Due: Tuesday, September 18th (leniency since the assignment is going out late)
The goal of this assignment is to:
- Get you to think more about what is a game, and what is a good game, and why we may need to develop our vocabulary for discussing this.
- To learn to critique others in a constructive way. (or to practice this) We’ll do a lot of this in class over the next few weeks with each other.
- To get some ideas about what kinds of games to make for P1
In this assignment, you will play some of the games from prior years. The assignments weren’t exactly the same, but they are similar to your P1.
Each person must critique 2 games. You may not critique the same games as your project partner. We encourage you to do this exercise with your project partner (for example, during lab time on 9/14).
For the critiques:
- We would like you to consider design (e.g. “how good a game is it”, how does it look) in addition to technical quality (how does it look, how well does it work, etc.).
- We specifically want you to ask the question “is it really a game”
- Imagine you are writing the critique for the author of the game. The idea is to give them constructive criticism. Tell them what is good and bad, but do it in a way that can help them either improve this game, or do better next time. (that includes keeping up the good work)
Some thoughts on giving constructive criticism:
- Think about how you would feel if you received this critique.
- Remember that the goal of the critique is to help the author.
- Critique the object (e.g. the game) not the author. Try to make it non-personal (it’s about the game, not the author)
- Take responsibility for your opinions – there’s a difficult, but fine, line between “I dislike X” and “X is bad.” (generally, you should have more concrete reasons for the latter)
- Useful criticism can be positive or negative. Telling someone why you think something is good or bad, or what they could change to improve (or should keep to keep it good).
- Being specific is good.
- Try to have at least some positive things to say.
For the assignment, the authors of the games won’t see the critiques (although, the course staff will “critique your critiques”). But its good practice, since soon you will be critiquing your classmates.
Place you results as threads on the Assignment 2 forum board.
Here are some games from previous years to look at. Note that many of these only run in Chrome.
Very ambitious games:
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/MattSam/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/NateNick/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/AlexJosh
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/ChrisJames
A game that was too ambitious (in my opinion)
https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/DennisRussel/
Games that had a very different idea
https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/AndrewPhil/Boids.html
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/HankZack/
this games doesn’t always work
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/BrandonMatt
less flocky:
https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/DanRyan/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/LorenzoShane/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games11/Proj1/XixiYiqing/
Older gam
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games10/proj1/RaeShei/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games10/proj1/GrimMoxon/
Two games with very similar themes (herding)
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games10/proj1/BuckKlein/
http://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/Courses/Games10/proj1/HugoMills/
