Blogs

Dr. Cecil Brown began his lecture Games Blacks Love to Play by citing Marshall McLuhan's 1964 observation that the games people play mirror the surrounding culture. Brown uses this stance—that games teach us about the culture they come from—to explore the history of African Americans, the interplay between black and white play cultures, and the effect these diverse forms of play had on American culture at large.

Brown divided American history into three stages. First, slave culture, in which outdoor physical play predominates. Under slavery, blacks rarely learned to read and write, as punishment was having your hands cut off. Black culture, thus, was primarily oral and kinetic out of necessity. Second, segregated culture, characterized by dance. Thirdly, integrated culture, which our digital culture is a part.

Brown talked about a host of fascinating play phenomena that occurred under slavery in America. Black kids usually played with the children of their master, interestingly, but were not allowed to play with white kids from elsewhere. Slave children played a game called auction, where they enacted the auction of slaves as a game, enabling them to explore the drama of a slave auction and the strange idea of their own value. White kids often weren't allowed to play, as they "weren't worth anything." Children's play culture under slavery found a specific manifestation in the topsy-turvy doll, a handmade doll made with two halves, each representing a black or white girl. By flipping the dress over the head of one, you ended up with the other.

Center Director Michael Mateas was our speaker today during our IFOG: Speaker Series, and his take on the "Photoshop of AI" debate was fascinating!

In 2008, Chris Hecker posited that game developers needed a "Photoshop of AI" equivalent in order to compete with the strides made in graphics development over the last few decades. Michael posited that while a grand idea, it's not feasible, as it's based on the assumption that the problem of representing 3D space is comparable to the problem of creating AI in games. But it's not.

There is only one goal in tackling the 3D representation problem - does it look like a 3D representation? AI is far more complex, and encompasses a number of different fields: character sensory, physics of movement, conversation, character learning, pacing and dynamic difficulty adjustment, modeling of city dynamics, and the modeling of common sense reasoning, to name a few. No one system can address this.

Graphics are the statics of what you see, but AI is gameplay - everything else! AI is conditional, and therefore much too complex to expect an equivalent instant feedback program like Photoshop to be an option. But Michael does agree with Chris in one area - AI *must* be about authoring. And creating leverage (where quality and variability is greater than the effort put in) is an author-centric way to focus on the future of AI.

And make sure to check out the Senster, an amazing example of the aesthetics of behavior - built in 1970!

We were lucky to have Peter Brinson from the USC Interactive Media Division to join us for our speaker series today. Serious games have a reputation of being just that - serious, but Peter expressed the need, and benefit, of finding levity in such games.

Peter's background as a filmmaker was apparent in his approach to game-making, as was his interest in incorporating interaction and play into his filmmaking. Check out http://noanimalswerehurt.peterbrinson.com and participate yourself. But Peter's recent focus has been in documentary video games, where he has found the opportunity to explore narrative and character identity in unique ways.

Most recently, Peter created The Cat and the Coup, a puzzle game about the CIA-sponsored ousting of the Prime Minister of Iran. As a political science-trained game enthusiast, I was blown away by the game's ability to incorporate an unpleasant historical moment into a truly beautiful space that I wanted to explore. Many of us have become so used to ignoring, or being uncomfortable or strictly uninterested in serious topics, but the mastery of Peter's work is the ability to bring levity and beauty to a serious issue, without taking away from its gravity. Maybe the key to "loosening up" serious games is to actually take pleasure in the topic - which The Cat and the Coup does to great effect.

Congratulations to the Prom Week team for an eventful month!

The game was recently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education...read the full article here.

And we can't help but be excited that G4TV has predicted the game to win the Technical Excellence Category! Always bet on indie -- click here!

** Round of applause! **

The Center for Games and Playable Media (CGPM) invites applications from outstanding individuals for a Senior Technical Lead/Project Scientist position. The position will be responsible for directing the IMMERSE Project, a game-based cultural training system.  Responsibilities include leading the development of the autonomous character and social simulation architecture, including the animation solution for character animation, leading and participating in the implementation and research experimentation with these architectures, managing the UC Santa Cruz IMMERSE team, which will consist of staff, project scientists, postdocs and grad students, and for coordinating with leads from other institutions who are participating in the IMMERSE project. The applicant must be an analytical problem-solver, able to learn and integrate complex technical information quickly, convey complex technical concepts to others in verbal and written form, and have a strong commitment to quality and best engineering practices. The ideal candidate will have experience developing complex software in a team environment, have experience with game development and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) systems into a game, and have strong communication skills. The position requires independence and self-motivation in a team environment, and the ability to provide project and technical leadership.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT