Month: August 2020

Seminar back on: “What You Should Know about Simulation if You Care about Videogames”

This Friday the Department of Computer Science and Information Science Seminar Series is hosting Associate Professor David Ciccoricco for a talk titled:

“What You Should Know about Simulation if You Care about Videogames”

ABSTRACT: This talk historicizes the tangled relationship between two kinds of simulation, the mental simulations that happen in human minds and the digital simulations that happen on computer screens, and speculates about that relationship’s transdisciplinary future. It also suggests some ways in which aesthetic appropriations of simulation – as seen in videogames and other creative media – can play a significant and revealing role in mediating between the cognitive and the computational.

WHEN – 4 September at 1PM

WHERE – live & streamed online

Room G34 (Owheo building, 133 Union St. East)  (places limited – to secure a seat you must email:  
csadmin@cs.otago.ac.nz )

& online on Zoom at:

https://otago.zoom.us/j/98869375927?pwd=dmRTWTNrL2V4VEtRTkpwVmE2MlBwdz09

Password: 965073


BIO – David Ciccoricco is Associate Professor in English and Linguistics at the University of Otago. His research is focused on literary and narrative theory with an emphasis on emergent forms of digital literature, as well as digital culture and posthumanism more generally. He is the author of Reading Network Fiction (2007), a book on pre-Web and Web-based digital fiction, and Refiguring Minds in Narrative Media (2015), which is focused on cognitive approaches to narrative and literary theory in print novels, digital narratives, and story-driven videogames.

[Literary Games Group] 8/5/20 Defining Literary Games and Exploring Subversion

Today we read through the third chapter of the book Literary Gaming, and found out really why the book is called Literary Gaming – it explores the concepts of how to game in a literary fashion, but also how to define literary games – and even experiences which we wouldn’t define as games, but still involving some ludicity – that is, still some element of play within them. The different types of games are available to look at in the graph I’ve attached at the bottom of this post.

We also discussed the results of our Bartle test – a test which determines what kind of gamer you are personality-wise (primarily in relation to the way you approach multiplayer RPGs, but it can grow to extend the way you approach other games too). I discovered I’m a combination of Explorer and Socializer, with Achiever and Killer far down the list.

After our discussion of the chapter (the next chapter is available to read here) we went on to explore another game I’d discovered just a few weeks prior called Indecision. Indecision. is a game that masterfully subverts the way we approach videogames, specifically 2D platformer, by constantly baiting you to act a particular way and changing the rules for victory, and we can critically examine ourselves and the way we play and function.
It’s also a lot of fun! Extremely clever, too.

We finished our session with a bit of Pathologic 2 gameplay, which we’ll continue with next week to finish the two or so hours of gameplay that are on offer in this particular “chapter” or segment of the game.

Hope to see you around!