at UC Irvine, Department of Informatics
Design and technology of mobile games, including mixed reality gaming, urban games, and locative media. Case studies of significant systems. Uses and limitations of location-based technologies. Infrastructures and their relationships to gameplay and design.
This class will combine game playing, game design, and location-based technology to introduce you to the challenges and opportunities that currently exist within the mobile and ubiquitous games design space. We will be playing many classic locative games – both digital and analog – and will be designing, implementing and testing our own new location based games. By the end of this class, you should be able to:
This class is not going to be about creating games for mobile phones or tablets. Games made in this class may well involve Android or iOS development, but if you are interested in making Flappy Bird, Angry Birds, or any other bird related game to be played on a mobile device, you are in the wrong place.
Some of you are programmers. Others are not. I am not a programmer, and so I will not be evaluating you based on your code. I will be evaluating you based on your understanding of the concepts, the sophistication with which you integrate them into your designs, and the overall experience that you create.
I will post the syllabus and assignments on the website, along with link to reading quizzes and other online resources. If we make any changes to the class structure or deliverables, these will be reflected on the website. If there is any disagreement between this printed syllabus and the website, the website should be considered the authoritative and up-to-date reference.
Every student will need access to a computer and to a GPS enabled device (ideally a smartphone that is less than 4 years old).
All students should be able access the internet in order to complete quizzes and submit assignments.
We meet twice a week. The first class of the week is usually some combination of discussion and lecture, while the second class of the week is usually some sort of group activity or time to work on projects and receive feedback.
Class attendance will be determined by completing index cards. The index cards are also a means for me to get feedback about the course.
For each class please write your name on a card, the date, your student ID and a comment about the course.
If you would like to submit an anonymous comment, take an extra card and don’t put your name on it.
Collecting feedback this way is a useful and different source of input than other media. It helps me track how the class is understanding the material and something about writing things out on paper causes students to say different things than they would in an online system.
The main textbook for this course will be Pervasive Games: Experiences on the Boundary Between Life and Play by Markus Montola, Jakko Sternos, and Annika Waern. Additional “readings” will be assigned periodically, and may include texts, videos, or games. Most readings will have a quiz associated with them in EEE. There will be 10 quizzes on the readings, each of which will be worth 2% of your grade, for a total of 20% of your overall grade.
Assignment 1 is a short individual writing assignment where you will analyze a contemporary game within its historical context (details will be circulated when it is assigned).
Assignment 2 is a group project that will require you to discover and design local geocaches (details will be circulated when it is assigned).
For your final project you will design, implement, and document a pervasive game. This game may be digital or analog, or a combination of both, but it must incorporate some specific aspect of the UCI campus and its surroundings into the gameplay in a meaningful way (details will be circulated when it is assigned).
Total Points available: 100 (+ up to 11 points of extra credit)
* Due to the situated nature of the final projects, in many cases the only way I will know what you did for your final project is through the documentation you submit. Therefore it is in your best interest to submit documentation that is as comprehensive as possible, as much of your final grade will be determined by this.
There are several opportunities for extra credit in the class.
We will be playing a game of Assassin that could conceivably last the entire quarter (if you are clever). At the end of the quarter, your ranking in the assassin game will be worth a few extra credit points, as follows:
Dishonorable Assassins (students who cheat, or do not participate) will receive no extra credit points.
In the unlikely case that there is no master assassin victorious by the end of the quarter, a game of Ninja Slap will be used to determine the final rankings of any surviving assassins.
In assignment #1 (Historical Analysis) you may earn a single point of extra credit for proposing a convincing future scenario for a locative or pervasive game that evolves from the historical trajectory outlined in the rest of your submission. You should not use more than 200 extra words to complete this extra credit.
To earn the title of Geocaching Master, you will need to submit your new cache to the geocaching.com website (see the full assignment for details). If it gets approved before the end of the quarter, I will award 5 points of extra credit to your entire team. This offer is only good once – additional approved caches will not yield additional points. This will certainly be a difficult the approval process, and I’m not certain how likely it is that your cache will be accepted so this might be an easy 2 points, or it might be virtually impossible to earn. That’s why it’s extra.
Individual written assignments will be submitted via turnitin.com. Group assignments will be uploaded to the class Google Drive folder. Quizzes will be completed in EEE, and will take place in class.
This is a day-by-day breakdown of the class structure. Some of this is likely to change, in which case refer to the website for the up-to-date version of the schedule.
Assassin: Rules & Target assignments
Course Schedule | ||||
Day | Topic | Readings Due | In Class Activities | Deliverables |
Week 1 | ||||
Tuesday, 03/29 | Course overview and Welcomes | none | ||
Thursday, 03/31 | Games vs. Persuasive Games | PG: Case A & Chapter 1 | Quiz #1 | |
Week 2 | ||||
Tuesday, 04/5 | Types of Pervasive Games | PG: Case B & Chapter 2 | Quiz #2 | |
Thursday, 04/07 | Pervasive Games Film Festival 1 | |||
Week 3 | ||||
Tuesday, 04/12 | History of Pervasive Games | PG: Case C & Chapter 3 | Assign Historical Analysis | Quiz #3 |
Thursday, 04/14 | Pervasive Games Film Festival 2 | Assassin Check-in: Righteous Kills! | ||
Week 4 | ||||
Tuesday, 04/19 | Campus as a Design Resource | Team Building | Quiz #4 | |
Thursday, 04/21 | Designing for Space | PG: Case D & Chapter 4 | Assign Final Project | Historical Analysis Due |
Week 5 | ||||
Tuesday, 04/26 | Designing in Time | PG: Case E & Chapter 5 | LARP Prep | Quiz #5 |
Thursday, 04/28 | Final Project Think Tank | Mini-proposal-design-jam Assassin Check-in: Righteous Kills! | Team Geocaching Journal Due | |
Week 6 | ||||
Tuesday, 05/03 | Designing Social Expansion | PG: Case F & Chapter 6 | Quiz #6 | |
Thursday, 05/05 | LARP Day | Class LARP | Design Document Due | |
Week 7 | ||||
Tuesday, 05/10 | Josh @ CHI – Dan to do project check-ins with teams | Proposal Presentations | Quiz #7 | |
Thursday, 05/12 | Josh @ CHI – Dan to do project check-ins with teams | Proposal Presentations Assassin Check-in: Righteous Kills! | ||
Week 8 | ||||
Tuesday, 05/17 | Pervasive Game Design Strategies | PG: Case G & Chapter 7 | Quiz #8 | |
Thursday, 05/19 | How to Document Pervasive Games | Movies, storyboards, photo-journals, and more | ||
Week 9 | ||||
Tuesday, 05/24 | Information Technology in Pervasive Games | PG: Case H & Chapter 8 | Quiz #9 | |
Thursday, 05/26 | Zombie Apocalypse Game- Version 1 | Zombie Game Playtest #1 | Preliminary Documentation due | |
Week 10 | ||||
Tuesday, 05/31 | Zombie Apocalypse Game | PG: Case I & Chapter 9 | Zombie Game Collective Re-design | Quiz #10 |
Thursday, 06/02 | Zombie Apocalypse Game – Version 2 | Zombie Game Playtest #2 & Final notices. | ||
Finals Week | ||||
Tuesday, June 7th, 6-8pm | Final Presentations | Teams will present their documentation of their game, and we will have time to play any games that are playable. |
Please read and heed the following information regarding academic dishonesty. The instructor cannot and will not tolerate academic dishonesty. For more information, refer to the UCI Student Handbook. The UCI campus policy on academic honesty resides here: http://honesty.uci.edu/
The penalty for plagiarism is at a minimum to receive a 0 on the assignment and have the case reported to the Associate Dean’s office. Particularly flagrant cases may receive more severe punishment (notably failing the course).
What is cheating?
What is plagiarism?
You should be on guard against plagiarism at all times. At any time that you read anything in preparation for a paper or consciously recall anything that you have read or heard, you must be prepared to provide documentation.
Generally, when you use someone else’s ideas and/or words, you will either quote that person directly or you will paraphrase or summarize that person’s words. You must let the reader know which you are doing.
For example, the text here on plagiarism was initially written Gillian Hayes for the Winter 2013 version of INF 242, although some modifications and additions of my own have been integrated into it. The original can be found here: http://www.gillianhayes.com/Inf242w13/, along with Professor Hayes’ own disclaimer that the material has been “generously borrowed and slightly modified from the UTC Center for Advisement and Student Success.”
Oftentimes plagiarism isn’t intentional – it happens because the writer either isn’t in the habit of citation, or because the overhead of citing sources turns the process into a burden. For this class I strongly encourage you to adopt the use of a reference management system if you do not already use one. This is one of the single best investments of your time you can undertake as a student, and it will reward you a thousand times over once you have integrated it into your workflow. Unless you are already heavily invested in a different platform, I would recommend you use Zotero: it’s free, it works as both a stand-alone program, and as a browser plug-in, it integrates very smoothly with Word, it has great collaboration support, it has AMAZING citation scrapers for the major online repositories (ACM DL, JSTOR, Springer, etc.), and it has a very complete database of reference formats that are easy to install. Did I mention that it’s FREE? It is! For more information about the options out there, the UCI Library has a good resource here:
http://libguides.lib.uci.edu/content.php?pid=19606&sid=583269.
If you are a student with a disability (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, hearing, etc.) and think that you might need special assistance or a special accommodation in this class or any other class, please check out the Disability Center online or visit them in person at: 100 Disability Services Center, Building 313, Irvine, CA 92697-5130. If you are having difficulty with the class for any of these reasons, please let me know so that I can work with you to meet your learning needs. If for any reason you are uncomfortable discussing the details surrounding a given situation you need not disclose anything, but at least let me know that something is going on so that arrangements can be made to adjust things for you before you fall too far behind.
I am always available to meet with students who are having trouble, and I am usually willing to make some reasonable accommodations if you have a legitimate issue, but I require that you check-in with me before a problem gets out of control so we can work something out. If you come to me during finals week to explain that you were in the hospital for 6 weeks and couldn’t complete your work, my first question will be: “why am I just now finding this out?”
Likewise, if you find that personal problems, career indecision, study and time management difficulties, etc. are adversely impacting your successful progress at UCI, please check out the Counseling Center or Graduate Student Services. Graduate school can often have adverse effects on one’s physical and mental health, and it is better to seek help early than allow the trials of pursing and advanced degree to cause serious harm.