I spent a half hour today looking at the Web site of The
Longest Journey. It’s a video game (or, specifically, a computer
game) that I found listed among those cited by James Paul Gee, a professor
of linguistics and education, as "worth looking at for their educational
merits."
I’m designing an educational game, so Gee’s book, and another
one by Marc Prensky (Digital Game-Based Learning which is about learning via video games) are my “textbooks”
for a self-teaching course in digital game-based learning.
To look at video games is part of my homework. To buy and play them
comes next. Already I got Myst,
which is one of the oldest adventure games and is most notable for its graphics.
Actually I was bored with Myst and
only played with it a short while.
I do this “homework” reluctantly.
Two reason for this are (1) those are not my kinds of games and (2) I
think an inventor needs to know only the general idea of a game—enough
to know it’s unlike the one he or she is inventing.
I’m on the lookout for a game that’s enough like mine that I can
feel some affinity for it and the people behind it. Affinity comes from a
variety of reactions, some emotional and some technical.
An example of an
emotional affinity is the collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering because I noticed when the first stories
about it were published that it was invented by a teacher (like me) and,
secondly, the publishers commissioned many artists to create the images on
the cards.
I like the idea that a teacher can invent a game. In fact, I played
with this idea when I was employed as a professor at the UW School of Art.
My students and I created a game called Video Game to help
ourselves
navigate the technology of closed circuit TV and videotape recording.
I
also like the idea that the creation of a new commercial product, like a
game, could employ artists like my former students.
I had no idea that inventing a game could be so difficult. I suppose I
look at games like Myst, Magic
or The Longest Journey for clues as to how a game makes itself known
among publishers.
Also, as I mentioned before, I’m seeking an affinity
group. When I read that the protagonist in The
Longest Journey is an art major, it piqued my interest. However, my
interest waned when I saw that being an art major has little to do,
apparently, with her journey.
It’s an adventure game. According to the Web site description, The
Longest Journey (also known by its acronym, TLJ) is:
"…
an amazing graphical adventure, where the player controls the protagonist,
April Ryan, on her journey through more than 160 locations, spanning two
original worlds, and featuring a cast of more than 50 speaking characters.
"The Longest Journey" will take you on an exciting and original
journey of discovery, where you will explore, solve puzzles, meet new
people, face terrifying monsters, learn, grow, and live the adventure of a
lifetime! With a story spanning thirteen chapters and more than 30 hours
of game-play, leading up to a surprising and emotional finale, "The
Longest Journey" is an epic, best-selling, award-winning adventure to
be remembered.
Compared to this description (and the graphics I looked at on the
Web) my affinity for adventure games in general is only slight. I have in mind
something that’s not of the gripping “adventure” quality that this
games’ inventor is dishing out.
I have a different group in
mind, and I want to form an affinity group around a wholly different set
of motives. I call the motive “asset management and legacy transfer.” With
this in mind, my game would be described as:
“Click on the screens of this CD and
you will be taking a journey through Emeralda Region, a storied and
graphical imaginary place where the user plays the role of a winner of a
great prize -- the Gates. In this region, Emeralda Communiversity is an artist’s ideal
colony; as a short-listed candidate for the Gates Prize, you visit its 10 locations on islands that let you sample
the experiences of modern multimedia artists. You share an original
journey of discovery, where you can explore, play trivia games, and
learn about artist’s stamps and their origins based on one artist’s
lifetime in art. (Artist’s stamps are non-governmental stamp-sized
artworks known in stamp collecting as cinderella).”
Despite that my description may not interest the members of the
current gamer market, I still want to be a
teacher who invents a game that employs artists (and others) like
those in my former students’ population.
By “employ” I mean
something different from what Richard Garfield (inventor of Magic:
The Gathering) meant. In that case, the Magic
artists were contracted to create images for the
cards, and the copyrights belong to the publisher—Wizards of the Coast.
I want to employ artists in a different way so that what they do for
Emeralda remains in their ownership, and money that comes from their contribution goes
directly into their bank accounts.
My motivation is not money alone, but if it were so, I suppose I could work it
out so that a nominal percentage could revert to me.
The way Emeralda works is that it has a structure based on a fantasy
journey. Players use their computers and the Web to visit ten islands in a
huge lake. Each island is dominated by a kind of expertise in an art form
not found anywhere else in the world. The region is owned and governed by
a foundation whose responsibility is to disseminate prizes to teachers in
the arts, humanities and sciences.
It’s referred to as a Communiversity—a
word I made up to describe a blending of a university bonded by a
community sense. When players “go” there, they find examples of what
other visitors have done while in residence all in the form of cinderella
stamps, i.e., stamps that are non-governmental and have no postage value.
The stamps exist both as paper stamps and as electronic, or digital
stamps. The former make nice images to look at; the latter are
“click-able” and are linked to other images, stories, videos, and
multimedia.
I took the idea that, “A picture is worth a thousand words” and
changed it to read, “A picture is worth a thousand bytes—or more”.
This makes my game a better game, a bigger game, for people to play. The
people are the kinds of people I met in college and who took my
printmaking classes. They were, without anyone of us knowing it, members
of an experimental group, where I was trying out my teaching using a new
canon.
I have in mind pursuing life in this new, fantastic
region—Emeralda—and restoring my links to my former students because
we constitute an affinity group worth the effort.
Postscript
As this essay is being written, a former student is
working a soundtracks that might be used to accompany the CD-based game.
Another is considering a few seconds from a printmaking videotape I made in 1984. These are examples of an ideal situation I want to create—where former students are
the front-runners in converting their assets to digital formats and adding
them to the game.
I note in the books I read about digital games that the process of
the players themselves actually building or modifying the game is a common
method used in commercial game development and improvement.
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Above: The author's postcards for his game Emeralda: Stamps 'N Stories
Bill
H. Ritchie, Jr. is an Itinerate Professor of Art in Seattle. He taught 19
years at the UW as a professor of art, traditional printmaking and media
arts. Resigning at 43 to start his own learning, research and production
company, he created Emeralda in 1992, a game strategy he likens to a
fantasy region accessible only by computer. He invented rules-of-play and
an operating system he wants to be an online interactive game. He’s
immersed himself in a virtual promised land in the age of digital
reproduction.
He writes for the benefit of discipline, using a PDA when he's
wandering around and a desktop PC to organize his essays. He has a
thousand or more saved, which you can see listed on the ten
"islands" on the Web. An example is www.seanet.com/~ritchie/apzine.html,
on the island of ArtsPort in the Emeralda Region.
For further information via e-mail: Ritchie@seanet.com,
and see the professional Web site at www.seanet.com/~ritchie.
The company’s name is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, WA 98109.
Telephone (206) 285-0658. This article’s statistics are: 1452
Words. 6915
Characters. 3
Pages. iap30802
Dreaming of ArtsPort. ©2003 Bill H Ritchie, Jr.
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