Although this was not the first game design class I have taken at Tech, as I took the CS Video Game Design course, it was still a learning experience since we focused far more on the actual design and prototyping of the game. As one of the programmers, things were especially tricky early on because I had never used Flash before and everyone I asked about Actionscript 3 seemed to prefer Actionscript 2, but fortunately our other programmer had experience with it, and was especially useful in his knowledge of Flash collision detection. Our earliest meetings for deciding a topic... Continue reading

One of the earliest forms of online gaming were MUDs, or multi-user dungeons, which were text-based games. A form of them called MOOs, or multi-user object oriented expanded the genre by granting the players a lot of control, making it so that “...they can describe their characters any way they like, they can make rooms of their own and decorate them to taste, and they can build new objects almost at will” (Dibbell 3). Since everything was text, user-generated content was simple to create, requiring more creativity than technical skills, “Participants in the MOO are literally building their own universe... Continue reading

Counter-Strike: Source is a computer game developed by Valve in October of 2004. The game focuses on the battle between two forces, terrorists and counter-terrorists, in various scenarios involving bombs, hostages, or just eliminating the opposing team using the large variety of weapons available. It perfectly fits within what Laurel describes as, “...the chasing, shooting, fighting, exploding, hyper-male world of games” (Laurel 17). The game focuses entirely on the conflict between the two factions, taking “...this physical violence into a symbolic realm. Rather than beating each other up behind the school, boys combat imaginary characters, finding a potentially safer outlet... Continue reading

The rise of the New Games Movement in the 1970's saw the introduction of games that did not necessarily follow the stereotypical standard of the time. Unlike most games, “...the New Games Movement is not merely about play's the thing, it's about the players as people...” (Fron et al 2). One of the games from this movement is Prui. In Prui, one player is singled out to be the Prui. When the game starts players must close their eyes and stumble around shaking the hands of any players they come in contact with. If they are not the Prui and... Continue reading

Starsiege: Tribes is an online first-person shooter released by Dynamix in 1998. While the game had much in common with standard first-person shooters, such as having two teams locked in combat both attempting to capture the other teams flag, it varied from them on one key point: the jet pack. The jet pack added a unique twist to the game, making it much harder to master. Starsiege: Tribes pitted two futuristic armies flying around battling each other, and the only way to win was to capture the opponents flag. Johan Huizinga's points out that one important part of a game... Continue reading

As chess traveled from India to the Arab countries and eventually Europe, the game underwent mainly small changes to adhere to the regional views. The names of the pieces changed, and even the size of the board was experimented with, however the most drastic change was probably the transformation of the general or vizier into the queen we use today, and is the focus of Yalom's book Birth of the Chess Queen. Chess was created in India, and “was resolutely and exclusively a war game enacted between male fighters mounted on animals or marching on foot” (Yalom XIX). A female... Continue reading