Announcements

Tuesday, March 18th at 5:30pm. A protest will be held in front of Troy City Hall at 1 Monument Square. In support of the Sanctuary for Independent Media and against the abuse of public power to suppress art and dissent. The protest, which is being organized by a new ad hoc group calling itself the Capital Region Committee for Free Expression. Come join the IGDA, the UAG, and the newly formed Committee in a stand against censorship and oppression. If this mod project is allowed to be shut down, we are opening the floodgate for a maelstrom of censorship of independent game projects everywhere. For info on the protest and the new committee email.

IGDA members Tim, David, Justin, Megan, Colin and Tobi at the protest on Tuesday

Freelance designer, author, and IGDA founder, Ernest Adams, will be coming to RPI this Thursday to give a lecture on stories and challenge in gameplay.

Thursday, November 29th
7:30-9pm
Russell Sage Laboratory
Room 3303
RPI Campus
Troy, NY

Rethinking Challenges in Games and Stories

Abstract: In this lecture Adams will take a second look at the role of challenges in gameplay - how they construct the player's experience and affect his or her emotional response to the game. Starting with a new proposal for determining the difficulty of a challenge, Adams goes on to question the assumption that games should be challenging at all, and make a case for other forms of computerized play beyond the traditional challenge-achievement-reward structure. The lecture also addresses the effect of challenges on storytelling, and discusses how different mechanisms for influencing the plot of a story produce different feelings in the player. The lecture ends with a suggestion for a unifying meta-approach to interactive storytelling that obviates all the debate about the "right way" to design games.

Get directions to this event here.