Author: Jesper

Casual Games as Treatment for Depression (?)

A Popcap-sponsored study of using casual games as treatment for depression has been making the rounds the last few days. (Here, here, here.)

The table shows changes over time (pre study – post study): test subjects who were told to play a casual video game at regular intervals (bottom data) showed much greater improvement than a control group who were not asked to make any changes (top data).

As usual, I should say that I am not trained in psychology, but the study would be a lot stronger if there was a second control group who was subject to another type of intervention – therapy, drugs, any kind of behavioral change. As far as I know, certain psychological states are not only likely to change over time (as happens with the control group who does get better), but are also influenced by any type of intervention or change in behavior. The two underlying questions that I would like to see answered:

  1. Does Bejeweled work better than cooking classes or reading?
  2. Do different games work differently? My feeling is that asking novice users to play StarCraft II would increase depression.

(The study isn’t published yet, but the slides can be found here.)

What I have been doing lately

An update on what I have been doing the last 6 months:

I am spending the period from summer 2010 – summer 2011 in Copenhagen, where I am working on a research project at the Danish Design School. The project is to write a small book on the subject of Failure in video games (the failures of the player, that is). The project is sponsored by the Danish Centre for Design Research.

I continue to be affiliated with the New York University Game Center, to which I am returning physically in the summer.

The Dangers of Games in the Workplace

In the wake of Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, I participated this week in a round table at Zócalo Public Square on the subject of “How Will Video Games Change the Way We Work?” The other participants were Mark Deuze, Paul Dourish, Nick Yee, and David Rejeski.

Here is my contribution.

Games can be a huge help—but have huge limitations

Reality is Broken makes a strong case for applying the lessons of video games to work, and to the rest of the world. While I am very sympathetic to this idea, I would like to add a caveat: Games work well in part because they provide clear goals and feedback, but the application of clear goals and feedback to work environments has in many cases proved disastrous. The employees of (for example) Washington Mutual have explained how they were being measured exclusively on the number of loans they were approving (clear goals), and how they were threatened with sanctions if they asked too many questions about a customer’s ability to pay (feedback). In fact, much of the financial crisis was due to the application of game-like design principles to work, where employees were forced to work toward short-term goals that were detrimental to the health of their company and the economy at large. In the Eastern Bloc, Polish furniture factories used to be rewarded on the basis of the weight of their total output, and consequently made the heaviest furniture in the world.

The key is to recognize that it is fine to set up goals and feedback in work environments only as long as everybody – from CEO to temp employee – understands that performance measures only give a partial image of reality. Clear goals and feedback are only inspiring in work situations when we have the discretion to decide how seriously we want to take them, and as long as there is no higher-level manager that takes the performance measure literally anyway. Games are also enjoyable because they give us wiggle room. If we are to use game design principles outside games, we need to make sure that the wiggle room is still there; we need to make sure that we are still allowed to use our sound judgment when faced with a performance goal.

I am probably coming out as a skeptic of gamification here, but the point really is that game conventions should not be blindly applied everywhere.

My argument is more fully developed in the book on Failure that I am currently working on.

Depth in one Minute: A Conversation about Bejeweled Blitz

I have posted an essay called Depth in one Minute: A Conversation about Bejeweled Blitz, which I co-wrote with Rasmus Keldorff for the new Well Played 2.0 anthology.

This is a conversation about the design and merits of the Blitz format, about how we develop strategies, about chance, about the danger of burning out on a specific game, and about the difference between younger and older players.

Incidentally, this is the fourth time I have written about Bejeweled (first time about matching tile games, second time about casual games, third time as game of the decade). It’s a bit like writing about haiku or minimalism – because there is so little to see, there is so much to say.

Read the paper here: http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/depthinoneminute/

DiGRA 2011 Conference Call For Papers

THINK DESIGN PLAY 5th International Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference 14-17 September 2011

Hosted by the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands

http://www.gamesconference.org

Call for participation

After Leveling Up in the Netherlands (2003), Changing Views in Canada (2005), Situated Play in Japan (2007) and Breaking New Ground in England (2009) the 5th DiGRA Conference returns to Utrecht for Think Design Play

The goal of the DiGRA conference is to advance the study of games and playfulness. DiGRA 2011 seeks to connect game research to the creative industries and society by fostering the development of an integrated practice of game research, design, engineering, entrepreneurship and play. The conference is designed as a physical and online playground for meaningful dialogue between all players in the field of games. Whilst the conference will include the presentation of (peer-reviewed) papers and practice, invited talks and workshops, we are also very interested in supporting alternative forms and processes through which to participate and stimulate debate and discussion.

Topics

The focus of the 2011 DiGRA conference is on integrated practices of game research, the creative industries and society (think: game design, engineering, entrepreneurship and play). We invite contributions on all topics and perspectives.

Submission and deadlines

Submissions are subject to peer review. Submissions should be in ACM SIG format and PDF (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates). Full papers will be published in conference proceedings, special issue journals as well as at the Digital Library of Digital Game Research Association on the DiGRA website (http://www.digra.org/dl).

Papers (individual or multi-author): submit an abstract of 600-800 words.

Full papers (optional): manuscripts of up to 7.000 words will be accepted for review. These will be reviewed and judged separately from abstract submissions. You do not need to submit an abstract in order to submit a full paper.

Alternative forms: we are also very interested in supporting alternative forms and processes through which to participate and stimulate debate and discussion, think: posters, panels, roundtables and workshops but feel free to move beyond!

  • Abstract papers and alternative forms submission: 21 February 2011
  • Notification of acceptance: 12 April 2011
  • Full paper submission: 18 April 2011
  • Full paper notification of acceptance: 17 June 2011
  • Camera ready version: 8 August 2011

The 5th DiGRA conference is hosted by the Utrecht School of the Arts The Utrecht region is the prime location in the Netherlands for activities related to game design and technology. The Utrecht School of the Arts is one of the largest art and culture-oriented institutes in Europe. The institute links design education and research to the creative industries and society. The DiGRA conference is hosted by the Faculty of Art, Media & Technology where creative design & research are practised in the combined fields of games, media and music, for entertainment as well as meaningful application. Together with Utrecht University, the Utrecht School of the Arts founded the Dutch Game Garden, an incubator for new game companies. and participates in the extensive GATE game research program.

Salman Rushdie on Video Games & Storytelling

Over the years, I’ve seen several references to Salman Rushdie’s apparent love for love-hate relationship to video games. As I recall, he professed to being a heavy game player during his years in hiding, and he has recently declared his passion for Angry Birds.

Here he discusses storytelling and video games. A bit on the short side, but he understands Rockstar’s typical mostly-linear + sandbox game structure and puts in the obligatory Borges reference.

The Independent Games Festival Nuovo Awards Finalists

I was judging the Independent Games Festival Nuovo awards this year, and the eight finalists have been announced.

It’s an interesting time, and it’s a challenge to have to rethink what constitutes “new” or “unconventional”. Is a game suitably new if it applies a new theme to an old mechanic? A new graphics style? If it makes a hitherto unseen organic whole of disparate elements? If it shifts the emphasis from traditional gameplay to something else?

At the same time, yesterday’s innovation is today’s entrenched style, and it is a challenge to make sure that we do not simply end up rewarding the same-old genre that was innovative 5 years ago.

(Some might say that pixelated indie platformers have been on the verge of becoming a stale pseudo-signifier of innovation. But I think there is still life in the form.)

From the IGF site:

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The Independent Games Festival (IGF), the prestigious GDC-held video game industry event highlighting and awarding the talents of independent game developers, has announced the finalists for the 2011 Nuovo Award, which honors “abstract, short-form, and unconventional game development.”

Some of this year’s finalists include unconventional party game Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now (B.U.T.T.O.N.), first-person dinner simulation title Dinner Date, Messhof’s chunky 2-player fencing title Nidhogg, and zen-like tree simulation title Bohm.

The Nuovo Award, the top video game art prize, is announcing an increase to $5,000 for this year’s award winner, thanks to the quality of this year’s entries. The winner of the award will be revealed at the Independent Games Festival Awards on March 2, 2011 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, during Game Developers Conference 2011. In addition, all Nuovo finalists will be playable in a special section of the IGF Pavilion on the GDC show floor from March 2nd to 4th.

Now in its third year, the Nuovo Award allows more esoteric art games from among the almost 400 IGF entries to compete on their own terms alongside longer-form indie titles, and has been newly expanded this year to include eight finalists.

The full list of this year’s Nuovo Award finalists, with links to screenshots and videos of the titles on their official IGF.com entry pages, is as follows:

– Bohm, created by Monobanda – (“Gives you control over the life of a tree. It’s a game based on slow gameplay and the act of creation.”)

– A House in California, created by Cardboard Computer – (“A surreal, narrative game about four characters who bring a house to life… with environments and activities drawn from a combination of memory, research, poetry, and fantasy.”)

– Nidhogg, created by Messhof – (“A 2 player fencing game with football & platforming elements”.)

– Dinner Date, created by Stout Games – (“You play as the subconsciousness of Julian Luxemburg, waiting for his date to arrive. You listen in on his thoughts while tapping the table, looking at the clock and eventually reluctantly starting to eat…”)

– Loop Raccord, created by Nicolai Troshinsky – (“Manipulate a series of video clips in order to create… continuous movement.”)

– The Cat and the Coup, created by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad – (“A documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.”)

– Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now (B.U.T.T.O.N.), created by Copenhagen Game Collective – (“A one-button party game for 2-8 players. … rather than let the computer carry out all the rules, the players are themselves responsible for enforcing (or not enforcing) the rules.”)

– Hazard: The Journey Of Life, created by Demruth – (“A philosophical first person single player environmental puzzle game. The game presents no goals directly to the player, but they create goals for themselves based on what they know of the world.”)

The Nuovo Award had recommendations put forward by over 150 of the IGF’s Main Competition judges, and the winners picked – via active discussion and voting – by an elite jury of the video game industry’s top thinkers on the future of art and the video game medium. The jury included previous winner Jason Rohrer (Between), as well as lauded game creators including Paolo Pedercini (Every Day The Same Dream), Ian Bogost (A Slow Year), Daniel Benmergui (Today I Die) and more.

In addition to the 8 Nuovo finalists, the jury also awarded honorable mentions to the following 5 outstanding Nuovo-styled titles which also deserve recognition: Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games), Faraway (Steph Thirion), Feign (Ian Snyder), Choice Of Broadsides (Choice Of Games), and Spy Party (Chris Hecker).

“This year’s finalists for the Nuovo Award perfectly embody what this award was created to celebrate — a set of games that could hardly be more different from each other than they are from the wider body of entrants in this year’s festival,” said IGF chairman Brandon Boyer.

“Running the gamut from quiet reflections on both nature and ourselves, to raucous new-arcade experiences designed to entertain onlookers as much as the participants of the game, each finalist showcases the unconventional approach of the indie community to new forms of play.”

For more information on the Independent Games Festival, including a more detailed statement from the Nuovo Jury and many more details on entrants and finalists, please visit the official IGF website. IGF Main Competition and Student Competition finalists will be announced, as originally scheduled, in early January 2011.

For those interested in registering for GDC 2011, which includes the Independent Games Summit, the IGF Pavilion and the IGF Awards Ceremony, please visit the official Game Developers Conference website.