Game design as play:players as designers

This document discusses the design and development of the Game Design as Play: Players as Designers research project. Game Design as Play is a project investigating games that are actively designed by their players during play through both a series of workshops and the development of a tabletop game called making it up as we go along.making it up as we go along draws from the philosopher Peter Suber’s Nomic (Suber, 1990), Bernie De Koven’s concept of the Well-Played Game (De Koven,2013), and concepts from critical pedagogy (Freire, 2017) and participatory art (Bishop, 2012),, in an attempt to flatten the hierarchy between game designer and game player. Players take turns to add and remove rules from the game as they play, acting as both game designer and player, and by necessity engaging in a dialogue about game design and their shared interest in playing together.</div

Ashitaka: an audiovisual instrument

This thesis looks at how sound and visuals may be linked in a musical instrument, with a view to creating such an instrument. Though it appears to be an area of significant interest, at the time of writing there is very little existing - written, or theoretical - research available in this domain. Therefore, based on Michel Chion’s notion of synchresis in film, the concept of a fused, inseparable audiovisual material is presented. The thesis then looks at how such a material may be created and manipulated in a performance situation. A software environment named Heilan was developed in order to provide a base for experimenting with different approaches to the creation of audiovisual instruments. The software and a number of experimental instruments are discussed prior to a discussion and evaluation of the final ‘Ashitaka’ instrument. This instrument represents the culmination of the work carried out for this thesis, and is intended as a first step in identifying the issues and complications involved in the creation of such an instrument

Game design as play:players as designers

This document discusses the design and development of the Game Design as Play: Players as Designers research project. Game Design as Play is a project investigating games that are actively designed by their players during play through both a series of workshops and the development of a tabletop game called making it up as we go along.making it up as we go along draws from the philosopher Peter Suber’s Nomic (Suber, 1990), Bernie De Koven’s concept of the Well-Played Game (De Koven,2013), and concepts from critical pedagogy (Freire, 2017) and participatory art (Bishop, 2012),, in an attempt to flatten the hierarchy between game designer and game player. Players take turns to add and remove rules from the game as they play, acting as both game designer and player, and by necessity engaging in a dialogue about game design and their shared interest in playing together.</div

ShoutFight!

A primarily sound-driven game developed to accompany an interactive game design talk called Playing Along, by Yann Seznec and Dr Niall Moody. Playing Along was a talk focusing on the way small changes to a game can have a sometimes outsized impact on the experience of playing that game.ShoutFight! comprises the main interactive element of the talk, and is designed in a modular fashion so that different elements can be gradually added to demonstrate this principle as the talk progresses.The Playing Along talk and ShoutFight! game have been presented at 2 events to date: The BFI Video Games Day 2018; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.Continue Edinburgh 2018, University of Edinburgh Business School

Breaking out of the frame

A webcam-based, crowd-driven game developed for the Generation ZX(X) event held in Camperdown Park and the grounds of the JTC Furniture Company on May 4th 2018

Generation ZX(X)

This document discusses the design and development of Generation ZX(X), a hybrid multi-media event which explored how video games and performance can enhance and complement one another and enliven different types of historical data: oral herstories, lived experience, collective memory and audio-video archives.Generation ZX(X) was a hybrid of live and virtual components: an audiowalk, a social play session (3 video games were developed and played in a pop-up arcade), a film projection and a musical performance. For Generation ZX(X), I worked with third year Games and Art students and staff from Abertay University. The event took place on the 4th May 2018, in Camperdown Park, and at the JTC Furniture Group – the former Timex Camperdown factory. The event was developed as part of Mona Bozdog’s SGSAH ARCS (Applied Research Collaborative Studentship) PhD - Playing with Performance/ Performing Play. Creating hybrid experiences at the fringes of video games and performance.The project engaged with the living memory and heritage of the Timex factory in Dundee, and its aim was to reclaim and rewrite the history of the charged site on Harrison Road and to challenge the ‘official’ history of the local games industry. The project explored the hidden figures of the video games industry: the women who assembled the ZX Spectrum computers in the Timex factory in Dundee, and the ramifications that this labour had for the city’s development as one of UK’s leading games development and education centres. <br/

Combined inhibition of p97 and the proteasome causes lethal disruption of the secretory apparatus in multiple myeloma cells.

Inhibition of the proteasome is a widely used strategy for treating multiple myeloma that takes advantage of the heavy secretory load that multiple myeloma cells (MMCs) have to deal with. Resistance of MMCs to proteasome inhibition has been linked to incomplete disruption of proteasomal endoplasmic-reticulum (ER)-associated degradation (ERAD) and activation of non-proteasomal protein degradation pathways. The ATPase p97 (VCP/Cdc48) has key roles in mediating both ERAD and non-proteasomal protein degradation and can be targeted pharmacologically by small molecule inhibition. In this study, we compared the effects of p97 inhibition with Eeyarestatin 1 and DBeQ on the secretory apparatus of MMCs with the effects induced by the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, and the effects caused by combined inhibition of p97 and the proteasome. We found that p97 inhibition elicits cellular responses that are different from those induced by proteasome inhibition, and that the responses differ considerably between MMC lines. Moreover, we found that dual inhibition of both p97 and the proteasome terminally disrupts ER configuration and intracellular protein metabolism in MMCs. Dual inhibition of p97 and the proteasome induced high levels of apoptosis in all of the MMC lines that we analysed, including bortezomib-adapted AMO-1 cells, and was also effective in killing primary MMCs. Only minor toxicity was observed in untransformed and non-secretory cells. Our observations highlight non-redundant roles of p97 and the proteasome in maintaining secretory homeostasis in MMCs and provide a preclinical conceptual framework for dual targeting of p97 and the proteasome as a potential new therapeutic strategy in multiple myeloma

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO COMPUTER-BASED MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DESIGN ABSTRACT

In recent years a large number of new computer-based musical instruments have been created. While a number of these have implemented a degree of non-audio feedback as a performance aid (which generally takes the form of either haptics or visuals), the majority have tended to focus specifically (and perhaps understandably) on the audio output, and have neglected other forms of feedback. This paper will examine recent developments in computer-based instruments and propose that an ‘integrated ’ approach, which combines audio, visual and haptic feedback, may be more beneficial in the construction of new musical instruments. Further, a preliminary design of such an instrument will be stated based on this approach

Dual p97 and proteasome inhibition induces high levels of apoptosis and disrupts protein degradation in MMCs.

<p>(<b>A</b>) A panel of human MMC lines were treated with the indicated concentrations of bortezomib (BTZ) or Eer1 for the indicated time. The proportion of live cells relative to DMSO-treated controls was determined by staining with Annexin V-FITC and PI (mean and SEM of 3 independent experiments). (B) MMC lines were treated with the indicated concentrations of BTZ and Eer1 for 48h (OPM-2, RPMI 8226) or 24h (U-266, KMS-11) and the proportion of live cells compared to controls determined as in A (*p<.05, **p<.001, two-sided student’s t-test). (<b>C</b>) BTZ-adapted AMO-1 MMCs co-cultured with human bone marrow MSCs, primary MMCs grown in the presence of IL-6, and healthy donor PBMNCs were subjected to single and dual inhibition with Bortezomib and Eer1 (the median of 3 technical replicates is shown). (<b>D</b>) Immunoblotting for ubiquitinated proteins and tubulin (loading control) carried out on whole cell extracts prepared from MMC lines treated with bortezomib, Eer1, or both inhibitors, for 24h (14h in KMS-11 cells due to their higher apoptotic sensitivity).</p

Combined inhibition of p97 and the proteasome dramatically affects ER configuration.

<p>(<b>A</b>) RPMI 8226 myeloma cells were stained with ER Tracker Blue-White DPX following treatment for 24h with bortezomib (BTZ; 5nM), Eer1 (5µM), or both. Representative confocal microscopic images show minor ER alterations after BTZ treatment, transformation of tubule-lamellar into globular ER structures after treatment with Eer1, and widespread ER vacuolisation after dual treatment. (<b>B</b>) Representative electron microscopic images of OPM-2 cells after treatment with BTZ (5nM), Eer1 (5µM), or BTZ and Eer1, for 24h. Arrows indicate classical ER in control cells, black arrowheads indicate moderately dilated and disrupted ER in Eer1-treated cells, and open arrowheads indicate vacuolised ER with reduced ribosomes on the cytosolic ER surface. Another cell treated with Eer1 and BTZ is shown at lower magnification (right panel). Areas of dilated perinuclear space are indicated by asterisks. Nu, nucleus. (<b>C</b>) BTZ and Eer1 have different effects on ER volume as shown by staining of OPM-2 cells with BFA-BODIPY after treatment for 24h with BTZ (5nM), Eer1 (5µM), or with BTZ and Eer1. A representative histogram (left panel) and the mean and SEM of 6 experiments (right panel) are shown (*p<.05, **p<.001, two-sided student’s t-test). (<b>D</b>) Immunoblotting for lumenal ER chaperones and tubulin (loading control) was carried out on whole cell extracts prepared from OPM-2 cells treated as in (C).</p