Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons:
Games, Spaces, & Worlds
A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by Chaim Gingold
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science in Information, Design & Technology
School of Literature, Culture, & Communication
Georgia Institute of Technology
April 2003

Committee:
Michael Mateas, Janet H. Murray (chair), Sha Xin Wei, & Will Wright
Original thesis .pdf (~14mb)
Comic Book Dollhouse v0.2 for Mac (370k) or Windows (1.2mb)
Table of Contents
I Thinking Across Genres
II Aesthetics of Miniature Worlds
2.1 Micro/Macro
2.1.1 Overview
2.1.2 Abstraction
2.2 Boundaries
2.2.1 Frames
2.2.2 Hide-and-reveal
2.3 Life
2.4 Inviting Participation
2.4.1 Intelligibility & Plasticity
2.4.2 Safety
2.4.3 Syntonicity
2.4.4 Scripting Play
2.4.5 Pleasures of Participation
2.5 Down the Rabbit-Hole
2.5.1 Worlds in Flux
2.5.2 Compound Worlds
2.5.3 Trespassing Across Worlds
2.5.4 Ontological Foregrounding
III Magic Crayons
3.1 Building Worlds
3.2 Exploiting the Player
3.3 Exploiting the Author
3.4 Snarled Worlds
3.5 Inert Worlds
3.6 What is a Magic Crayon?
3.7 Authorial Modes
3.8 Encouraging Authorship
3.9 Primitives
3.10 Domain
3.11 Origami Possibility Spaces
IV Pullulation & Ludic Playability
4.1 Possible Worlds Landscapes
4.2 Constraints & Ludic Playability
4.3 Input Constraints
4.4 Motivating Rules
V Who Am I? Point of View in Games
VI Comic Book Dollhouse
6.1 Goals
6.1.1 Encouraging a Storyworld Practice
6.1.2 Experiential Goals
6.2 Strategy
6.2.1 Representation & Comics
6.2.2 Authorship
6.2.3 Participation and Authorship, then Generation
6.2.4 Shallow Architecture, Deep Surface
6.3 Design
6.3.1 Overflight via Screenshots & Descriptions
6.3.2 Storyworld Primitives
6.3.3 Playing & Authoring
6.3.4 Interface
6.4 Future Work
References
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Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons Chaim Gingold © 2003