Author: Jesper

For your theory pleasure, the Conference Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008 have now been published, edited by Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe and Dieter Mersch, with the editorial cooperation of Sebastian Möring. Download it here.

I discussed my own contribution in the previous post, here is the table of contents.

Table of contents

Petra Müller: Preface

Patrick Coppock: Introduction

Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe and Dieter Mersch: Editor’s Note

Keynotes
Ian Bogost: The Phenomenology of Videogames

Richard Bartle: When Openness Closes. The Line between Play and Design

Jesper Juul: The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece

Ethics and Politics
Anders Sundnes Løvlie: The Rhetoric of Persuasive Games. Freedom and Discipline in America’s Army

Kirsten Pohl: Ethical Reflection and Emotional Involvement in Computer Games

Niklas Schrape: Playing with Information. How Political Games Encourage the Player to Cross the Magic Circle

Christian Hoffstadt/Michael Nagenborg: The Concept of War in the World of Warcraft

Action | Space
Bjarke Liboriussen: The Landscape Aesthetics of Computer Games

Betty Li Meldgaard: Perception, Action, and Game Space

Stephan Günzel: The Space-Image. Interactivity and Spatiality of Computer Games

Mattias Ljungström: Remarks on Digital Play Spaces

Charlene Jennett/Anna L. Cox/Paul Cairns: Being ‘In The Game’

Souvik Mukherjee: Gameplay in the ‘Zone of Becoming’. Locating Action in the Computer Game

Dan Pinchbeck: Trigens Can’t Swim. Intelligence and Intentionality in First Person Game Worlds

Robert Glashüttner: The Perception of Video Games. From Visual Power to Immersive Interaction

The Magic Circle
Britta Neitzel: Metacommunicative Circles

Yara Mitsuishi: Différance at Play. Unfolding Identities Through Difference in Videogame Play

Eduardo H. Calvillo-Gámez and Paul Cairns: Pulling the Strings.
A Theory of Puppetry for the Gaming Experience

Michael Liebe: There is no Magic Circle. On the Difference
between Computer Games and Traditional Games

My keynote presentation from the 2008 Philosophy of Computer Games conference can now be downloaded here: The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece.

This is my attempt at giving some nuance to recent discussions about the magic circle of games. Abstract:

In a common description, to play a game is to step inside a concrete or metaphorical magic circle where special rules apply. In video game studies, this description has received an inordinate amount of criticism which the paper argues has two primary sources: 1. a misreading of the basic concept of the magic circle and 2. a somewhat rushed application of traditional theoretical concerns onto games. The paper argues that games studies must move beyond conventional criticisms of binary distinctions and rather look at the details of how games are played. Finally, the paper proposes an alternative metaphor for game-playing, the puzzle piece.

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Postscript

With The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece I had been hoping to create a paper as balanced as my old Games Telling Stories? paper, wherein I would elaborate the merits of pro and con arguments concerning the magic circle.

What I found was that in hindsight, the games vs. stories discussion was the easy one: The participants agree that there exists something called games, and that we can discuss whether or not these can be considered stories.

The discussion of the magic circle is much harder because the participants fundamentally disagree about the terms of the discussion: Proponents of the magic circle metaphor consider it interesting to examine to what extent a game session is or isn’t separate from something outside that game session. Critics of the magic circle, on the other hand, have objections to the question itself because they assume that the metaphor is fundamentally problematic for various historical and theoretical reasons that I mention in the paper.

In other words, the magic circle discussion has not happened so far. In the paper, I hope to have opened a tiny hole in the wall through which future conversations can take place.