I’m taking a course this quarter called Virtual Environments. Yesterday was the first real day of class. The professor hooks up a laptop to the projector. It has an FFX wallpaper. Then someone arrives with the “course materials”. The professor says, “Here’s the material we’ll be using for the class,” and hands everyone in the class a brand-new Unreal Tournament 2003 box. The lecture yesterday was on the history of video games, so the prof went through his list of some 2000 emulated games from pre-1990, selecting notable games and showing them to the class. He made a few demonstrations with WinFrotz too. He has a very interesting theory on how the widespread Contra cheat code is actually the origin of user modification in gaming culture. And yes, he knows the code by heart. After playing Contra for a while (“Hold on, lemme play this for a minute or two.”) he jumps forward to Halflife, and talks about modern games, and then runs a DOOM 3 trailer. We are going to be using the UT2k3 level builder, and he regrets that Halflife 2 isn’t out yet because we'd be using that instead. Then at the end of class he says for next week he’ll have UT installed on the lab computers, computers designed to do 3-D modelling and the like.
And we'll have weekly deathmatches.
If you're wondering, this is from the class syllabus:
ICAM_120: Game (Re)Development is a critical game development class for the University of California San Diego's Interdisciplinary Computing and Arts Department.
Using current 3d game modification tools for their immediate accessibility, students will be incrementally introduced to key game development skills, while also being involved in readings and discussions on critical topics that surround game development technology and culture. Students are also expected to contribute to networked FPS game play in class. They will slowly build a base from which small teams can each create a small, but technically complex, visually seductive, and conceptually interesting 3D game modification in the last half of the course. The overall goal will be to give the students the theoretical and technical knowledge to integrate 3D game development technology, as well as the culture and ideas that surround these immersive spaces, into a content based art context, and their own digital art practice.
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