I came across this interactive movie game in summer, and I think it is pretty good example for semiotics analysis.

Let us have a look at a short trailer of it:

Referential

At the first glance, we will be somehow clear about what the signs in this movie game refer to – Coke Zero , a specific product of Coke Cola company, as the title explains through its text, yet some “front-line” insiders may be also aware of another big “thing” behind the scene – UEFA 2008, as a lot of soccer things in this game explicates, but folks outside Europe probably are not sensitive to it, as the signs in their physical surroundings do not give many hints, in other words, they are not completely situated in that particular context to play it.

Moreover, the story depicting a dramatic experience a young man has encountered in a cold night which is supposed to be disappointed, is also something those signs directly work on. All in all, the content we can read here is a sort of remediation stuff, as it is a movie, advertisement, and game.

Metalingual

Audience should be able to find a plethora of cues, suggesting and helping them to shape the ways to understand this art work. For instance, the grungy, dark, and cold filtered graphic style indicates a dirty, lonely back-street place; the sharp contrast between this seemly isolated street corner and busy, glittering downtown on the other side of river enhance the sorrow and dejection the boy had before game started; the luring gestures, and the speaking tones of game girls send players a sense of “longing” for a “battle” success.

Hence, by means of interacting with those signs’ metalingual function, audiences will understand the game better. (like the genre of this movie, in the meantime also a game)

Expressive

The addressers are graphic artists, film folks (actors, producer, and director), game designers, developers, and most importantly the Coca Cola Company.

Conotive

Young people who are enthusiastic about soccer  (The targeted customers of Coca Cola from their business mode?),or who are fans of game. Interaction designers, 3-D modeling expertise, film makers…

Phatic

The story and four games embedded in it, the music which highlights ” go for challenges” theme.

Contextual

As mentioned earlier, this game comes with background of soccer events of UEFA 2008, and it is a festival for soccer lovers.

My board game design:

Inspired by the Presidential Campaign 2008, I pick up a Chinese traditional board game concept and combine it with this very particular event. As Jake has pointed out this afternoon, it can be of some education purpose, teaching kids what is going on with voting as a citizen.

The Rules:

Looking at the prototype above, there are basically two people allowed to play at the same time. One will use black chessman, which refers to democrats; the other will use the white one, representing republicans.

Then the essential idea of this game is to “attack and defense”. Each side needs to grab one chessman in each turn, and put it on the top of each state as they would like. But each player cannot place the chessman randomly, as they should try to build up the pattern in which four of chessmen (the same color) are lined up in a straight path [attack]. Once that pattern is shown, the player can pick up one state from those four to win votes, in the meanwhile, she/he should also take the chessman away for future reuse. As we know, the votes are different, depending on the state’s population, so normally folks will choose the bigger state; however, it is not always the best choice, as you won’t use the state you have won before. Thus, in this game, having a long term strategy is also a required course here.
When it comes to defense, in order to break the four-in-a-line pattern, the other player needs to destroy it by putting chessman in the line.

There is always an end; we will set up the time before game. When time is up, both of them should stop and sum up the total number of the votes. Who gets more WINS like Obama!

Reading Report 1 can be downloaded from here

It basically tells a story about my experince of learning Maya last Saturday with Marcella, check it out here

It looks like the emerging ARG hightlights the future trend of game design, and I firmly believe that if the game is put in the proper way, it would become a great form of education tool in terms of evoking public awareness of current issues worldwide. 

I do not intend to make my concept bigger, and I do not want to utilize a large scale game to reflect the topic(s) as well as the desired messages. After struggling for a while on the topic, I finally decided to focus on “A world without the tree” or “A world with a limited number of trees”. 

I know you may have some immediate responeses to this too general “inquiry”, yet I am not going to discuss the disasters that are coming, instead, I will talk about what kind of goods in the store will be disappear from the shelves. I have done some research about what products are made from wood, and it turns out that there are thousands of them already existed, which is out of my expectation. (More details please refer to here). 

As you may see, lots of them are pretty common in daily life, however, some are either rare, or hard to recall. Hence, my design is to list 2-3 things of specfic brands at the same time. (The reason why I want to show the brand is based on the advertisement business mode of this game), then the question will be “what will be gone if we do not have enough trees in the world“, following that request, the audience needs to choose one or two of them that are made of wood. 

At the first glance, this game is really simple, yet the fun  lies in the “picking-up” process, especially when audiences see the products they may be familiar with, but without 100% certainty about what it is made up of.  I hope from this little game, public awareness of our environment (or) sustainablity issues will be improved, for it associates tightly with our lives.

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There is a very clear trend that the future virtual community will be 3-D based. With regard to the reason, I think it may due to the fact the people want to see more cool stuffs in your design, which may evoke their experience in real life, whatever it is.

I am recently playing around too much with “Need for Speed”, and from that game, I noticed many detail to inspire me, and the big one is to imitate the real scenes of life, and in the meanwhile, put the stories in it. Both of these two features will involve game goers in.

Thus, my initial thinking about IU memorial is to let our alumni actually go back to virtual IU again, and there could be several versions of IU campus (like IU of 1950, IU of 1970 ) in order to fit people graduated at different periods.

Folks registered will have real them in the virtual IU by scanning their body or submitting their images, and in the game, they can do anything as they did as before, for example, they are able to take classes, hang out with friends, and even participate in “little 500″ race. They may probably meet their old friends over there in all kinds of places and events, then they will be good talk to each other, leave message, and probably do something that they used to have fun before.

Moreover, users can leave comments in each place of IU, like images, text, videos, any form that they feel comfortable with to express their stories at IU. Those stuffs will be open to anyone who visit the users’ profiles or places. Plus, folks can also take the “time shuttle” to go to other ages of IU to see what is going on there, and perhaps know more guys whom you can share your stories with.

That is my concept. Although it looks general right now, it still has some potential for future exploration, for my concern is to look into a form of design to truly engage users.

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Finally, after several reiteration, I have made my idea more detailed and concrete. Although it has nothing to do with numbers, it is still interesting, for your courage and decision making skills will be exposed to others.

The card will look almost the same, the only difference is that the new one gets the building address under the its name, because I want to decrease the difficulty level, and make game go faster.

When it comes to the rule, it is quite understandable: There will be a host who takes care of the whole process, and that person will also supervise the process in case plagiarism happens. To facilitate players to finish assignment, there will be a IU campus map given to everyone. When the game begins, each player needs to randomly pick up one card from the pile stacked in the center, and since all of the cards are face down, nobody knows what building(s) she/he is going to grab. Once you have cards at hand, it is time to find the corresponding place(s) on the map, and make them well organized. Then, with the cards becoming more and more, there should be a pattern in which one card is surrounding by another four, if that situation appears, you will have two options: 1. take them away; 2. leave them there until a better picture comes up.(BTW, a card can be used in mutiple pattern when it is still on the map). Keep doing that until the all cards in the “Junk Pile” are gone.

There is always an end, yet the host will give you extra time to wrap up, remeber to be faster though ! When time is up, everyone must stop, and the “lucky” guy with the least number of cards wins!

My concept may be very simple, but its initial purpose is good-to make new folks get familiar with campus through a card game. Hope there will be a lot of fun when it comes to play.

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My idea is to design a game of instruction purpose.

After several “hours” ‘ brainstorming (It is really hard), I decided to associate IU campus with the game, for basically I want the players to get familiar with layout of the whole campus by playing it.

First of all, I will crop the image of each building on campus and put them on the cards, in the meanwhile, I will also indicate which building it is. e.g:

(Of course, I will try to cover as many buildings as possible.)

Before the game begins, campus maps will also be handed out as the reference, (maybe for difficult level, map is not allowed).  Then the host will put a stack of cards in the center with face down, so players are not able to see them, what they need to do is to pick up cards randomly one by one, and put them on the top of the corresponding places in the map. When they find a pattern in which one building is surrounding by another four, they will be good to take them away from map, and give back to the host.

There must be a time limit, but it is up to the host. Once time is up, everyone should stop, and the lucky one with the least number of cards will WIN!

As you can see, my wish is let new folks get to know campus better through an interesting way. I will further look into this idea, hopefully, it is going to be a good one.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.