Here are some notes on accessibility in game design from Henry Jenkins and Eitan Glinert (one of his students). Glinert has written a thesis on designing games that are accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities. He shares two key ideas:

This has been a helpful metaphor for the act method during the class taught at Martin Luther King Jr. Early College. For example, instead of saying "in the act method, do this..." you would describe the act method as the heartbeat of the actor and consistently use the heartbeat metaphor throughout your instruction.

"Make a game about sad."

M

Humane Games Presentation

For those having problems with running the latest version of Inkscape (0.46) on Leopard, I found a solution that seems to fix the problem (at least, it did for me). Click here for a description of the problem. Read below for the solution that worked for me. Leave a comment if you try this and let us know the results.

Agenda

1. Playtest
2. 3rd Game with Formal Constraint
3. Intro to Conceptual Constraints (communicative games; games about stuff)

Ground Rules for Playtesting

Today we started with a short discussion of playtesting. Here are some quick points:

First, we spent time going over a productive definition of games: "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." - Salen & Zimmerman 2004, p80

This definition is elaborated further here.

Further, it is important to create interesting constraints. We had an extended discussion of the meaning of "mechanic" as it relates to games. A few possible definitions follow:

Here are a few things I'd like to go over in class today:

1. Talk about Humane Games; Show a few more game examples (Drew's game, Eximont's game)
2. Show updated Humane Games post & DU Gamecamp video
3. Show Greenfoot.org
4. Show timer example
5. Talk about displaying text

Humane Games fit these categories: