Blog - The Return of Fluffy
Monday, July 14, 2008We just started our last and final session of EGD this year, and gave them both of our basic non-digital design exercises earlier this morning.
I happened to snap a photo this time of the "Fluffy: Destroyer of Worlds" image.
Again, we draw the following on the chalkboard and ask our students to pitch a hypothetical game based on this image:
A couple of the ideas it generated actually seemed pretty fun or had some interesting mechanics I think I might try playing around with in Flash/actionscript.
I have, after all, been meaning to try to make some simple flash games this summer to add at least something digital to my game design portfolio.
Also, because it's a topic that interests me, I couldn't help but notice how the classic "box of crap" design exercise encourages play with affordances (again for you non-academics reading the list, affordances are qualities/properties of a object/material that are instantly understood: i.e. glass = transparent and breakable.)
I made the mistake of giving each of my students (among other random bits with which to make a game) a rubber band and a six sided die.
Predictably, nearly every group used the die for its original function as a random number generator. I was glad to see at least a few exceptions there which surprised me. However, every single group used the rubber band in some way to involve projectiles in their game design (sometimes using the die as the projectile...)
I suppose I should have seen that coming, given the nature (affordances, if you will) of a rubber band. Especially those rubber bands placed in the hands of rowdy high school students.
Oh well.
Labels: affordances, EGD, teaching
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 12:30 AM
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