Computation as Creative Practice : Saturday 13 August

Section	Length
1: Topic introduction	15 min
2: Hands-on and material exploration	40 min
3: Discussion and reflection activity	20 min
4: Wrap-up and next session	5 min
Workshop length	1:30 min

1: Topic introduction

Replicate your object in code. It can be as realistic or abstract as you prefer.
Can you add one element that is different every time you reload the sketch?
Can you add one element that changes when you move the mouse?

Game designers create worlds and design temporary selves.
By setting the motivation and abilities of the players in the game, they create certain forms of agency.
Games offer distinctive aesthetic value: supporting the aesthetic experience of deciding and doing.
When we play games, our agency is fluid. We take on temporary ends and submerge ourselves in an alternate identity.
Games are a vessel for communication, writing and storing modes of agency: an archive.
By playing game, we familiarise ourselves with this archive and gain the capacity to change our own style of agency.
Games can function as critical, utopian tools, inspiring shifts in thinking and political orientation.
Games can blur the boundaries between the contingency of play and the irrevocable seriousness of “real life”.

Come up with a simple single player game. Try to keep the mechanic and interaction as simple as possible to start out.
Using paper and pens, make a prototype or storyboard.
Mechanics
- What is the goal? What does the player do?
- How do you win or finish?
Details
- How do you detect if the player is achieving the goal?
- How do you communicate to the player how they are doing?
- Are there different states? Playing mode/game over? Levels?
- Does the game involve timing?
- What are the smaller problems you need work through to tackle the bigger problem?