My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things.
For your theoretical delectation: Well Played: volume 6 number 3
Agency, Identity, Sex, Gender, and Pokémon Go
Allison Bannister
So Close You Can Feel Her
Prostitution, Proximity & Empathy in Grand Theft Auto 5
Elena Bertozzi, Amelia Bertozzi-Villa
Learning at the Farm
Developmental Psychology in Peekaboo Barn
Carly A. Kocurek, Jennifer L. Miller
Taking Over the World, Again?
Examining Procedural Remakes of Adventure Games
Anastasia Salter
For your theoretical delight, a new issue of Game Studies.
Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research has just published its latest issue (Volume 17, Issue 1, July 2017). All articles are available at www.gamestudies.org/1701
Articles
Watching People Is Not a Game: Interactive Online Corporeality, Twitch.tv and Videogame Streams
by Sky LaRell Anderson
This article examines Twitch.tv in order to reveal the design strategies it employs to direct awareness to the presence of players and viewers. Specifically, I describe the elements that direct attention toward humans, persons and personalities outside of games.
Glory to Arstotzka: Morality, Rationality, and the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy in Papers, Please
by Jason J. Morrissette
This article examines how ludic and thematic elements coalesce in Papers, Please to replicate the monotony of bureaucratic work, trapping players in Weber’s iron cage of bureaucracy. Moreover, by offering opportunities to deviate from administrative protocols, the game highlights the inherent tension between morality and bureaucratic rationality.
Abstracting Evidence: Documentary Process in the Service of Fictional Gameworlds
by Aaron Oldenburg
This paper looks at a strategy for creating content and gameplay using documentary processes such as interviews and on-location evidence collection for games that abstract that content with varying levels of fictionalization.
An Enactive Account of the Autonomy of Videogame Gameplay
by Jukka Vahlo
In this paper, the phenomenon of videogame gameplay is analyzed from an enactive view of social cognition. It is asserted that videogame gameplay arises as an autonomous organization in the reciprocal dynamics between at least one social agent and a responsive game. This autonomy is argued as both original and irreducible to its constituents.
Today is the start of the 12th installment of the Nordic Game Jam.
Going through my old files, here is the draft document describing the first “Nordic Game Jam” (yes, quotes) in 2006, which was organized by Henriette Moos, Gorm Lai and me.
By now, the language is positively quaint, patiently explaining that it’s about “making a game in a weekend”, and framing it as a workshop.
Nordic Game Jam is a weekend workshop in January 27-29th 2006 at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark. The workshop is about “making a game in a weekend”, dealing with game design and technical issues, and meeting other people working with game design and development.
This was not the first game jam to be held, but it was possibly the first to be centered around teams, rather than around individual programmers. This was a departure from the single-programmer and engine-oriented style of the Indie Game Jam, which I’d been to in 2005.
During the next few years, the Nordic Game Jam helped the broad acceptance of the game jam format, and it’s in part responsible for the incredible glut of indie and experimental games that we see today.
Compare today’s environment with the fact that my mere participation in the 2005 Indie Game Jam was enough to make my game shown at the Experimental Gameplay workshop at GDC. Doesn’t work like that anymore.
I remain extremely happy to have participated in making the Nordic Game Jam happen.
Continued from yesterday’s survey of Game Developers Conference 2017 tweets, here are the most common words on the #gdc17 twitter hashtag for March 3rd 2017, fifth and final day of the conference:
Michael Chu of Blizzard gets the most mentions, quoted for saying that Blizzard embraces diversity in Overwatch.
And last day, of course.
And those were the main themes on Twitter.
Time: The first time I did this, a mere 8 years ago, Twitter wasn’t yet an integral part of the communication strategy of every company on the planet, so it felt more like these word clouds were revealing something fundamental about the conference.
Today, Twitter has to be approached with some skepticism. I have had to remove the endless stream of tweets that concerned the promise of prizes for everyone retweeting a particular tweet. And you never know how many accounts are real, and how many are puppets made for whatever reason.
But still: This GDC had no dominant theme.
Continued from yesterday’s survey of Game Developers Conference 2017 tweets, here are the most common words on the #gdc17 twitter hashtag for March 2nd, 2017, the fourth day of the conference:
Still congratulations for the Developer Choice Awards.
“Innovation” comes from a snarky retweeted messages to No Man’s Sky makers Hellogames: “CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GAME DEVELOPERS CHOICE AWARD FOR INNOVATION ᵃᵖᵒˡᵒᵍᶦᶻᵉ”.
“Creepiest” refers to a face-scanning technology.
The Final Fantasy XV tech demo video is mentioned.
And “party”.
So still no standout story or theme. Some years have a theme on Twitter, some don’t.
Continued from yesterday’s survey of Game Developers Conference 2017 tweets, here are the most common words on the #gdc17 twitter hashtag for March 1st, 2017, the third day of the conference:
Today: Game Developer Choice Awards, with lots of congratulations.
Biggest talk was Nintendo on Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, by Hidemaro Fujibayashi, Satoru Takizawa and Takuhiro Dohta, whose names show up.
Windows and Acer are mentioned for mixed reality headsets. (The MR refers to the Nintendo presenters though, not Mixed Reality.)
Noctis from Final Fantasy XI also makes it.
Continued from yesterday’s survey of Game Developers Conference 2017 tweets, here are the most common words on the #gdc17 twitter hashtag for February 28, 2017, the second day of the conference:
Again, no dominant topic, but booths, showcases, artwork, mobile, VR.
As part of my Game Developers Conference tweet series, here are the most common words on the #gdc17 twitter hashtag for February 27, 2017, the first day of the conference:
This suggests a conference with no dominant theme.
VR and Mobile stand out, but then there are specific events for those happening these two first days.
VR is a less popular tag now than the same day, last year.
PS. I’ve filtered out the tweets where unnamed companies were promising prizes for retweets. This is also what Twitter is becoming.