The beginning

Sorry, no much time to write!

As you know on Monday 6th I began the Master, we began with an introduction of the course, then each student said which were their favourite genre and video games. The director, Daniel Sanchez Crespo, told something interesting about many of these video games. The second day we started with game design, also with the director. After this class, I realized that I had been listening to him for three hours without distraction -something very difficult to do-. The director didn’t talk about video games -well, at the end a little bit-. He explained things about the human being and why he loves to play. It was a kind of anthropologic class, since the cavern men to our days. So, why do we play? There are three points:

• To do and learn new things that could be useful.
• To challenge, thinking in natural selection, where only who adapts to the environment survives.
• Because it’s something innate to mammals.

In the end, these three points are due to the brain, who, when it believes that it is doing or learning something useful pays the body by segregating an hormone called dopamine, the hormone of the reward. I’m not going to develop this theme you have all the information about dopamine in the Wikipedia. I’m explaining it all very resumed.

He continued explaining the games evolution, their exponential growth since the Industrial Revolution, when the concept of pay to play and new kind of games appear. Then, in the Twentieth Century the National Institute for Play appears in the USA and creates a lists of elemental forms of play. The examples of play forms are of video games, but could be of any type of game:

• Attunement play: Ico, when I've played with this game I'll write about it.
  
• Body play & Movement: Wii, the best example.
  
• Object play: Rubik's cube.
  
• Social play: Any MMO.
  
• Imaginative and pretend play: Any classic game.
  
• Storytelling-Narrative play: Any classic game.
  
• Transformative-Integrative and Creative play: Little Big Planet.
  

Nowadays, most video games are in included in imaginative and pretend play and storytelling-narrative play, but as the director said, we have to find the new potential markets, as Nintendo has done with the Wii -body play- or games like Nintendogs -attunement play-. The director sticked out the games Ico and Shadow of the Colossus of PlayStation 2, who play with the emotions of the player. I haven’t played with them, actually I haven’t got a PlayStation 2 -I was a proud owner of a Xbox, but dreamed of these games-. By luck, a friend is going to lend them to me -thanks Jordi! I’m anxious to play them-.

But I think, that that some things, can’t be done in the final project of the master. We don’t have enough time to do a long video game. Also, the director said that we’ve got to think about the final project as a demo of ten minutes that make us think that this game is awesome. This will be our presentation into the business. Then, we have to surprise, looking for new things. Let’s see what happens.