Curious Games Studio (CART498I Special Topics in Playable Media)

Instructor: Pippin Barr

Award-winning independent game-maker & TAG-DCART’s inaugural Visiting Game Designer.

Summer I Mondays & Wednesdays 1:30PM – 5:30 PM (1 May– 17 June, 2013)

This new course offered during the upcoming Summer 1 semester is open to students from any and all departments, and to both graduate and undergraduate students. Given Pippin's background, this will be a great site for interdisciplinary collaboration around innovated game design, gameplay and game techniques.

See here for flyer.

Video games are most exciting expressive medium of our time and yet the trend today is toward conventional structures and aesthetics of interaction. To push against these self-defined boundaries, we must not only talk about what video games are and can be, but must actively work to create games that move the conversation forward.

In this class we discuss the notion of “curious games” as an approach to creating a different kind of video game. Here, “curious” means inquisitive activity in opposition to a static aesthetic perspective or conventional interactions. A curious game may leverage conventions in some way, but is not obliged to adhere to them. A curious game may involve a kind of prying or meddling to the point of provocation. A curious game is for curious designers, but also for curious players. The focus of the class is thus on making these curious games, along with discussion and critique of our own and others’ work.

Open to Graduate students and Undergraduates.
Open to students from departments university-wide.

Contact Kathy McAleese in EV6.761 or at designandcomputationarts@concordia.ca.