About

VS 425/510 Designed Play
Instructor: Stephanie Rothenberg
sjr6(at)buffalo.edu

Course Description

From early amusement parks to the ‘80’s video arcade craze to the current phenomena of portable entertainment gadgets and mega-leisure-malls, the design of “play” and its seamless integration into daily routine has become increasingly more prevalent in our everyday experiences. Play is being used for corporate team building, retail and museum design and edu-tainment. Advertisers have transformed game logic into a new marketing device. Computer electronics feature not only the latest business software but the hottest new digital games. In the current zeitgeist of ludic behavior, how do we delineate between what is work and what is play? As both consumers and cultural producers, is it important that we still maintain these boundaries? And why?

The course will focus on the changing role of “play” and its impact on contemporary cultural production as a design medium. Questions surrounding how we currently define play – is it aimless, productive, meaningful – and how the current production of “play” and the use of game-based models in both consumer, educational and corporate culture is shifting the boundaries between work and leisure will be explored.

In our exploration of designed play and its cultural impact we will look at early theories of childhood play, edutainment including interactive public exhibitions for museums and educational environments, corporate cultural contexts, current marketing and advertising models that employ play, the culture and economy of computer video gaming including online social network games such as “Second Life” and their emerging virtual economies (gold farming in World of Warcraft/Ultima, etc). We will also create a collaborative class project in the social networking game Second Life.

In addition to excerpts from a few seminal texts, much of the required reading will be from pop culture web sites and blogs focused on society, technology, education and business. These issues raised in the readings will be explored through reading responses posted on the class blog, in class discussion and active, participatory class exercises.

The final project will be a participatory, interactive experience that addresses a material covered in class. The final realization can take any form – indoor installation, public event, outdoor pervasive game, public tour, online game, etc. Your objective is to raise awareness on a specific issue (personal, political, societal) through meaningful play. Undergraduates collaborate with one partner. Graduates have option to work independently or with a partner.

Required Activities

• Present one cool URL of the day related to the class – will be posted to class blog (counts as participation)
• Nine 350-word reading responses posted on class blog on due date. Be sure to address the questions posted for each reading response.
• Creation of SL avatar and participation in class SL project
• Completion of 3 in-class projects – product, derive, SL retail space
• Completion of one final collaborative project created with a partner
• Maintain personal blog related to class – will be linked to class blog
- online space to comment and post images on experiences encountered in SL
- post interesting projects, resources, images, video clips, etc related to class topics

Basis for Grading

Students will work in pairs or small teams to complete the majority of assignments. Students are expected to perform their responsibilities to the team and/or partner to the best of their abilities, and peer evaluations will be used in determining each student’s individual grade. Students in this course are expected to be driven and possess a great deal of personal initiative.

• class participation – 5%
• anatomy of game exercise – 5%
• Usernomics 1.0 – 5%
• Utopian product idea- 15%
• Campus Derive – 10%
• Second Life – 15%
• final project – 30% [Grads 25% + 10% pres/paper]
• written reading responses – 10%
• personal blog – 5% [undergrads only]

Attendance
Regular attendance is expected. The final grade will be reduced by 1 letter grade (ex: A to A-) for every unexcused absence beyond 3 absences. If possible, students should inform instructor of upcoming absences. Students are expected to be punctual and prepared for every class and stay for the class duration. Chronic lateness, early leavetaking, or abuse of break time result in a grading penalty (3 latenesses/early leavetaking = 1 absence).

Additional Requirements for graduate students
1500 word or more research paper and correlating 15-minute visual presentation related to one of the topics covered in class

Further reading (refer to “resources” link for full list):
“Politics of Play: The Social Implications of Iser’s Aesthetic Theory”, essay by Paul B. Armstrong
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, Edward Castronova
Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, Julian Dibbell
Homo Ludens: The Study of the Play Element in Culture, Johan Huizinga
Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Institute for Distributed Creativity (IDC) listserv

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