Week 6 of “Understanding Video Games”, a University of Alberta Course offered by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera, focuses on how to interpret/analyze a game with 5 videos this week.
Overall, the premise is that massive multiplayer online games are ripe for study given the richness of information and diversity of players. The videos walk through the beginnings of MMOs with multi-user dungeon games (MUDs), and how MMOs added to it with advanced GUI and recognizable visual settings. In particular, Hackman and Gouglas work their way through Ultima (which added both positive social interactions and negative ones such as griefing), Everquest (innovation through adding 3D interfaces, but also led to selling characters in the real world and early references to online addictions), Second Life (showing that it wasn’t all about weird fantasy worlds), and the true powerhouse, World of Warcraft.
Back in Week 1, we learned about a variety of elements in games and Week 2 focused on how “games” differ from simple “play”. Week 3 introduced the contrast between linear, progressive gameplay and more emergent gameplay brought to it by the various players. Week 4 introduced us to a mechanical structure of how to break down games into component pieces, and Week 5 tried a narrative approach to explaining games.
This week stepped back a bit and pulled from literary theory to talk about a structural way of analyzing games and the interrelationships between the parts starting with:
Hardware, program code
Functionality
Gameplay
Meaning of a game (relying on semiotics, signs and symbols)
Referentiality (and how it represents a genre or crosslinks to other games and game types)
Socio-culture (how it fits within the outside world or what is brought to the game by players).
Again relying on literary theory, they add in “post-structuralism” tropes and how language defines reality, and thus a question about what can the language of a game tell you about the designer’s beliefs, arguments, views of reality, etc.? In particular, they talk about procedural rhetoric (rules, interactivity, language, mechanics to make an argument) and how the rules reflect the world view of the game designer.
However, for me, I am not convinced it is about a world view, so much as it is a slice of a world view, particularly as meaning is more than just the rules (i.e. as they note, it also includes play and agency). More importantly, when they talk about WWII fight simulators, and about what is missing due to focusing entirely on technology, I’m not convinced it represents a denial of the other pieces, just that the other pieces don’t make for interesting or fun gameplay. Often it is easier to set warfare on strange alien planets just to avoid controversy around “supposed meaning” rather than the intent of the designer which is to have warfare, but without the political arguments that might creep into the discourse, and distract from what is meant to be simpler gameplay, not a debate.
Week 5 of “Understanding Video Games”, a University of Alberta Course offered by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera, focuses on “stories and games” with 7 videos.
Role-playing Games (14:16) — This is an overview of RPGs in general, including D&D, Ultima, Quest for Glory, Final Fantasy, etc. to illustrate sweeping storylines with common structural building blocks (character, plot, genre). For me, I’m more interested in the story elements of the game (narratology) over the game mechanics (ludology).
Character (7:16) — This video explain the analytical framework from standard literary concepts (protagonist hero, antagonist villain, tritagonist third person narrator/expositor or sidekick). Pretty basic.
Plot (19:21) — This video elaborates the framework to go from chronicle (facts) to plot where events are linked and show causation, but not necessarily linearly (more so on average than other forms of entertainment). It also argues that you can use the classic 3-part (beginning, middle, end) or 5-part dramatic arc (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement). However, there is a really cool interview with a Mass Effect writer and how they handled multiple branching storylines (it’s an illusion using two people who are always the drivers of a conversation, and the third wheel can be any other character who may or may not join the conversation, but allows the illusion of total differentiation based on which characters survive to that scene vs. the reality that it is still tightly controlled narrative/dialogue).
Genre (4:15) — It’s a very short video, mostly to introduce the idea of viewers/players bringing certain expectations to certain genres, and the ability to suspend disbelief. Pretty basic.
The Hero’s Journey (29:22) — The big video is an overview of Joseph Campbell’s male-dominated monomyth, which serves as a for growth. The monomyth has three main components…the departure (call to adventure, refusal of the call and punishment like woman-in-the-refrigerator, supernatural aid, crossing the threshold / overcome guardian, and belly of the whale), the initiation (road of trials with everything familiar gone to allow capacity development, meeting with the powerful goddess and getting a gift and/or experiencing love, the temptress to give it up, atonement with the father, apotheosis/acceptance of terrible truth with sacrifice, ultimate boon to achieve inner peace), and the return (refusal of the return, magic flight, rescue from without, crossing the return threshold to show independence, master of two worlds, and accept reward/freedom to live). While I see the truth of the criticisms of the model (default male-orientation, the open-endedness as it includes everything, and its misuse as prescriptive storytelling), it’s a pretty powerful story arc for the true “hero’s journey”.
Games Aren’t Books (17:37) — The video raises the question of how interactivity can violate literary theory, such as Campbell’s monomyth while noting that all media is interactive in some form.
Branching Narrative (8:39) — This video gives an overview of hypertext fiction/interactive fiction/ text-based adventures linked to the development of branching narratives.
Overall, the two big pieces I liked this week was Campbell’s breakdown, partly as a huge majority of games follow the hero’s journey arc, and the interview with the software designer and how they faked some aspects of differentiation and customization/interactivity.
Today is my foray into week 4 of “Understanding Video Games“, a University of Alberta Course offered by Leah Hackman and Sean Gouglas through Coursera, and focuses on what they and others call “game mechanics”. It includes 7 videos (totaling 79.5 minutes) and one reading resource.
Their breakdown separates out game rules (obvious) from agents (i.e. the players) and game mechanics (i.e. the methods the agents use to interact with the game world, often in the form of verbs/actions — running, jumping, etc.). The golden age of video games — mid-70s to mid-80s — is fantastic for understanding basic concepts since a game like Space Invaders is almost entirely about game play, more so than the games that came later that included emergent gameplay. In Space Invaders, you could move left or right or fire, and that’s it, with harder versions based on changes in speed and mild complexity of gameplay.
In the first video (Game Mechanics), the most interesting part comes from Roger Ebert, and the flame wars that started when he suggested that film and literature were subject to authorial control and thus could be “art”, whereas video games had player choices i.e. interactivity, which as a structural issue meant video games could never be art. Oddly enough, I think his point that it was too interactive rather than narrative could perhaps be valid for the games of the 1980s, but I don’t think it lines up with the games you “embed” yourself in that came out in the 2000s where the interactivity is even greater but with very strong narrative elements. The second video (Interactivity) notes that some games like Tetris have no narrative whereas others have strong narrative (Tomb Raider), so they argue that narrative can’t be the sole defining characteristic compared with ways of interacting. They list 10 elements from the 60s that are interesting:
Purpose of the game
Procedure for action
Rules governing action
Number of required participants
Role of participants
Results or pay-off
Abilities and skills required for action
Interaction patterns
Physical setting
Required equipment.
That list leads them to a focus on actions/procedures that the player can do (mechanics) vs. the things they cannot do (rules). I find the third video interesting as it focuses on agency…I assumed initially that this would be just about the “player”, but it is interesting to think of the computer opponents as agents too, rather than simply part of the game itself. So it gives you the option to think of Inky, Binky, Pinky and Clyde as semi-autonomous agents within the game rather than part of the game itself.
Video 4 starts to talk about Koster’s view of the game as a “black box”, and more about game grammar — the black box spits out a scenario, the player responds, and the goal is to figure out the rules and solve the game. With “rules” as the basic building blocks, they argue that multiple blocks form the mechanics of the game, with all the mechanics together (scoring mechanics, firing mechanics, movement mechanics), forming a framework i.e. a game. And as with a “language”, you learn the language (i.e. the game) by actually using the language (i.e. playing the game).
Their largest video of the week though is dedicated to the MDA approach to understanding games — mechanics (actions, behaviours and control mechanisms in a game), dynamics, and aesthetics (emotional level). I think it’s a good paradigm from a “design” perspective…such as thinking about the impact from changing from repetitive to challenge puzzles, more exciting aesthetics, or changes in dynamics (like Mario power-ups or Pacman power pellets — which change the goal, at least temporarily). As an analytical framework, it also allows theorists to look at the relationship between the three elements, and how changes in one affects the other two, or the resulting impact on gameplay…kind of a systems approach more so than the structural elements of “game grammar”. The second element of the video is an interview with a game designer for Mass Effect, which is a nice “applied” example. A third element shown is Schell’s separate framework for mechanics (after removing technology, story and aesthetics) that has abstract space (full screen), functional space (where you can move), objects (things that move, more or less), player’s actions, rules, and skill — that are all hard-coded in the game.
The next video talks about the role of narrative and how it is balanced in various games — ranging from Tetris (no narrative) to Metal Gear Solid (full narrative, but often through exposition). By contrast, there are the RPGs — where the narrative “emerges” through game-play, “rogue-like” without a clear path that you have to follow, and often with very little dialogue.
The final video looks at the interactions between the various mechanics, where some mechanics try to PREVENT emergent play that might be frustrating or inappropriate.
It’s a pretty interesting framework to think about games, whether they be video games or role-playing games or strategy games, and what about them makes them interesting to play more than once. I know people who LOVE Monopoly for example, and while I’m willing to play it once a year (or once a decade), anything beyond that is like gouging my eyeballs out. Maybe partly as I tend to play in too small of a group to make it really interesting perhaps, or too much within the rules. I find PayDay far more interesting but like Life, there is no strategy at all really, it is just totally die-based random progress, which many people abhor. I’m the same for video games though, I’m willing to accept randomness to a high degree if there is a narrative element, something that is completely lacking from games like Monopoly.
As I mentioned earlier, I started watching videos on Fundamentals of Photography – Class 01 – Making Great Pictures from The Great Courses company. Class 02 of the course deals with camera equipment and related accessories. While the host is a National Geographic photographer, and has been for much of his career, he basically suggests getting equipment that fits in a backpack. No more, no less.
For the bag, he recommends soft shoulder straps so that you can lug it around for the day, and room for:
camera body;
a lens or two;
memory cards;
batteries;
battery charger;
lens cloth;
external flash + batteries for it; and,
a sync cord for flash.
I confess I don’t really like my camera bag setup. I had one that came with the combo I bought, and it is a hard bulky near cube-like format. It would hold everything above, but it only has a shoulder strap, and it’s kind of blocky. The interior design isn’t the best either, and I often felt like I was trying too hard to shift things around. I had another camera bag that I had bought for astronomy stuff, and I’ve repurposed it back to its original purpose, but it’s not great either. It is very hard to get things in and out of without taking it off, setting it on its side, etc. At some point, I need something better, just not sure what that it is yet as I haven’t quite figured out where/when I will use my camera the most yet. It’s a different setup if I’m doing astrophotography vs. hanging out at the cottage vs. going on a hike. Or, as the host puts it succinctly, “What do you want to do?”.
He prefers a photography vest, as do some astronomers. Lots of little pockets to hold everything, distribute weight equally, and freeing your hands for adjustments, etc. It is also harder to steal your equipment if you’re basically wearing it.
The Chapter doesn’t spend much time on the actual camera equipment, mostly as he wants to hold that back until he gets into the various features and what he uses them for…his only real advice is that his favorite lens is a 24-70 mm lens, mostly as it is comfortable, not too heavy, allows him to mostly support the entire camera and lens in his left hand, freeing his right hand to snap and adjust easily.
He does, however, heavily recommend three things:
A decent view screen, although he has a cute story that professional photographers call it a “chimping” screen (i.e. so people can look at it, and sound like a chimp, saying ooh, ooh, ahh, ahh);
A solid tripod for longer exposures and to reduce any shake; and,
A cable release to also eliminate shake.
The Canon T5i has a good screen, I like it. Sure, some of the new ones that come with Android built-in and that have WiFi are great, but this is a little more traditional and meets my needs. The only challenge I have is that in bright light with my transition sunglasses on, it’s hard to see the screen.
I picked up a used Manfrotto tripod from a camera store on Bank Street, and it is pretty rock solid. Not the best options for heads, etc., or quick change setups, but I haven’t used it much either to get used to it. I also have a lighter one that I had for my previous cameras, including the video camera, which would work with short lenses (i.e. not too heavy), and a monopod for hiking, although I’m not convinced it works as well as some people seem to claim. Could just be a lack of practice too.
I have two cable releases — one that supposedly works remotely, that I could never get to work, and one that is wired. I’ve toyed with the idea of adding the bluetooth attachment that would also connect to my phone or tablet, but outside of astronomy, I don’t know when I would use it that much.
What I found really interesting this week though is that he blew past the intro to equipment and covered the basics of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Those three pieces work together on your photos, and I confess that while I have read multiple explanations of them over the years, I have never really “gotten it”. I could regurgitate what the shutter speed was, mostly aperture although sometimes a little off in technical details, and on ISO, I often described it more as the speed of the “film” from our old pre-DSLR days. And how the three worked together, I really had no idea. I was constantly confused. I would get some of the pieces, I could duplicate other shots if I had the technical specs, but the real relationship between the three and how the three worked together? I really didn’t get it.
For the first time, watching this host, a light came on. The example he used was the idea of a faucet filling a sink with water. The aperture is the size of your faucet — small faucet, small amount of water; large faucet, large amount of water. The shutter speed is how long you have the faucet running — longer duration, more water; shorter duration, less water. And the ISO, although the metaphor is a bit weaker here, is how strong the water pressure is pushing through the pipe.
Translating that to the camera, the biggest piece for me is that he ignored ISO. He focused almost entirely on aperture and shutter speed. So a big aperture lets in a lot of light, while a small aperture lets in less light. Pretty straightforward. It’s the same concept for astronomy, and I think that was the hook for me. Large light buckets bring in lots of light, small light buckets bring in smaller amounts of light. If I think of it as Aperture, instead of focal length (which is how it is measured), it becomes much clearer to me. Maybe part of what was confusing to me previously is that astro stuff works heavily with focal length, and you even have some basic math to figure out magnifications, etc.
I was also confused by the focal length because as you “decrease it”, you’re increasing the opening and increasing the amount of light; because it is a ratio, the number works in reverse to the size of the opening. The focal length is on the bottom of the ratio, so as that number goes higher, and the focal length gets higher, the aperture gets smaller. So f/1.0 is the biggest aperture with the most light coming in; f/8-11 is a moderate setting; and f/22 is a small amount of light. It’s also why you frequently see wide-angle lens having the f/2.8 settings — because they are designed to give you wide shots with lots of light. Also making them good in low light too, because they are pulling as much light as possible at those settings. Most of my lens stop in the f/4.0 range and that’s pushing them to their limits.
For shutter speed, I’ve never really had any trouble understanding that…it always made sense to me in terms of longer exposure. But I didn’t think of it like I do astronomy i.e. I only thought of it as related to night photography. Longer shots to get the stars, to gather lots of light. I didn’t think of it as gathering more light for the day time too. Hence the trade-off with the aperture — if you go to a small, small, small aperture, you need to adjust to longer exposure times. If you have a large aperture, you need faster shutter speeds or you’ll get nothing but white — you’re controlling how much water is coming out of the faucet into the sink and how much light is coming into your camera.
The trade-off has never been clear to me on that. Particularly when you start with shutter speed — if I’m going with a faster shutter speed, for example to capture somebody doing sports, I also need to adjust my aperture in order to open up the “light hole” (aperture) to make sure I’m still getting lots of light in. Hence why small f # lenses, like 2.8, are called fast lenses — because they allow for the fastest shutter speeds.
I couldn’t see those two as the trade-offs as I always threw the ISO in there just enough to confuse me. I remembered that ISO 100 was considered “normal” speed film, and that ISO800 was considered “fast” film. So I figured if you were jacking your shutter speed to be super fast, you must have upgraded your ISO at the same time. Almost like they *always* went hand-in-hand, and hence could be considered almost the same.
I knew that ISO stood for the International Standards Organization, so the acronym never helped. However, once he started talking about it as the light sensitivity of the camera, kind of the reverse of how much water is being pumped into the sink, more like how hard or how much is hitting the bottom of the sink, it clicked for me. I understand sensitivity of sensors, and how important it is for their ability to register photons, just like the old plates (not that I ever used them, but I understand the physics of it). Particularly in terms of astronomy, so it suddenly became clear why jacking my ISO during the day was like flooding the camera with super sensitive light. Just like taking a photo of a bright moon with high ISO, and seeing it just completely wash out the details.
I know I’m supposed to see them as a triangle — aperture, shutter speed, and ISO — but it works better for me to see aperture and shutter speed as trade offs, and ISO more as just the sensitivity to the amount of light controlled by the other two.
After that, it was more simple note-taking:
shutter speed normally in the 1/60 or 1/125 range;
f/16 has everything in it tack sharp, f/2.8 is mainly the centre;
low light needs more sensitivity;
“aperture priority” is great for setting aperture, and the camera does the rest on “auto”; and,
“shutter speed priority” is great for setting fast or slow and letting the camera handle the rest on “auto”.
He concluded the intro by noting that he frequently sets up beginners in AP mode, shooting as close to 2.8 as they can get, and letting them rock out on composition after that. The assignment was basically to just to play with settings, which I’ve already done, so wasn’t part of my main focus afterwards.
I’m just ecstatic that I finally understood aperture and shutter speed trade offs, with ISO in behind. I finally “get it”. That alone is worth the price of the course (maybe not full price, but certainly with the discount that is always available).
I bought a DSLR camera some time ago, a Canon T5i Digital Rebel. It came with a stock lens, plus I bundled it with a 55mm to 250mm zoom lens, and it works pretty well for me. I’ve taken some amazing shots of our cousins waterskiing, some nice group photos, a few sunsets, and even some astrophotography. But I have a big challenge. And it isn’t the equipment.
I don’t really know what I’m doing. Sure, I’ve read the manual, but I don’t know much about the difference between aperture, f-stops, shutter speeds, and ISO settings, let alone white balance, metering modes, bounce flashes or any of that stuff. I kind of naively thought if I looked at settings of photos I like (often the magazines include the specs for the shot), I could learn to recreate some of them. Not impossible, but not very illuminating either. I have wanted to take a course, but timing and expense and area of emphasis were hard to coordinate. In the meantime, I’ve been playing with my camera and reading magazines.
Fast forward to a photography course with The Great Courses company. Note that TGC has an approach to these learning courses that basically relies on identifying excellent teachers from around the world, getting them to teach a specific course they’re passionate about, and then selling the audio or video series. Think of it is as more organized TED talks, or alternatively, downloadable MOOCs without the other students, interactions online, or the paper certificate at the end. They have a couple of photography courses, and I lucked into Joel Sartore’s “Fundamentals of Photography”. Broken into 24 video lectures of about 30-35 minutes each, the course basically talks about various subject matters in photography from a non-technical perspective. Which is about where my level of expertise is at the present.
Class 1, entitled “Making Great Pictures”, is a general introduction to the course, with an overview of the “approach”. Mostly Sartore talks about teaching would-be photographers to “see well”, combining subject, light, background and space to create iconic or interesting photos, something different from everybody else.
While the lecture is more of a general intro, there were some tips I liked:
Sartore noted that lots of people subscribe to the classic myth that the best photos outside require you to have the sun at your back. Except he said that this means that whoever your subject is (person, dog, etc.), they are looking directly into the sun. Which means they are likely squinting, a form of torture for your subject, and it is even less important with modern cameras which can work with a lot softer light.
For him, Sartore noted that the true basis for a great picture was great light + great composition + something interesting to see.
Last but not least, he advised that you should stop to “pet the whale”, an anecdote about a specific whale watching excursion where the whales will let you pet them but many photographers are so focused on the photo, they forget to enjoy the experience. Combined with the need to think about what you are photographing, he advises putting the camera down to enjoy the experience as well as seeing it clearly, considering what you want to include or exclude, and only then consider picking up the camera.
There was one sour note in the opening lecture, and I confess it almost turned me completely off the series. Sartore was talking about how some photos require a bit of staging, although those aren’t the words he used, and he showed a photo of his wife and son, with his wife holding his son up while he was wearing a bright shirt/short set, less than 2 years old, in front of a sweeping Arizona vista. He was noting that the shot was “unique” because it showed his son in full on crying mode — beautiful image, but not your typical pose. The image itself was a bit iconic, perhaps, but Sartore noted that his son had been crying most of the time, and wasn’t very happy. And he wanted a photo, so he asked his wife to hold his son up for about 20 seconds, essentially to make him uncomfortable and give him real time to get into the cry. Did it hurt his son? Of course not. Would I do it with my son? No, cuz I don’t want to be an a**hole to him.
It really turned me off the host, and I basically took it as my “warning shot”. I stuck with the series though and it hasn’t repeated. Maybe he was being funny, maybe he was adlibbing, maybe he was careless with his words, but it didn’t sound very nice to the kid. However, I’m in it for the photography tips, not parenting tips, and I’ve stuck with it.
I liked his “homework” assignment at the end, where he suggested you find an interesting room in your house, i.e. your favorite room, and think of what you could photograph. He chose his living room, with two assistants playing with dogs. What I found interesting was to see the composition, and how much of a difference it made when he decluttered the background to remove a mirror and some pictures. It isn’t much, very subtle, but it drastically altered the composition. Quite well done.
