Contextual Research

Spend hundreds of hours playing researching one of the following games.

• Dawn of War - Aman, Jayashri, Juan, Radha
• Total Annihilation -
• M.A.X. - Chris
• Starcraft - Ryan
• Rise of (Nations) | (Legends)
• (Galatic)? Civilizations \d - Ryan Leigh
• Halo \d, Dan
• Massive Assault
• Kohan \d
• Homeworld \d - Mike
• Warcraft \d - Brad, Nathan
• Battlefield \d
• Xtrek - Sushil
• Nethack - Leigh

Write a report on the game, answering the following questions.

Most of these should be short easy answers, no novels please.

1. Brief description of the game
2. What did you like about the game
3. What did you dislike about the game
4. What genre is the game in?
   1. Why is it in that genre?
   2. How does it differ / innovate from that genre?
5. What are the Goals of the game - What are you trying to do when you are playing?
   1. Ultimate Goal - (Destroy their buildings)
   2. Sub Goals - (Deny them resources, etc...)
6. What are the means by which goal is achieved?
   1. Direct means (kill your enemy)
   2. Implicit Goals (Starve him of resources)
7. What are you doing when you are playing the game?
   1. What decisions are you making?
      1. High level long term decisions?
      2. Short term decisions?
   2. Which of your skills are being exercised
8. What is the game world?
   1. Entities - What kind of objects, things are inside the world doing things. (Don't forget the terrain / background world)
   2. Aspects - Behavior or one side of an interaction attached to that unit
   3. Interactions - What are they doing, how are they interacting
   4. Rules - Important restrictions on how the interactions operate
9. Simple flowchart describing the play of the game (pencil and paper is best)

Come to class on wednesday prepared to discuss that game in detail when called upon and harrassed by me.