Azumanga Daioh--Missed Communication?

The first chapter in Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's The Illusion of Life, a book dedicated to the art of Disney animation and the theory and techniques behind it, deals with communication as a part of animation. Thomas and Johnston make the claim that successful animation happens with the animation "conveys a certain feeling". It is not simply enough to have a good narrative or to make the audience laugh, but there must be a deeper emotional connection between the animated characters and the audience. This is the second thing that Thomas and Johnston stress in the first chapter of their book: The audience assigns emotions to the character based on the action that is happening in the animation. It is the character's personality that makes for successful communication in a piece of animation, that is, how well the audience can connect with that character emotionally and stay involved with what happens to the character.

Here is an example clip from the anime series Azumanga Daioh.

In this scene, a group of schoolgirls are gathered around a vending machine at school while one girl buys a drink. When she makes her purchase, a paper cup is supposed to drop out of the machine and be filled with milk tea. Instead, she and her friends watch in horror as the tea is dispensed back into the bottom of the machine. Another friend comes by the machine to buy a drink, and recieves not only her cup of tea, but a second cup--what is presumed to the the first girl's missing paper cup.

Analyzing this clip using the guidelines for successful communication in animation set forth by Thomas and Johnston, I would say that the Azumanga Daioh clip is not a very good example. I did not relate to any specific character on a very deep level, even though I had no problem reading the subtitles while watching the action, so I still understood what was going on. There was very little use of dialogue, and the dialogue that was used was nothing too profound or interesting. (Although I am in no way trying to say that dialogue and communication are directly related! This may have done better with no dialogue, and there are plenty of scenes in movies where no one talks and it is visual and music only and the communication is still effective.) I understand that nothing too important needed to be said, since the main point of this scene is for comic effect. Also, this is an everyday situation, so none of the characters need to be making long speeches.

Aside from dialogue (or lack thereof) I related more to the situation than the characters in it. The same thing has happened to me at vending machines many times, and I did get upset, albeit not nearly as much as the girl in this anime. The characters themselves seemed more like personifications of stereotypes than anything else: the adorable younger friend who is cheerful and helpful all the time, the energetic and emotional friend (the one who throws a fit over losing her paper cup), the friend who's not quite all there all the time (the one reassuring the vending machine after it "lost a lot of trust"), and the older, more sensible and practical friend (the one who buys a drink at the end of the clip). I watched other bits and pieces from the show, and these stereotype personalites seemed to persist. This particular clip was funny, but it didn't communicate on a very deep level.

Research Findings Part 1 (With Links!)

As I mentioned in my general overview of my topic, my research for game design class this semester is dealing with the history of role playing games (non-computer). In this portion of my research findings, I will discuss the history of RPGs pre-Dungeons & Dragons, since, as I mentioned before, that entire tale is far too complex to relate in just part of a post. The D&D saga is probably going to be its own mini-series of posts so that I can throughly cover the information and still keep things relatively short. (I know I've already failed to do that in some previous posts!) I've already found some great information about the beginnings of role playing games, or at least their origins.

Role playing games grew out of strategy and wargames. According to Steve Darlington's "A History of Role Playing, Part 1", as far back as four thousand years ago, people in ancient Sumeria simulated battles, and Chess and Go, which are the world's oldest games, are based on teaching military tactics. Darlington mentions that contemporary wargames developed at the turn of the 19th century in Prussia, and was called "kriegspiel", which means "war game". I'm going to make all of my English teachers cringe and cite Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia page gives a bit more detail into kriegspiel. The Wikipedia article on the subject states that the Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick created a similar game 1780, and the Prussian General Staff developed the game between 1803 and 1809. In kriegspiel, pieces would be moved around the table, with blue pieces indicating their forces, while red pieces represented enemy forces. Dice rolls were used to indicate random chances in battle and a referee would score the results of the game. Games such as kreigspiel became a routine part of military training.

According to an article from E-zine Articles, parlor games that incorporated elements of role playing became popular. A game called "Jury Box" involved players in a mock trial. In the 1960s, historical re-enactment groups would every now and then host "creative history" events which re-enacted historical events with a few fantasy elements incorporated in.

Separate from the live-action role play games, most RPGs were still wargames. Referring back to Darlington's article, it was science fiction visionary H.G. Wells that brought wargames from the armies to the amateurs. Wells published a set of wargaming rules in 1915 in a book entitled Little Wars. The games laid out in Little Wars suggest using miniature figures, such as toy soldiers, to play the game and create a sense of involvement and realism. In 1953, Charles Roberts released a commercially available board-game-type wargame. By the 1960s, wargames had caught on, and were recieving popularity. The battles were still historically based, and there was little role playing action. This changed when The Lord of the Rings trilogy was release in the United States in 1966. I just have to use this quorte from Darlington's article because I love it's references, and it speaks volumes about the impact that The Lord of the Rings had on the wargaming world and its players:

"No longer did players want to recreate the battle of Gettysburg, but the battle of Helm's Deep. The Napoleonic Wars were discarded in favor of the War of the Ring, goblins and orcs replaced foot soldiers and calvary. People wanted to know just how much damage a Balrog could do, and what the range was on a lightning bolt spell."

That about brings us to the next phase in the history of RPGs, which is the partnership between Ernest "Gary" Gygax and David Arneson. These two men are responsible for role playing games as we know them today.

Spilling the Beans...and the Asparagus, Heirloom Tomatoes, and Wild Mushrooms

In my first-ever post to this blog, I was nervous about keeping up with the readings from Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I realized very quickly after I began reading that the book is great--it's very interesting, Kingsolver is highly knowledgeable about her topic, and the prose style keeps me entertained while informing me at the same time, which is a rare feat in and of itself! I've already read the required first hundred pages, and the next hundred are underway. I can't wait to learn more about Kingsolver's adventures in local, organic, and ecologically-friendly food.

All of this reading is giving me some food for thought about themes for my Flash game, which is the overall reason the class is reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the first place. Some ideas:

• Although this sounds ambitious, I would like to try creating a resource and time-management game based around Kingsolver's invented "vegetannual", a plant that bears every type of fruit or vegetable according to the growing season. I would start by choosing 4 to 6 consecutive months out of the year in which the player begins his or her farm adventure. The player would have to plant seeds and care for them, harvesting crops only when the plants are ready and not a moment before or after. Kingsolver stresses this, especially with certain crops, as well as noting that fresher veggies taste best. Rewards for a good month of growing could be: an increased harvest (which would add to the player's money supply after the farmer's market), special heirloom seeds being "unlocked", and more helpers and equipment on the farm (which would be able to be hired or purchased with in-game money). Penalties for a poorly-managed month could be: insects eating crops or plants rotting (failure to harvest when the time is right), effects from the weather (did the player plant something when it was still too cold and the seeds died? was the weather too hot, dry, or rainy?) and both of the previous would result in a loss of harvest, and therefore resources and money.
• The second idea I had which is simpler is that of a quiz game. In keeping with the "vegetannual" theme, I would devote each level to one plant or season, following Kingsolver's example in the book where, in early Spring, she devotes an entire chapter to the care and keeping of asparagus. In the asparagus level, I would create questions about asparagus; why it's healthy, what it looks like, where it grows, how to grow it, etc. Each correct answer would result in an asparagus plant being placed in the player's empty patch of land, until it is filled in at the end of the level. The next level would start over with the bare patch and a different plant, and the process would repeat.

That's all I really have for now, but I can't wait to see what the next hundred pages of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle have in store to inspire me with!

Research Topic

I am now at that exciting point in the semester where I have chosen a research topic and can begin to gather my information! WARNING: If you think this is too nerdy now, turn back! It will get much worse! I'm really enthusiastic about my chosen research topic, and I spent a good chunk of Thursday night into Friday morning (till about 1:30 a.m.) beginning the hunt for reliable sources to use for my project. My super-exciting-top-secret research topic is...the history of roleplaying games. ( I warned you all...)



I want to cover the history of these games, from the beginning of their development up to current times. Let me clarify what I mean by "role playing games". The term "role playing game" or RPG, for short, gets tossed around a lot and can be used or abused to cover anything from Dugeons and Dragons (and similar dice-roll and pencil and paper games) to a genre of video games (and a subset called "MMORPGs"--massive multiplayer online RPG, such as World of Warcraft and others) to LARP (Live Action Role Play, basically acting out anything from being a society of vampires to being engaged in medieval battles). I strictly want to cover the first kind of RPG, the "tabletop", dice-rolling, writing down a character and giving him a personality type of role playing game.



I have already found some really great information (links to sites are to come, I am not on my own laptop now, where the bookmarks folder currently resides). For example, the first role playing games were military strategy games. There were ancient versions and variations in China and Sumeria (I think, I need to check on the second one), and a later version developed for the rulers of Prussia (now Germany) centuries later. Similar games hit the U.S. much later, but the common tie between all of the military-themed games was that the emphasis was mostly on the dice rolls and the strategic movement of the miniatures in battle.



Role-playing came later, with parlor games in the 1900s. These games were meant for dinner parties, and the guests would act out things such as "whodunit" murder mysteries.



The history, creation, and evolution of Dungeons and Dragons (aka D&D) and its similar games is a saga unto itself. That's most likely going to be its own post. I also want to shed a little bit of light on the religious opposition surrounding the game (I say "a little bit" because there is a great deal of opposition!) and discuss how Dungeons and Dragons specifically has evolved on its own. D&D as we know it today has been around since the '70s, so there's a lot of game history there!

Production Meeting

Every Spring semester, the entire Shepherd campus and community get involved in Relay for Life, an event that raises cancer awareness and raises money to help researchers find a cure. Relay for Life takes place overnight, and the darkness symbolizes the sad news of being diagnosed with cancer, while the morning sunrise when the event ends is symbolic of the survivor's healing and recovery after such a devastating battle. In past years, Shepherd University's Relay for Life committee used a promotional video that educated viewers, participants, and potential sponsors about the purpose of Relay for Life and shared stories of people in the Shepherd community who survived cancer treatments.

This semester, a music video class was presented with the option of creating a new video for Relay. The idea was for something more upbeat and fun that would get people excited about the event, which has the dual purposes of remembrance and celebration. The class viewed St. Vincent Medical Center's "Pink Glove Dance" that is circulating on YouTube as a jumping off point. The class's goal was to create something similar to the Pink Glove Dance video, but modify it and make it applicable to Shepherd and Relay, not just the theme of the pink ribbon for breast cancer.

The class held a meeting with the Shepherd Relay for Life committee, and we came up with really great ideas so far. The color motif of our video is purple, since that is the color theme for Relay for Life, as it symbolizes all cancers and not just breast cancer. The class liked the idea of purple glowsticks being used in dim or dark scenes, but soon realized that lighting and making the shots look good would be difficult. We decided to use purple bandanas since they can be worn or waved in many different ways in any type of lighting and are relatively inexpensive to purchase in mass quantity. I think this will be effective because the bandanas will allow the sequences to be filmed in normal lighting with the dancers' faces visible, and this is very important to the whole message of Relay.

Relay for Life is about hope and knowing that other people will be there for you when you are suffering. By having people's faces visible, there is that element of human contact that would be lost if the class had stuck with their original idea of glowsticks in low lighting. No matter how much fun we have with the video, there is still a serious issue underlying it all--cancer is a serious and terrifying illness, but those who are diagnosed with it are not alone. There is support, and there is hope.

Magically Delicious Gaming

One part of Chris Crawford's article, "What is a Game?" that really struck me as being interesting as well as relevant to the type of games I play was the part about the significance and of interaction in games, which Crawford also refers to as his scale of “gaminess”. Crawford explains the nature of interaction in games (a.k.a. the “gaminess” scale) by comparing puzzles, which have little to no interactiveness in them, to slightly more interactive games, such as blackjack and tag. Crawford argues that blackjack and tag are higher on the “gaminess” scale because they are more interactive than puzzles: there are more players involved, and there are decisions to be made or physical activities to be performed. The higher tier games on the scale are the more interactive ones, such as football (a whole team of players, more complicated plays on the field), bridge, and poker (bluffing, decisions to bet or fold, many players).

I found this part so interesting because it really matches up to some of the games I enjoy on a day-to-day basis. I am going to call it a board game, even though it is a card game, but I’m going to post that my favorite “board” game is Magic: the Gathering. Yes, it’s those strange cards with the pretty yet trippy pictures on them that all the nerdy kids at your high school played at their own secluded lunch table, but I play it and I think if Chris Crawford knew about it, he’d rank it an 11 out of 10 on the “gaminess” scale. First off, there are a few hundred cards that come out in each new “set”—the most currently printed cards, so combined with all of the old sets, there are thousands of possibilities to put in each 60-card deck. That allows for creativity on the players’ part, so two players may have decks with the same basic colors (there are 5 colors in Magic cards, each representing elements…I told you, it’s nerd stuff) but the decks can be completely different when played. Magic is also highly interactive, because each player needs to be able to play cards on his or her turn and often be able to stop the opponents on their turns with special "Counterspell" cards. As Crawford describes with the traditional card games bridge and poker, there is also deception, cooperation, lots of strategy, as well as trying to interpret what the opponent will do.

Awesome Technology!

Get This Party Started

A new semester, a fresh start, so much to learn! I am nervous yet somewhat excited to be in this class, because I know there is so much that I don't know about creating a game. I enjoy playing games, and I enjoy coding as well. I've only ever done coding in HTML, so I am not sure how I'll do with ActionScript. I look forward to the challenge, and I think it will be rewarding to get to make a game from start to finish. It will be great to make a game with an educational purpose, instead of a mindless shooter or just another silly game. I'm more worried about keeping up with reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the idea source behind my game, than I am about creating the game itself!

Whatever may happen, I'm glad to be in this class, and good luck to all of my classmates!