[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi, and welcome to this first unit on the video games creation course: art and technology. In this first unit, we will introduce what a video game is, their different uses and the gamification concept. I'm Enric Martí, professor at the Engineering School in the Autonomous University of Barcelona and coordinator of the Master of Video games creation. Concerning to the contents of this first unit, we will have an introduction, on the significance of the games in the humans. After that we will talk on what a video game is, which are the concrete properties a video game has. We will learn, during unit 3, to caracterize, to keep in mind many characteristics of a video game and, after that, we will talk on the three uses a video game can have. During the following subjects we will explain and give a general vision on those uses, such as the entertainment, the educational videogames and the gamification concept. Games are one of the activities which mostly defines humans. Since childhood people try to play, kids play and we try to create games which estimulate their learning and their activity. Many of the contemporary games come from the antiquity, from the first civilizations in which the game was defined or the rules were set so that they were able to compete. Some of the most important board games nowadays, such as chess or checkers, come from ancient civilizations. Games basically provide, on one hand, leisure and fun, and on the other hand, the development of cognitive and motor activities. They also provide competitivity due to goal achievements, and if speaking about teamplay, solidarity and some sort of friendship bond. The birth of computers and new technologies makes possible the existance of a new platform, a new field so that games can have a development and get to the general public. All those technologies give place to what we call video games. But what is a videogame? Hay diferentes definiciones. There are three of them we liked the most. The first would be an electronic device which, with the appropriate controls, simulates games on the screen of a TV or a computer. The idea is the simulation of games on screens, whether they are from a TV or from a computer, which makes possible that videogames can be seen or played on home screens. More technically, a videogame would be an informatic software and hardware created for the general entertainment and based on the interaction of one or more people and an electronic device which executes the program. The idea here, and it's a very important idea, is the interaction. The fact that a player can somehow control what is happening in the game and can decide where is the history or the activity of the video game going. The interaction can happen with one or many people. The interaction is very important, as it is a contact thread created between the user and the game, so if this thread is cut, if it is closed, the player can't control the game anymore, he can't control the continuity of the game, and thus he may lose interest on it. So, in a videogame it is a very important point to keep this common thread, to keep this interaction. As a newness or an interesting point in this definition found on Wikipedia, it mentions an electronic device, which can be a computer, an arcade system, a video game console, a hand device or a mobile phone, giving place to what we recently got as a market point in videogames, mobile phones, which have grown up on popularity the last years. We also liked this definition of video game, which says how playing with video games involves using our capacities and abilities, and the need of concentration, attention, control and tons and tons of emotion. An important point here is the emotion, as every single video games designer and video game wants to transmit an experience or an emotion to a player and, let's say, all the video games creation will transmit this emotion and this experience to the player. Video games today are the way in to information technologies and communications for kids and youngsters all over the world. Young people are getting more used to play video games every time. The learning of those video games is much more shorter in them because they are a lot more used to dealing with those new technologies. Lately these days, video games are not only for kids, also series of video games for adults have been created, so that they got to the grown up people through video games. The technological news and the interest of the companies in video games production have had a huge impact on society over the last 20 years, and it has brought the video games world to a great evolution and a very high competence between the different enterprises. A video game can also be a tool to foment relationships, dialog and different interactions between people groups, among the family, to be able to enjoy an extra leisure activity with the family or at home. Another insight of the video game is that it allows to share spaces and socialization environments between players, especially when they are online games. So the video game is also a transversal product in which different components such as art, culture, the audiovisual part, the techhnology, etc. come together. So different professional profiles take part on the creation of a video game in which each of them provides knowledge to this final product. So a video game is formed by a visual part, which are the images, an audio part, which is the music or the sound effects, a part of gameplay, very important so that the player has interest in the game, an interaction component to totally control in every single moment which is the action he wants to be done inside the game, the interaction, and also, a very important component of immersion, both in the text, in the history as in the senses. So all this has to give the player certain experiences and emotions to be transmitted. We can always say that, somehow, video games are an interactive cinema, as video games usually tell us a story and the player can have a certain control on where the story is going depending on the controls or the interaction that is planned in the game. [END OF THE AUDIO TRACK]