TODAY

1. Another of those check-ins2. This week’s play experience: League of

Legends3. The Tribunal4. Cosplay5. Now then, let’s play6. Homework/reminder

I tried to get some comments to each group about your game design documents, but this weekend ended up being “dodge various catastrophes” weekend, so I didn’t get to do the level of grading I wanted to. I’ll be caught up soon (by the weekend, for sure), but in the meantime, are there any pressing questions? Do you all have a sense of where you’re going?

League of Legends

This week I want you to fall down the rabbit hole that is League of Legends. We’re going to play in a bit. But first, some things to consider.

I want us to consider a few things about League of Legends before we start playing.

One is that it’s HUGELY popular.How popular, you might ask…

Of course the real test, I’d venture…

… is how devoted your fans are, Riot Games!

I happen to know someone who does this, but the next slide is my measure of what I’ll call the “geek saturation” of a game.

COSPLAY!

And the Tribunal

Also interesting in League of Legends is a feature called “The Tribunal.” Considered by many to be highly experimental, the Tribunal is an attempt to make players their own police (well, in this case their own jury), determining punishments as needed for violations of the game’s social contract.

So for this week…

… I want you to play at least part of your time in League of Legends with your team. To facilitate that, I want you to start playing here, today, in class.

With the time we have left you can register and start playing. As you play, think on these things:

What does it mean to be part of a gaming community of 70 million virtual people?

Why do all those people like this game?

Do YOU like this game?

Would Schell, or Juul, or Gee, or anyone we’ve read

think this was a good game? Why?

Is this a good game?Could it possibly NOT be? Does the sheer number of

players dictate that it MUST be a good game?

Think about the psychology stuff we discussed last

week.

Can you get your violence and rudeness quotient?

Is there sweet, sweet loot and reward for playing

deeper?

This game is free.But nothing is free.What’s the deal?

For Thursday

We’re going to talk about paper/physical prototyping. Please read the articles linked on the website.

Come in with questions about your game design docs. We’ll talk for about 45 minutes, then we’ll have some work time and I’ll answer questions.Play LoL, and think about how advantageous that acronym is.