Just as I Feared/Fantisized...

Over the holiday weekend, I had the opportunity to purchase and install The Movies... and just as I feared/fantisized, I was instantly addicted. This will seriously impact my school work for the term... perhaps positively in this class and negatively in other classes? Perhaps negatively to both?

I spent most of the weekend at a retreat center in outside of Deerfield, MA with some Arts in Education program-mates. While most of them spent the first day exploring the area by foot or by snowshoe, I spent it indoors getting my first movie studio set up!

I started with the "Learn the Basics" tutorial and that took me through some basic screen navigation controls. It seemed pretty intuitive so I moved quickly through the tutorials and went on to gameplay and just jumped right on in!

The initial steps of the game were also peppered with thought bubbles and tips on what to do next. You've gotta build some buildings like a stage school, a crew facility, a casting office, and a production office. Once those buildings are built, people line up at them looking for jobs and you've got to hire talent (directors, actors, extras) and staff (builders, janitors, crew, scriptwriters). Then you've gotta give those people training and experience and then get to making movies.

As it was my first time, I was just exploring and seeing what would happen and how things work. It starts in 1920 and I'm now in 1959, ranked 5th out of 9 studios and I have an efficient operation that can put out a whole lot mediocre movies with middle-of-the-pack actors and directors. Basically, quantity is excellent, but quality is average at best...

We'll see what happens... In my projective self, I want my studio to be known for making better films. I may try to slow my whole process down and start concentrating on making quality films... see if I can change the image of the studio (just like I can makeover the image of my talent by giving them a new wardrobe and a fancy new haircut!). Or maybe I'll start over with a brand new game. It's been about six hours of gameplay (did I mention how addictive and immersive it is?!), and without "finishing the game" (by at least playing through the current date), I'm already recognizing what could've been done better and making plans for my next game!

And the videogame is...

The Movies. Yup. The game that I've chosen to play for Spring term is Lionhead's The Movies using my Mac. The Movies is a simulator game in which players take the role of a Hollywood mogul in creating and managing a studio and creating films beginning in the 1920s and proceeding through the history of film. Originally released in 2006, the structure of the game is similar to the business-management “tycoon” games managing the resources of a movie studio (facilities, sets, actors, directors, etc.). Additionally, much of the interest in the game is the ability to create films using tools built into the game and also export movies to share on the Internet. (Machinima is a brand new term for me, but may reappear with quite a bit of frequency in this blog.) With these two elements, there seems to be a great deal of potential for immersive and engaging gameplay and, with the ability to easily export gamer-generated movies, the potential for a significant online presence is considerable.

Here's a quick sample of a video made from The Movies from YouTube.

My Early Video Game History

When I was about 8 years old, my brother and I got an original Nintendo with the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt Combo. My brother's game of choice was Super Mario Bros. with its story, characters, levels, tools/rewards (mushrooms, flowers, 1-ups, coins), secrets of the game, and infectious music. A natural choice, right? My choice was Duck Hunt where you've got a dog, some ducks, and a gun.

I could spend hours in front of the TV playing it--and I mean literally in front of the TV with the NES Zapper (I think that's the technical term for the non-so-politically-correct "gun") right up against the screen! (Perhaps I wasn't the most adept at hand-eye coordination as an 8 year-old, but if you're right up against the screen, it does the trick!)

Yeah. I did play it for hours on end. It's not like it had a compelling narrative. You're a hunter. Your dog runs into the grass to chase some ducks into the air. You shoot the ducks. If you shoot them, you move onto another level in which the same thing occurs with the ducks moving slightly faster. What exactly kept my restless eight year-old body in one place for so long?

Well, that quick story and question might give you a clue to why I 'm here at the Harvard Gradate School of Education taking a class that studies video games. There's something strange about video games. Why the heck did I do that? And why am I no the only one?
And why am I still thinking about that experience twenty years later?! There's bound to be some answers to this and I'm looking forward to figuring it all out!