Due Dates:
December 3: Game version 4.0 due, paper draft due
December 10: Game version 5.0 due (final version of game), paper due
During our Picoboard workshop, we discussed how humans and machines form complex assemblages. Whether we are riding a bicycle or using a sensor board, humans are coupling with technologies. Humans can be part of machines that include digital technologies, procedures, physical spaces, and other humans. We also discussed affordances, the qualities of objects that encourage or allow certain kinds of activities. Just as a desk affords writing, leaning, or holding a cup of coffee and flat ground affords standing, Picoboards afford various kinds of interaction.
Keeping these discussions in mind, your task for this project is to continue the development of your videogame using a Picoboard. Your incorporation of the Picoboard should move beyond using it as a joystick or controller. Instead, you should be thinking about the sensor board's affordances and about how it can be part of a complex assemblage that includes your game, the computer, the Picoboard, the player, physical space, and multiple other entities. Picoboards allow us to incorporate the human body into the game, extending our procedural argument beyond the screen and the keyboard. You should be considering how the Picoboard allows you to intensify or complicate the procedural argument of your game.
In addition to developing a new version of your game using the Picoboard, your group will write a 500-word explanation of how you incorporated the Picoboard. That paper should incorporate our readings to explain how the sensor board extends your procedural argument into physical space and how it intensifies, complicates, or (possibly) changes your procedural argument. This paper should be focused, concise, and (like all writing in this class) it should go through multiple revisions.
When providing feedback, Deidre and I will be looking for the following:
- Does your game use the Picoboard to extend, intensify, or complicate your game's procedural argument?
- Does your use of the Picoboard extend the game out in to physical space, taking full advantage of the sensor boards affordances?
- Has your group effectively managed the project, allowing all group members to take part in all phases (research, writing, coding, testing, etc)?
- Has your group incorporated feedback from others in the class?
- Is your game fully functional and without any bugs?
- Does your paper explain your use of the Picoboard by drawing on the course readings?
- Does your paper explain how the Picoboard intensifies, changes, or extends your game's procedural argument?
- Is your project free from grammatical errors and generally well written?
