Author: Jesper

Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies

I have been looking at the rhetoric surrounding console launches. This is, for real, from Sony’s 2005 press release announcing the Playstation 3:

Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies and experience the excitement in real-time.

The same old drab way of selling a new console, of course, promising better graphics (joy!). But spot the really wonderful mistake of using literally as a modifier for emphasis: The selling point is not that games will feel more like movies, but that diving in is not a metaphor at all! You will literally be jumping headlong into your television set. Wow! Can’t wait!

PS. On the other hand, since we all so massively seem to agree that realistic 3d is not the way to go, I am beginning to hope that someone will actually stand up for 3d photo-realistic graphics. Any takers?

On the Game Studies Download 3.0 Shadow List

My article Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games made it to the “shadow list” of this year’s Game Studies Download session at the Game Developers Conference.

I’ll quote the shadow list description of the paper:

Juul, Jesper. “Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games.” Artifact journal, Volume 2, 2007. Also available at http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/swapadjacent/.

Games discussed: Tetris, Centipede, Puzzle Bobble, Zuma, Luxor, many others


Country: Denmark

The casual games marketplace puts conflicting pressures on game developers: Innovate enough to differentiate, but make the game sufficiently like other games that players find it easy to pick up and play. When player picks up a game, they are also using their conception of video game history to understand the new game.

The article presents a history of matching tiles games, including a complex family tree of influence and innovation. Categories in the family tree include timed vs. non-timed, methods of tile manipulation, and criteria for matching.

Innovation in casual games is incremental, and based on combinations of mechanics from existing games. This creates a somewhat schizophrenic environment of cutthroat competition between developers simultaneously trying to out-innovate and out-clone each other.

The basic development method has been analyzing existing games, identifying their basic components, and then creating prototypes that combined elements in new ways in order to create a moderately innovative matching tile game.

Takeaway: The key finding here for our audience is that the actual historical origins and influences of casual games developers are less important than the ones that the players come to the game with. The innovations that will be legible to these players depend strongly on their experience with specific previous games.

Xbox Live Arcade: The Democratization of Game Distribution, Peer Review, Community, all the Good Stuff

As speculated, Microsoft today announced at Game Developers Conference that they will open XNA and Xbox Live Arcade to developers.

It is called Xbox Live Community games and was described like this:

  • Developer makes and submits an XNA game using their “developer“´profile.
  • The game is “peer reviewed” by other developer to be screened for misuse of IP and “objectionable content”.
  • Game is made available to the public.

Details were spare on monetization, but the titles shown did say “limited trial” etc., so there seemed to an economic model in place.

Notice the good-guy rhetoric used: Community (obviously), the democratization of development and distribution, peer review (academia). As always, there may be some devil in the details.

The other interesting thing was that the games shown really did have an indie aesthetic – “low-fi” hand drawn graphics, offbeat themes. In other words, it seems that we do have an audience for games with an indie sensibility.

A few years ago I felt that half of the barrier for “indie games” was not distribution but the lack of an audience, and now it does looks like the “Youtube” phenomenon: Low production values, the feeling of something different, but a personal connection to the creator.

Indie has arrived, hasn’t it?

Game Developers Conference 2008

It is that time of year – going to Game Developers Conference in San Francisco with my new colleagues from GAMBIT and wondering:

  • What is the mood this year, now that the casual market has become a force with the Wii?
  • Will Microsoft open Xbox Live Arcade to developers and non-certified games?
  • Will Wiicade take off?
  • Is there life after Scrum?
  • Ray Kurzweil says what?
  • Casual games: Is the gravy train ride over?

This time of year, I always want to be liveblogging the event, but it never seems to happen – too busy, the wireless network never seems to work. Lots of excuses.

The Suicide Game: Player Perception of Self-destruction in a Game

I have put up a conference poster made in collaboration with Albert Dang and Kan Yang Li when I visited Design & Technology at Parson’s School of Design in the fall 0f 2006.

The poster documents an experiment in identifying a basic convention of video games, in this case that players always fight for their own survival, and exploring the ramifications of breaking the convention.

Albert Dang and Kan Yang Li built a two-player game in which the object of the players is to commit suicide by drinking poison and stabbing yourself.

Yes, it is somewhat uncomfortable and perhaps controversial, but we wanted to explore that space by way of a prototype and user testing. The poster was presented at the DiGRA conference in Tokyo September 2007.

Play the game here:  http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/suicidegame/

Read the poster here: http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/suicidegame.pdf

From the poster:

Video games do not necessarily present the player with a positive role to play: The player character may be a villain, be morally corrupt. Yet it is almost universally the case that
video games make players fight for the survival of their character. In a discussion of tragedy in interactive media, Marie-Laure Ryan has noted the seeming impossibility of an
Anne Karenina game, a game where the player’s ultimate goal is to commit suicide by throwing herself in front of a train:

Interactors would have to be out of their mind-literally and metaphorically–to want to submit themselves to the fate of a heroine who commits suicide as the result of a love affair turned bad, like Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. Any attempt to turn empathy, which relies on mental simulation, into first-person, genuinely felt emotion would in the vast majority of cases trespass the fragile boundary that separates pleasure from pain.
(Ryan 2001)

While Ryan identifies a clear game convention of players fighting for the survival of their character, we know little about what would happen were this convention to be broken:
How would players perceive the controversial or uncomfortable game content in a game where the player had to seek self-destruction?

The Suicide Game

Call for Papers: Future and Reality of Gaming

The Vienna Games Conference 2008 “Future and Reality of Gaming” will be held from 17th till 19th of October in Vienna.

Digital games have become a driving factor of contemporary cultural, social, and economic development. They are enablers of global cultural exchange and serve as entry points for media participation. However, the cultural, social and economic significance of games usually remains underestimated or misunderstood by the general public. In 2007, the City of Vienna decided to host “Game City”, a high profile event bringing together representatives of the games industry, non-profit organizations, academia and the general public for the discussion of the current state of computer games, digital youth cultures and games research. One key element of “Game City” was the Vienna Games Conference, which had the objective of serving as a public information platform as well as an international networking event for game researchers of various disciplines. Due to the overwhelming success of this concept, the “Game City” event and the Vienna Games Conference will be held again in the fall of 2008.Abstract submission: 28th of March 2008

Notification: 25th of April 2008

Full paper: 03rd of October 2008

Conference: 17th till 19th of October 2008

 

Call for Papers: Computer games, between text and practice

Computer games, between text and practice
call for papers per un numero monografico speciale di E/C,
e-journal dell’Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici
edited by / a cura di Dario Compagno e Patrick Coppock

Confirm participation and send the title of your paper before February 29th, 2008.
Papers (maximum length 20 pages, images not included) are due before April 30st, 2008.
From May 1st to June 31st, 2008, authors participate in the review process.
Online publication: July 2008

More here.

(I have decided to start posting more about call for papers and new publications.)

First use of the term “casual game”

I have been researching the first use of the term “casual game” and thought I had struck unexpected gold when this August 17, 1885 article from the New York Times came up in the search results: “Provisions for an Ocean Steamer”. I was awaiting the description of the game-playing habits of the passengers, enjoying, probably, a casual session of some card game en vogue at the time.

But the casual game in question is the other meaning of game, as in “hunted, non-domesticated animal”. Not sure what makes it casual though? Small amounts?

Casual Game

(The first use of “casual game” relating to game as in “rule-based pastime” is either 1919 or 1936, depending on how you interpret the 1919 article.)