We'll be laying down announcements for two more events expected to kick in during the upcoming London Games Festival 2007. The first will be a gaming workshop titled Design Rules!, and will have attendees taking part in a simulated professional design environment. Attendees will be randomly assigned a specific role to play, as their team attempts to create a designated game idea. The workshop will be hosted by Ernest Adams, who had this to say regarding the event:

In this workshop you gain the knowledge to develop compelling and emotive games through interactive group working with your peers. It is open to all who have a love for games whatever their background or professional interest.

Moving along, we also make mention of the ongoing preparations for the It's Showtime - with Machinima workshop. As its title implies, this workshop will educate its visitors with the finer lines of making Machinima, from learning how to make a tidy profit from your works, to understanding new creative techniques within this art. Attendees will also be treated to a tutorial of the MovieStorm engine, as well as the appearance of several noted personalities in the Machinima industry:

• Ricard Gras (LA Interactiva)
• Hugh Hancock (maker with WoW, Halo 2, Sims 2 & Never Winter Nights)
• Matt Kelland (Moviestorm, engine developer)
• Chris Carella (Electric Sheep)
• Dr Tracy Harwood (Machinima Festival Europe)
  

Later on in the day, the Machinima workshop will culminate in a screening of the winning and nominated  films from the European Machinima Festival. Both Design Rules! and It's Showtime will take place on October, and are scheduled to run from 10 am to 1 pm, and 2 pm to 5 pm respectively. The events are expected to take place at 76 Portland Place, London W1, close to Oxford Circus tube. Festival visitors interested in booking a place for either of these workshops may do so via the read link below.

Plato's Republic puts into analogy the human body with his ideal, utopic city-state. The head represents the philosopher-kings, tasked with governance. The chest symbolizes the warriors or the military, specifically for the protection of the Republic. The stomach personifies the merchants who are accountable for the flow of resources into the city.

While there is a blatant display of hierarchy, it does not go to say that one is necessarily more important than the others. For while they may be different in levels, they are the same in their goal, that is to ensure the survival of the Republic. Thus, all component parts, while maintaining their individuality, are expected to work together for that one same goal. Much premium is placed upon this goal to the extent that to attempt to multitask on these roles is to put the goal at high risk of falling into utter chaos. Therefore, it is forbidden.

The underlying principle behind this system is that titles aren't there just for the convenience of identification. Categories are not there merely to be able to sort out things from each other. Titles and categories exist not just to portray some semblance of order, but more importantly, to define roles and responsibilities. Now, this is, more often than not, usually overlooked. But the thing is, names and roles ALWAYS come in a tight package.

Applying that same principle to our everyday existence, we often find it constricting to confine ourselves merely to just one area. Artists need not be just artists, they can be politicians. Professors need not only be able to teach, they can be athletes. Women need not be mere trophies and housewives for their husbands, they may be high-powered corporate executives.

And gaming need not be only frivolous and trivial, they can actually have a higher sense of aesthetic, even pragmatic, value in our existence. That is the battlecry of columnist Ernest Adams, at least insofar as gaming is concerned.

He posits that in the light of the growing clamor for censorship in video games, it brings to mind the fact that although gaming has already niched itself tightly into popular culture, it still remains to struggle for the respect it deserves as an art form. The most apparent excuse would be that video games or gaming has always been stereotyped into the category of entertainment for kids. And kids are almost always never taken seriously. By this mere affiliation, the gaming industry has been deprived by the highbrow end of society  of the proper value it should have.

Don't we just hate stereotypes?

The full article awaits after the jump!

Most gamers care about only the action they see on their gaming consoles. Little do they know that the real battle starts before any game hits the store shelves.

Ernest Adams, author of Game Design and game industry guru, identified the four major groups, clans if you will, behind the battle of the video gaming storytelling styles. They are:

• The anti-storytelling developers and gamers: They absolutely don't want any story in their game (eg. Doom). For them, playing a video game is about meeting challenges, period.

• The pro-storytelling developers and gamers: They want to sell storytelling engines with deep characters, intricate plots, and dramatic scenery. They want to feel as if they’re inside a story.

• The narratologists: Academic theoreticians of narrative. Their stories are interesting and important if only gamers can figure them out.
  

• The wanna-be film directors: They make games with tons of narrative and not enough gameplay.
  

While all four groups of storytellers think that they are doing it right, Adams thinks all of them got it wrong. First, Adams says. they put too much emphasis on structure - inside the software - where players never see it. "Whether interactive storytelling does or does not work has nothing to do with the structure of the plots, but with how the player perceives it in the end - and what the player wants in the first place."

Second, video game developers assume there’s one right way to do it. "Different players want different things, and games include stories for different reasons. There is no one kind of storytelling good enough for all the kinds of games in the world, or, more importantly, all the kinds of players in the world."

Adams believes the key factor to a great video game story is how players feel about the experience. They should feel like they are contributing actions to the story as if they are interacting with the game. The bottom line: There’s no one right way to tell a story. That depends on the game, the story, and the market. Video game developers should consider all their storytelling options and how important they are to the players.

That means you.