alien, ricochets off a barrier, then off another, and hits the little figure that explodes.
The affordances of mode and medium both enable and constrain the design of the
game and the construction of the concept of ‘bounce’.
Even though the initial design on paper was designed with screen and Toontalk in
mind, the move to design the game on screen and the multimodal resources of
Toontalk demands a transformation of the students’ notion of the game modally. The
students are required to move the initial design from the boundaried flat page to open
multimodal and multi-dimensionality of the screen. They move from the affordances
of written word and static line drawing, to the affordances of colour, ready-made
images, movement, and sound effect. The students have to transform the shape of
bounce /rule as written in language (and image) to the multimodal Toontalk system.
The visual design of the game narrative in Toontalk brings out the students’
ambiguities about the movement of the game elements in the second game-design
session. These ambiguities are present in the paper and pen design of the game;
designing the game on screen, however, the modal affordances of Toontalk - in
particular the potential for movement - ‘demand’ that these ambiguities be resolved.
Toontalk offers the potential to represent the movement of game elements and
requires a behaviour to be attached to an object. This serves to foreground the agency
of an object in the game-design process. It raises the question ‘what objects have
agency’ - an issue that is present but not required to be resolved in the pen and paper
game-design. In short, the modal affordances of writing, drawing and the screen
demand different epistemological commitments, these are summarised in Table 5.3.
As they move from page to screen the students are involved in the modal
transformation of the elements (signs) that feature in the game and the entity
‘bounce’.
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