Current Circuit Studio Projects
Collegiate E-Sports
Dr. Nicholas Taylor, Alex Hammond, Mally Dietrich
Professional, competitive gameplay - e-sports - is more popular than ever. Campuses are increasingly central to the ongoing popularization and diversification of e-sports, with leagues and tournaments dedicated to inter-school play and a number of US colleges offering scholarships to top gamers. Circuit Studio is excited to host two campus-based gaming clubs: LoLPack is the official League of Legends NCSU club, and meets every Monday in Circuit to share in their enjoyment of the game. Taylor, with the help of graduate and undergraduate student researchers, is conducting an ongoing ethnographic study of this inclusive community. NCSU Prime is a smaller group of elite players that studies game film in Circuit on Fridaynights, as part of their ongoing efforts to put NCSU among the top schools in intercollegiate League of Legends play.
Critical Play Session: Undertale
Sarah Evans, Christopher Kampe
Critical play sessions seek to provide a space to engage with and critically reflect on games. For this session, the organizers offered Undertale (2015). Following the game research methods articulated by Aarseth (2003), Carr (2009), Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum (2011), the organizers provided an environment that allowed individuals to play directly, play indirectly (commentary), and observe others at play. During the session, participants were encouraged to take note of particularly salient moments of play. At the close of the session, participants collaboratively developed a document that examines, the mechanics/content of the game, the subject/player positions it allows, and the possible instructive and research-centric uses for this game (design, social/critical discussion, etc.).
Twine Workshop for Teaching, Research and Self-Expression
Sarah Evans & MK Hendrick
As part of CRDM’s annual research symposium Sarah Evans and MK Hendrick (M.A. Linguistics) collaborated to present a workshop on the interactive story-telling tool Twine. A short overview of its capacities was presented and possibilities for using the tool for teaching, research, and self-expression were explored. Participants were given time to play with the tool and brainstorm about how they might use it.
SmoothSketch
Eddie Lohmeyer
This project was designed to move beyond the representational by exploring Delueze and Guattari’s concepts of “smooth” and “striated” spaces through visual and haptic gameplay. Players use sticks of graphite to draw on the surface designed with conductive paint and graphite to control the protagonist in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (1995).