Author: Jesper

Game Studies issue 11/02

by Phillip D. Deen

Pragmatist philosophy of art provides an account of aesthetic experience particularly suited to the transactive and immersive qualities of video games and superior to spectatorial and institutional alternatives. It also distinguishes between mere emotion and artistic expression, providing a response to those who assert games cannot be aesthetic.

Bishojo Games: ‘Techno-Intimacy’ and the Virtually Human in Japanby Patrick W. Galbraith

This paper offers an in-depth analysis of bishojo games. Observing that interactions with shojo characters are central to the play experience, and building on Thomas LaMarre’s discussion of a free or open relation to technology grounded by the shojo as “god,” the paper considers what it means for players to interact intimately with gaming machines.

The Leisure of Serious Games: A Dialogueby Geoffrey M. Rockwell, Kevin Kee

In this dialogue, performed at a conference, the presenters test the claim that “games can be educational”. They draw on the insights of philosophers and theorists in an attempt to provoke discussion, and eventually agree that the line separating games and learning may be blurry, and that in game design we may find the seeds of serious play.

Subjective Measures of the Influence of Music Customization on the Video Game Play Experience: A Pilot Studyby Alexander Wharton, Karen Collins

The Xbox 360 introduced the ability for players to substitute a personal music playlist into any game produced for the console. We carried out a smalls study to explore the influence that a player’s selection of music has on both gameplay tactics and on their reported perceived levels of immersion.

Book Reviews

What is love?by Olli Leino

Gaming – Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Alexander R. Galloway, 2006. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4851-1

Tensions Between Meaning Construction and Persuasion in Gamesby Jan H.G. Klabbers

Persuasive Games. The expressive power of video games. Ian Bogost, 2007. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Pp. xii+450. ISBN-13: 978- 0-262-02614-7 (hardcover)

Congenial by Design: A Review of A Casual Revolutionby Stewart Woods

A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Jesper Juul, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-262- 01337-6

Not a Casual Review: Reading Jesper Juul’s A Casual Revolutionby Staffan Björk

A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Jesper Juul, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-262- 01337-6

Reading Processes: Groundwork for Software Studiesby Raine Koskima

Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games and Software Studies. Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01343-7

Critical Theory, Political Economy and Game Studies: A Review of “Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games”by Bart Simon

Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Nick Dyer-Witherford and Greig de Peuter, 2009. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN: 978-08166-6611-9

Hackers, History, and Game Design: What Racing the Beam Is Notby José P. Zagal

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN-13: 978- 0-262-01257-7

Book Review. Racing the Beamby Lars Konzack

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01257-7

Stock Trading as a Video Game

The Atlantic writes about the similarities between modern stock trading and video games.

Mind you, the game the traders play is nothing like Mario or Zelda or Megaman. It’s not a shoot-em-up or racing game. What it is is more like Starcraft or maybe TradeWars: an intense, cerebral, massively multiplayer real-time strategy game. It’s a game grounded in information: prices, mostly, but also all kinds of news and rumors and oblique signals, whether by way of balance sheets or CNBC. It’s the kind of game that requires the player to immerse himself in data, distill from it a sort of strategical gestalt, and convert that high-level battle plan into a series of discrete maneuvers, in this case trades on the open market.

(Via Dylan McKenzie.)

 

2nd Annual ‘No Quarter’ Exhibition at the NYU Game Center

Exhibition at the New York University Game Center:


Next Thursday, May 12th, at 7PM is the Game Center’s No Quarter Exhibition of Games, featuring new work by Terry Cavanagh, Ramiro Corbetta, and Charley Miller, as well as a showing of Clock by Luke O’ Connor.

One of the primary missions of the Game Center at NYU is to foster the development of creative and groundbreaking independent games. To this end we started the No Quarter Exhibition last year by commissioning three games from independent game makers, including the IGF nominated Nidhogg by Mark ‘messhof’ Essen, as well as Recurse by Matt Parker, and Deep Sea by Robin Arnott. You can find pictures from last year’s event on this link.

This year we’re continuing the tradition by commissioning new games from Terry Cavanagh, the creator of VVVVVV, Ramiro Corbetta, a game designer on the IGF Award winning Glow Artisan, and Charley Miller, a New York-based designer of board and big games. We’ll also be showcasing Clock, by Luke O’ Connor, which premiered at the New York indie arcade, BabyCastles.

Additionally, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be unveiling the NYC Winnitron at No Quarter! The Winnitron is a free-to-play arcade cabinet entirely devoted to playing independent games. We’re happy to be part of this exciting project and look forward to having this machine at our event! For more information about the Winnitron project follow the link here.

The games will be premiered at the No Quarter Exhibition opening party on May 12th, and will then be be on display and available to the public for the rest of the month.

RSVP is not required for this event.

Refreshments will be served.

Fall 2011 classes at the NYU Game Center

Some news about classes and the new minor at the New York University Game Center this fall.

I will be teaching a new “Advanced Topics in Game Studies” class which explores foundational issues in game studies in combination with a current topic (in this case “gamification”). (Details below.) For those interested and in the area, but not at NYU, PhD students at one of the schools in the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium should find it straightforward to sign up.

Game Design Minor

Starting this fall semester, we are proud to announce that students will be able to get a Minor in Game Design from the Game Center! This degree requires are three Game Center classes and two electives from our approved course list. Additionally, elective courses that are related to games may also be approved by Game Center faculty on a case by case basis. For a full list of pre-approved elective courses visit our website here: http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/courses If are interested in taking the minor, or have any other questions, please contact gamecenter@nyu.edu.

Fall Classes from the Game Center

We’re excited to introduce three new courses being offered by the Game Center! Along with Thinking about Games and Introduction to Game Design, we’ll be offering a large lecture course focused on game literacy (Games 101), a course which engages students with the current topics of Game Studies (Advanced Topics in Game Studies), and a game development course that will allow students to practice the skill of modding in small teams in a 3-D engine. (Game Development: Modding). For more information about any of our classes, see the text below.

Games 101

Instructor: Frank Lantz
Course Number: OART-UT 1600
Meeting Monday 6:20PM-9PM
Recitation Times (Students choose one section) Tuesday from 12:30PM – 3:15PM, Wednesday from 2:00PM – 4:45PM, Wednesday from 2:00PM – 7:40PM, Thursday 4:55PM – 7:40PM
Games 101 is the foundational course for the NYU Game Center. The focus of Games 101 is game literacy – a shared understanding of games as complex cultural and aesthetic objects. The class will incorporate lectures, discussion, readings, and writing assignments, but the primary activity of the class is critical play – playing games in order to better understand and appreciate them. The class will cover games on and off the computer, including classic and contemporary board and card games, sports, and games on the PC, internet, and consoles.

Introduction to Game Design

Instructor: Eric Zimmerman
Course Number: OART-UT 1605/2605
Meeting Tuesday from 9:30AM -12:15PM
Lab Time Tuesday from 6:20PM – 9:00PM
This class is an intensive, hands-on workshop addressing the complex challenges of game design. The premise of the class is that all games, digital and non-digital, share common fundamental principles, and that understanding these principles is an essential part of designing successful games. Learning how to create successful non-digital games provides a solid foundation for the development of digital games.
In this workshop, students will; analyze existing digital and non-digital games, taking them apart to understand how they work as interactive systems; create a number of non-digital games in order to master the basic design principles that apply to all games regardless of format; critique each other’s work, developing communication skills necessary for thriving in a collaborative field; explore the creative possibilities of this emerging field from formal, social, and cultural perspectives; develop techniques for fast-prototyping and iterative design that can be successfully applied to all types of interactive projects.

Thinking About Games

Instructor: Charles J Pratt
Course Number: OART-UT 1606/2606
Meeting Tuesday from 3:30PM-6:10PM
This class is an overview of the field of games that approaches them from several theoretical and critical perspectives. No special theoretical background or prior training is needed to take the course, but to have had a broad practical experience with and basic knowledge of games is a distinct advantage. Also, an interest in theoretical and analytical issues will help. You are expected to actively participate in the lectures, which are dialogic in form, with ample room for discussion.
The course will prepare the student to: Understand and discuss games from a theoretical perspective, as well as the components of a game; Apply new theories and evaluate them critically; Assess and discuss game concepts and the use of games in various contexts; Analyze games, and understand and apply a range of analytical methods.

Advanced Topics in Game Studies

Instructor: Jesper Juul
Course Number: OART-UT 1611/2611
Meeting Thursday 2:00PM – 4:45PM
Advanced Topics in Game Studies is a research-focused course that examines methodological and foundational issues in the study of video games. In addition, a current topic relating to video game culture, design, or theory will be explored every semester. The class is thereby focused on allowing students to actively participate in the development of video game theory, with specific attention to how video game studies evolve as a theoretical field, and how it interacts with changes in the design and culture of video games. The topic of this semester is is “gamification” – the use of game design in non-game contexts such as teaching, politics, or business.

Game Development: Modding

Instructor: Katherine Isbister
Course Number: OART-UT 1610/2610
Meeting Thursday from 9:30AM – 12:15PM
Lab Time Wednesday from 4:55PM – 8:25PM
In this course, students get practice building game play experiences through a series of short-cycle exercises. Students work in small teams to create and tune gaming experiences in a range of game genres, using the game engine that they will use in Game Studio (a semester-long project class). The course introduces students to production roles, playtesting, considerations of audience and platform, and other practical concerns in building games.

Unfortunate Game Events Seminar, May 19th 2011

The Unfortunate Game Events Seminar
-A Seminar on Failures, Tragedies, and other Unpleasant Aspects of Games

I have the pleasure of inviting you to the Unfortunate Game Events seminar on May 19th, 2011 at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen.

The Unfortunate Game Events seminar explores the dark side of games: It is clear that games are not simply “fun”, but what does it mean when games are decidedly unpleasant? How and why do we deal with failure in video games? Does the structure of game necessitate straightforward heroics, or can games contain tragic content? Have the introduction of usability methods into game design and the expansion of the game audience led to games becoming too easy? How can these lessons from games be applied to other types of design?

The seminar is free, but space is limited, so reserve a seat by emailing seminar@jesperjuul.net. Hope to see you there!

 

The seminar is sponsored by the Danish Centre for Design Research.

Up-to-date program and directions are available at http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/unfortunate-game-events

 

Preliminary Program

12:30   Coffee, registration

13:00   Welcome by Jesper Juul

13:15   Miguel Sicart & Douglas Wilson: Aesthetics of Abusive Game Design, From Kaizo Mario to Marina Abramović

13:55   Sara Mosberg Iversen: Failure in a broad challenge perspective

14:25   Jesper Juul: Video Games, the Art of Failure

14:55   Break

15:10   Lisbeth Klastrup: Death in Games and Social Stories

15:40   Jaakko Steenros: Tragedy and Live Action Role-playing Games

16:10   Aki Järvinen: Social Disasters: The Role of Failure in Social Games

16:40-17:00:    Final discussion

Seminar Directions

Seminar location: Auditorium 5, Philip de Langes Allé 10, DK-1435 Copenhagen C, Denmark.

Directions at http://dkds.dk/skolen/find_vej

Speaker bios

Sara Mosberg Iversen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Literature, Culture and Media at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. Her research interest is new media with a particular focus on digital games. Currently she is investigating how players of The Sims 3 construct, modify and play with place. Her earlier work focused more on digital games and the ways particular designs may facilitate and motivate different types of experiences.

Aki Järvinen is Creative Director at Digital Chocolate’s Helsinki studio. His PhD on emotions and video games, Games Without Frontiers was completed at University of Tampere in 2008. He blogs regularly on Games for Social Networks.

Lisbeth Klastrup is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where she is affiliated with the Digital Culture and Mobile Communication Research Group. She researches internet communication and culture, gameworlds and mobile communication, in particular social media formats. Currently, she is focusing on forms of personal storytelling (such as blogs or status updates) and user-generated content.

Jesper Juul is a video game theorist currently at The Danish Design School and New York University Game Center. He has previously worked at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Lab at MIT and at the IT University of Copenhagen. His books Half-Real and A Casual Revolution were published by MIT Press in 2005 and 2009. He maintains the blog The Ludologist on “game research and other important things”.

Miguel Sicart is Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, where he teaches game design. He received his Ph.D. in game studies 2006; taking a multidisciplinary approach to ethics and computer games, he studied issues of game design, violence and videogames and the role of age-regulation codes. His book The Ethics of Computer Games, based on his doctoral work, came out on MIT Press in 2009. He is currently working on developing a design framework for implementing ethical gameplay in digital games.

Jaakko Stenros (M.Soc.Sc.) works as a game researcher and a doctoral candidate at Game Research Lab (University of Tampere). He is an author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design (2009), as well as an editor of three books on role-playing games, Nordic Larp (2010), Playground Worlds (2008) and Beyond Role and Play (2004). He lives in Helsinki, Finland.

Douglas Wilson is a PhD candidate at IT University of Copenhagen’s Center for Computer Games Research, where he teaches and researches game design. He is also a co-founder of the Copenhagen Game Collective, a multi-gender, multi-national game design collective based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Wii 2 in 2012, Playstation and Xbox in 2014

The end of this unusually long console cycle is visible, with Nintendo today announcing that the Wii successor is coming in 2012; Sony and Microsoft “sources” saying that they are holding out until 2014.

Still an interesting time: now that the traditional 5-year console cycle is no longer set in stone, what will happen? Is there room for another console cycle based on (technically) better graphics? Will physical distribution go away? Is AAA development sustainable?

As I like to point out, budgets have traditionally been doubling for every console generation, but exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. If the PS4 has graphic capabilities that require a doubling of budgets, how many Red Dead Redemption*2 games will investment money be willing to support? And if there are only few games that exploit a PS4 properly, will people buy one? And if too few consoles are sold, how will platform holders recoup their investment?

The sound you hear is from an army of analysts working their spreadsheets.

Digital Culture & Education on Games and Second Language Acquisition in Asia

New issue of Digital Culture & Education on Digital Games and Second Language Acquisition in Asia.

 

Digital Culture & Education: Special Issue on Digital games and second language acquisition in Asia

-Guest edited by Michael Thomas

 

Articles

Learn English or die: The effects of digital games on interaction and willingness to communicate in a foreign language

-Hayo Reinders and Sorada Wattana

 

Learner autonomy development through digital gameplay

-Alice Chik

 

Digital gaming and second language development: Japanese learners interactions in a MMORPG

-Mark Peterson

 

Teaching and learning English through digital game projects

-Jonathan deHaan

 

Book Review

Nicola Whitton’s (2010) Learning with digital games: A practical guide to engaging students in higher education.

-Darren Elliot

Games are Getting Shorter (and that is Good)

Ars Technica has a good discussion of how and why games are getting shorter.

I do think that (single-player) video games still tend to be too long. When was the last time you completed a game in which major parts didn’t feel like filler?

The article notes the problem of time, which I also discussed in A Casual Revolution: However much players would like to put 40 hours into a game, there is only a tiny audience with that kind of time. Here are the completion rates for various recent games, from the article. (Note the Red Dead Redemption 7% completion rate!)

[Note: The graph should probably be titled Completion achievement rate – it represents the percentage of users who have earned the achievement for game completion – which means the percentage of user who completed the game (rather than % of achievements earned that it may sound like).]

Game completion rate

I like to joke that games should have twice-as-expensive but quarter-as-long Executive Editions for players with busy lives and more disposable income.

Part of the issue is that we may intuitively feel that a longer game gives more bang for the buck, even if we end up not completing it because all the filler is so uninspired. As the article says, hopefully we are starting to move beyond that.