My Games Design

I had thought about combining this post with a week 7 entry, as it is a little overdue, but the forums have been a bit quiet so I thought I'd focus on week 6 and wait a little longer to give people a chance to discuss the relevant activities. The theme of week 6 was audiences and ethics, and while there was no set reading to discuss, students were asked to listen to a podcast - which anyone can listen to from here (thanks to Juliette for posting the link). The podcast was discussion between James Aczel , Eileen Scanlon , Cindy Kerawalla , and Chris Jones about the impact of different audiences on the process of research and how it is reported. Discussions in the forums highlighted the importance of pitching proposals to funders in such a way as to justify the research planned (including a consideration of any ethical issues), the need to be cautious of distorting the findings by oversimplifying the message (e.g. when reporting to a non-technical audience), and how there can often...

This is just a quick post to wrap up the last of block 1 so we can all start afresh for the next part of the course. I can imagine that everyone has been very busy getting the first assignment in (due today) so things have been a little quieter. In week four, there was some discussion about referencing tools and bibliographic software. It's something I have to keep reminding myself to do - keep track of what I'm reading and where to find it - but I have to admit I don't always stay on top of. But, once you get to grips with the tool you are using, it's one of those things that will actually save you time in the long run and well worth it. The main tools that have come up in the discussions include Refworks , Endnote and Zotero (which is the one I actually use). I did have a go at Endnote but Zotero just seems easier - I love the fact I can add references just straight from my browser, though you do need to be using Firefox to do so). Plus, if you use it in combinat...

So, what is user generated content then? I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a while now I think I first mentioned it when I was writing about Spore . In relation to games, it means you not only get to play them but you get to have some input into the game, by designing your own levels, for instance. This is beyond being able to customise your avatar in an RPG , as it influences the gameplay itself. The concept is quite similar to modding , which has been around for ages, with whole communities built around it e.g. for Counter-Strike (which is itself a mod of Half -Life ). But though modding tools are sometimes made available for certain games, the process was usually quite technical. There has been a more recent move though, towards encouraging this sort of user-generated content by making it easier to do, with games like Little Big Planet (LBP) allowing players to design, build and share their own levels. The video below is an example of a player created LBP level, ...

I had been meaning to get this post out earlier but have been busy this week trying to submit a conference paper. But it's all in now, so will have to wait and see how it goes. Students were asked to use academic search engines such as Google Scholar and ISI Web of Science (which you need to access through the OU library page , under databases but remember to sign in first) to find papers and evaluate their impact by checking how many times the papers had been cited. It seems that while this turned out to be a rather time consuming task and that not everyone got the same results, most people concluded that the last two readings didn't seem to have a huge impact and some students started to question whether number of citations was the only way to measure impact - surely having to read them for the course means they have an impact, despite not adding to how many times they have been cited? There were two readings for this week; the first of which was " How can learning ...