I didn’t actually know I was an activist, not until I was told so in a class at Simon Fraser University in my first semester. I’ve come to discover that I’m naturally an activist by the very nature of my interests and direction of my doctoral research. By engaging in my own community, I automatically [...]
Archive for the ‘Indigenous’ Category
I’m An Activist
Posted in Indigenous, Investigating on October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
On Playtesting
Posted in Indigenous, Investigating, Readings on April 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Tracy Fullerton provides a helpful overview and in-depth suggestions about how to set up, run, and make use of playtesting sessions as a designer. I plan to adapt these methods into the playtesting sessions of the games made during my doctorate. I strongly believe in the process of iterative game design, as supported by Zimmerman, [...]
The Serious Games Front
Posted in Designing, Indigenous, Readings on March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’m glad to hear from Simon that SeriousGamesSource.com is making a comeback soon. On that note, the field of educational games is growing past its phase as “edutainment” (please, please, would people stop making up silly merged words that date us?). James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy [...]
On Interactive Drama
Posted in Indigenous, Readings on February 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Based on, admittedly little, of what I have read so far concerning AI perspectives of interactive storytelling and interactive drama as it relates to games, many researchers follow the Hero’s Journey, the Three Act Structure, and the rising action/climax/denouement forms of story. They often divide this structure into a series of beats to program out [...]
Touching on Methods
Posted in Indigenous, Readings on February 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In my own research, I am designing Indigenous games and exploring the process and results of these designs. Game mechanics are emphasized, posing: What mechanics would be unique to an Indigenous game design? The motivating question for me is: how can video games be used for Indigenous sovereignty?
Brenda Laurel’s compilation in Design Methods gives several [...]
Majestic Lessons Learned
Posted in Indigenous, Investigating on January 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Majestic has been called a great failure, and I’m with that line of thinking. Christy Dena, who is working on a PhD and researches largely in the area of cross-media entertainment, pointed me to two references: Dave Szulborski’s ‘A Majestic Failure?’ in This is Not a Game (2005) and Carol Handler Miller in ‘Digital Storytelling’ [...]
What is a (Native) Game?
Posted in Indigenous, Readings on January 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
On the whole, Native American and First Nations (Aboriginal/Indigenous) games fall under the same game-related definitions from scholars such as Roger Caillois and Bernard Suits. As Suits states, “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles” (190). Similarly, Caillois defines play as free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, and make-believe (142) [...]
