how choreographic thinking can improve game design
TRANSCRIPT
Choreographic Thinking and Games
Boris Willis, Associate Professor
Computer Game Design
George Mason University
@boriswillis
boriswillismoves.com
blackrussiangames.com
Warm Up
Build a Phrase
1 to 10
Discussion
• Tools
• Iterations
• Design choices
• Observing
• Generating new ideas
• Awareness of self and others
• Puzzles
• Write down what you were thinking and discovering in the process.
• Warm up
• Build a phrase
• 1 to 10
What is a choreographer?
Games are a series of interesting decisions
-Sid Meier
Choreographer designs a series of interesting decisions.
Anything a game can be, choreography can be!
What is a choreographer?
• Designs experiences for an audience using movement, lighting, sound, costumes, props, sets, voice, text or multimedia.
• Crafts movement performed by a dancer, usually for an audience.
Defining Dance
Dance is a transient mode of expression, performed in a given form and style by the human body moving in space. Dance occurs through purposefully selected and controlled rhythmic movements; the resulting phenomenon is recognized as dance both by the performer and the observing members of a given group.
–Joann Kealiinohomoku
Defining Games
A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.
- Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Dance and Games
•A choreographer doesn’t create a game.
•A game designer doesn’t create a dance.
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
https://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/system/images/photo_albums/michael -jackson-videogames/large/michael-jackson-moonwalker-1.jpg?1384968217 https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/600x315/34/41/0f/34410fe4529aa3766e9f594b2a662249.jpg
Dance CentralJust Dance
Types of Dance
• Court Dance
• Concert Dance
• Social Dance
• Folk Dance
• Religious Dance
• …and more
Susan RethorstChoreographic Thinking
• “a kind of spatial emotional map of a situation, the emotional psychological reading of place, and of people in relation to that place and each other”
William Forsythe
• “A choreographic object is not a substitute for the body, but rather an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and organization of action to reside. Ideally, choreographic ideas in this form would draw an attentive, diverse readership that would eventually understand and, hopefully, champion the innumerable manifestations, old and new, of choreographic thinking.”
Dance
• The body is the driver of the experience.
• Movement is primary
• Space can move through the body
• Body can move through space
• Focus on body parts
• Focus on space
• Focus on objects
BoundPlastic Studios
Natasha: A Game of DanceBlack Russian Games
Company E
Natasha: A Game of Dance
▪Natasha offers an example of transmedia storytelling that takes place across multiple platforms and, in doing so, transforms audience members into gamers.
Bound
• Staniszewski says of Bound, “we don’t have a story, but we have a meaning” Thus, Bound can be said to function or “feel” more like a poem or artwork than like a goal-oriented mission that a player must achieve or win.
Comparisons
Dance and Gesture
Audience/Performers/Creators
Movement/Gesture/Gesticulate
Movement for movement/Story
Games and Play
Players/Designers/Audience
Play/Games
Ludology/Narratology
Choreographic Thinking in Games
Simplicity- Does the player understand where they are and what they need to do right now? Can they do it, if not do they know how to figure it out?
Surprise- Does the player regularly experience something unexpected yet believable?
Transformation- Does your game regularly change the player in some way or give them a new outlook? Is the player or world different from the game start?
Repetition- Does your game reinforce established ideas so the player feels grounded?
Tools
William ForsytheSynchronous Objects
http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/
Dance Exchange Toolboxhttp://danceexchange.org/
StoryNarrative
Write about
• Write about a time that you felt successful
1
Divide
• Divide the story into a beginning middle and end
2
Highlight
• Highlight the action words and verbs
3
Movement/Rules
Draw
• Draw a outline of your house or a house you would like to live in
1
Choose
• Choose three objects in the house
2
Choose
• Choose a number from 1-10
3
Action
• Do head shoulders knees toes and stop on final number
4
Movement
Decide Decide if you want to change the order of the movement. begin by stating the action words/verbs Consider timing, sound, size of house
Manipulate Manipulate the third object into the first object with the body part from the first room. Tell the end of the story
Transform Transform your body into the second object and locomote to the third object in the third room. Tell the second part of the story.
Move Move the first object with the body part you ended on to the second object in the second room. Tell the first part of the story
Discussion
Design a level based
on your house
Use the toolsUse
Change levelsChange
Change speedChange
Use turnsUse
How does the player know what to do?
• Audience Engagement
Simplicity
• Affordance
• Clarity
• Feedback
• Understanding
• Familiarity
Surprise• Unexpected but possible based on how you
establish the world
Transformation • Player, story, world, gameplay must be different and altered in some way at the end of the game
Repetition
• Establishing that what player is seeing is intended
• Reminding the player what they need to do by repeating it
• Reinforcing ideas
Game design as a walk in the woods
Choreographic Thinking and Games
Boris Willis, Associate Professor
Computer Game Design
George Mason University
@boriswillis
boriswillismoves.com
blackrussiangames.com
End
Body Controller Typical Controller
• Doesn't feel like dance. Feels like running.
Peter BaylissLocus of manipulation
Bayliss argues that a player’s sense of involvement in the actions of game-play “can take many divergent forms” and the sense of “being-in-the-game- world arises from the player’s ability to control the locus of manipulation and by extension their experience of the game”
Feels like dancing.
Feels like jumping.
Henrik Smed Nielsen
• Nielsen links this transformational experience to a somatic undertaking: “my relation to the game does not disengage me from the world, rather it re-enacts my condition of Being-in-the-world as a body... It is a somatic experience that both naturalizes and decouples our relation to the world” (Nielsen, 2010)
Rikke Toft Nørgaard
• Nørgaard’s research aligns with Henry Jenkins’s theories about video games as forms of “kinesthetic engagement, more akin to experiences of architecture or dance than film.”
Evgenia Chetvertkova
• Her style is a mixture of different body techniques mostly based on butohand improvisation. In her work as dancer and performer she focuses on how does her body and internal psychological state may create a meaningful movement composition. She also often works with visual images as well as with soundscapes to complete dance-body-performance practice.
Self-Portrait in Movement3 day laboratory with Evgenia Chetvertkova
• The idea of laboratory is to find the way how to create self-portrait in dance, considering dance as a body-movement metaphor.
1. Represent your vision of yourself in different modalities: visual and auditory2. And then use these representations as material, starting point to create through movements body existence and manner of presence3. Find words to define and analyze some characteristics or interesting points that underline personal representations
Through comparing (or even becoming) ourselves to objects, textures, colors, sounds, animals, countries, texts, buildings and others we will find a creative force of dance and body imagination.Set up a question if body thinking (embodiment) as interpretation metaphor of an abstract concept is possible. Embodiment can be understand as creating movement image based on inner sensations, mental images of inner landscape that sometimes are difficult to be verbalized but vivid, touching and emotional.We will work on sensibility and awareness of the body, presence, quality of movements.
We will work on dance not as set of movements in time and space, but rather on presence that produce a kind of energy by means of body.
It is possible to regard this laboratory as art-diagnostics of characteristics of individuality that may appear as a unit or as a movement or as an energy which takes shape(form) and represents itself in the world through materiality, relations, thoughts, meanings or way of doing something.