even after the Serious Games summit. There are some other forums and sites that automate meetings related to gamedev. But not much result yet on those.

Right now personally, I’m tackling the following problems which are very much hard to cover shortly and prone to metric-tons of advice. Bear with me:
* Audio sound effect demo reel. Analog synth and real audio to self-imposed video challenges.
* Understanding how to approximate a beizer curve and animate a game object. Just a test, not trying to create middleware.
* Create a game object, an animation class hierarchy and other basic objects to nicely move things. This mostly works, just not working as nicely as anything should.
* Use Unity to do the above to actually get something done in relation to an extremely narrow scoped game.

End gush. Hopefully my wordpress advice bought me some gush points.
Jeff

Comment by Jeff | 02/07/07 at 8:27 pm

Hey milkfilk!

Those are actually checked. I’ve been reading up on it, and it looks like a problem with my hosting not accepting anonymous requests to send email. I’ll get it fixed one of these days!

As for you problems, they actually huge problems and do require a lot of advice Unfortunately, it’s out of the scope of this blog. However, I’m pretty willing to work as “mentor” if you feel like emailing me off blog.

Good luck!
Ryan

Comment by Ryan | 02/12/07 at 8:35 pm

Hi Jeff, I came and saw you speak at the University of Maryland talk and spoke briefly with you afterward.

I’ve come to check out your blog and have found the agency talk very interesting. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the term, but I think I’m starting to understand.

I have one question I believe is related to it:

How would you place players who enjoy cheating? (By saying ‘cheating’ I mean cheating of the single-player kind. The multiplayer cheating, I believe, is a whole different monster.)

Obviously their fun is not obtained from the agency a game may have in place, but rather just by having every item, or being all powerful, or skipping hard parts. But the player still may be having fun. I guess we can just add this as support to your argument that agency does not necessarily imply a fun experience for every player(if this was what you intended with your mention that something with agency doesn’t have to be fun). This may be off topic since I don’t entirely understand agency yet. If so, let me know =).

Either way, the articles have been a nice read and I’ve pulled some good information from them.

Thanks Jeff,

~Ryan

Make a Difference

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