week 3

Readings

The Rhetoric of Video Games

I think the examination of the rhetoric of different video games is a very important conversation as the rhetoric that they inherently have can be utilized as an educational force. However, when examining the rhetoric, we must take note what is intentionally expressed and what is unintentionally expressed throughout the gameplay due to the video game creator’s context in society. I believe this could be expressed more throughout the text in order that we know exactly what kind of content we are analyzing. I think the point made about video games making representative expressions of the world as well as being catalysts for the world to express itself in relation to the game is extremely thought provoking as I have never thought about video games in such manner. You have more artistic games, such as individual adventure games that contain a lot of dialogue and storytelling that reveals something about the creator’s perspective on the world. And on the other hand, you have MMORPGs that evoke diverse social environments where micro-communities thrive.

Another interesting topic is the idea that the imposing of rules permits play. I had never considered this idea before but it makes sense as in many video games we are working against the rules to accomplish a goal. If these rules didn’t exist, there would be no effort, no challenge.

One question I have is how trustworthy are these procedural rhetorics. I believe they can be entirely unintentional, or rather subtle forms of propaganda. So if we are to legitimize the world of gaming as a more informative atmosphere, how can we know what we are playing is pushing us in the right direction? Also, are games where persuasion outweighs entertainment appropriate as games, or should they be in another category entirely?

As the example with the video game, Spore, we can understand that less obviously rhetorically charged games can have a great persuasive impact.

However, no matter how apparent the persuasive rhetoric is embedded in the medium, we should definitely encourage it in future video game making as it will make gaming even more relevant in an age where we are craving more and more easily accessible information.

Interaction Design

I believe this text gives a great summarization of important design principles to consider in a broad sense. In an effort to help my own understanding, I will summarize my own opinion of each principle. Visibility is very important so users are aware of what is possible to interact with. If an interaction is expected but is not visible, the user will not know how to continue with their interaction. Feedback is also necessary, as we must be alerted when our interaction has been processed by the device and we can move on to the next phase. Constraints allow us to be better guided as they allow only what is functional in the moment to be displayed by the device. Mapping is simply the positioning of interactive elements in a way that is intuitive to us based on spatial relations. Consistency is making sure that the device will respond back to us in a similar way every time we interact with it in such a way. However, one principle that I am not quite able to grasp is that of affordability. In my perspective, affordability is almost the perceived tangibility of each interactive component. Affordance used to be inspired by how the physical world is structured, but I believe as more of society is accustomed to using computers, interactive components’ affordability will be more based on aesthetics and minimalism.

Regarding heuristics, I think they are definitely very important to consider in the designing of interactive systems, however they cannot be taken too seriously, especially when aesthetics is becoming very important in the design of technological elements.

A Cultural Approach to Interaction Design

I definitely think this article’s emphasis on how we must quickly design technology correctly or else it will be completely inaccessible. It is important to consider that we can have very advanced technology, however, if it is not designed to be easily used, then this will leave its benefits inaccessible to the majority of society.
In order to design these technologies in a way that facilitates usage, I think the idea of intuition addressed by the article is definitely important. However, I don’t believe that intuition is the same across different cultures. So this brings across a question, how can we design the digital medium so it can easily be accessed and used by people from all around the world?

A lot of this article was hard to understand, which is ironic because it is an article about design. So I almost feel like this article fails to establish exactly what it is trying to claim to do.

However, I think it does bring upon some good points, such as computers having an effect on society just as impactful as print did. While this is definitely a notable statement, and computers will have a big effect, I believe that it is definitely something that has not yet come. Computers will have a big effect, but on a smaller portion of society. Print had a lesser effect, but on a greater portion of society. If computers become more accessible to all social classes by becoming less expensive, then I believe this statement will be easier said.

Another concept brought up is the need to design computers so its effects are positive. I don’t know if this is necessarily possible. The function of these computers will be entirely in the hand of the designers with the correct skills, so the computer’s functionality will match the nature of who designed it. However, in order to not restrict the functionality of technology, I don’t know if there is any way to design it to produce only positive effects on society. The greater functionality something has, the greater effects it can produce, both good and bad.

One of the author’s final claims regarding the increased interconnectedness between human beings with the advent of more advanced computers is a great way to finish this introduction.

Augmenting Exercise 2

For the Unity exercise this week, I started by following every one of the AR setup instructions exactly as stated on the blog. Once I had my AR Session introduced into my Unity program, I started searching for the web for a bunch of 3d models that I believed would capture the aesthetic that I was going for in this project. I decided to convey the mystical emotions associated with space travel as well as futuristic vibes. I decided to settle on a cool color scheme because I want the viewer of my augmented reality experience to feel impressed yet relaxed at the same time. I found all of my 3d models on Sketchfab, as I believe it has the best quality work from experience.

Once all my models were imported, I started creating code to allow my galaxy, sphere and pyramid model to all load in on timers, so that part of the AR model will load regardless of user interference. One issue I ran into at this stage was that some of the models had multiple parts to them all contained under a collected file. When coding, I learned that I couldn’t just assign the variable to the container, it needed to be attached to a structural object. I still haven’t found out how to allow models with many parts to all load at once, but for example, with my gun model, I was able to make the cloud that comes out of it appear without affecting the gun itself.

Regarding my other objects, I coded them so that they would sequentially be enabled as the user continues to click. I coded the first snowflake slice regularly, but then for the next snowflake slice, I would have it be enabled on the user’s click, but only if the previous snowflake slice was already enabled. I did this similar code for each following object to have the objects load one by one. This did come to a few problems in the final execution of the Unity file, as some of the objects would want to load all together. I assumed this occurred because the code would load sequentially so that the objects who I wanted to enable only once the previous object was enabled would load just slow enough to register that the previous one was enabled, which allowed all of them to load at once. I tried putting a delayer on some objects to remedy this, however I couldn’t figure out how to implement that quite yet.

Overall, I think the effect that I was going for was well accomplished, and all of my affects function as planned, despite a few objects loading too early. One thing I want to learn is how to have the objects placed based on the position of the mouse click as well as how to have them fade in.

As for the uploading of my script to my iPhone, I downloaded XCode, followed all of the instructions, and then realized I had no way to connect my iPhone to my laptop. I went and bought an adapter and it worked perfectly the first time.

Video:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vbN0_yWTX8yj-WidioBFjy3RtPbjIrTi

Unity File:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g3Ba7a4OzK7IdiELY-AfixSTEXe-BMEd