This page will house the formal graded assignments. Writing assignments may be thought of as "penultimate drafts". There will be a chance to revise and resubmit them. In all cases you may turn in an earlier draft for feedback and you are encouraged to use the Writers' Block.

The assignments will contribute 35% of the grade, the two shorter papers will contribute 10% each, the longer final paper (with presentation) will contribute 25% and the group design project (with presentation) will contribute 20%.

In addition, attendance, participation and prompt submission of assignments is expected. Your performance here will alter your grade by up to one letter.

Choose a game. Write about it using the schema we've covered in Rules of Play so far. You may choose to either demonstrate deeper insight into the game that comes from using these schema or use the game to illuminate the schema (or a bit of both). 1000-1500 words.

Puzzles 1. Choose two puzzles from Puzzle Sheet 1 and carefully write up complete solutions to them. These should be entirely readable by, for example, someone reading your Writing Portfolio, so you should include the statement of the problem.

What I'm looking for: clearly explained solutions and that you've pushed yourself to solve the trickiest problems you can. Also good is some commentary on your process for thinking about the problem. An extreme version of this are some failed attempts and thoughtful musing on one you could not solve.

No word limit. This is not designed to be part of the word count for those looking to submit a portfolio entirely from the class, but it certainly could be included.

Group assignment. Improve Pig. Take the basic structure of the game and come up with variations (probably extra complication) that give a richer game-play experience. As well as a ruleset, your write-up should include /why/ your version is better---you should reference both constituative and operational rules here---and why it is fair---you'll probably need some probability calculations.

Second writing assignment. As we discussed in class, the parameters are a bit looser this time. The one thing that is required is that it should tie in some way to Schema 2: Play. You can take it like the first assignment and write about a game using the theoretical tools S&Z introduce here. You can revise and extend your first paper to include some aspects of this schema. You can reflect on your own gaming life with reference to S&Z's characterisations. Or... if there's some other angle you want to take then talk to me. I'm looking for another 1000-2000 words for those of you who are relying on this class for portfolio requirements. Other than that, I'm flexible and want you to write about something you want to write about for a sensible amount of words.

http://cs.marlboro.edu/ courses/ spring2017/games/ special/assignments
last modified Wednesday May 10 2017 1:26 pm EDT