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.
So the GTA IV trailer? features music by Philip Glass and looks a lot like Koyaanisqatsi.
For a moment I am hoping that Rockstar is really thinking outside the box – after 80’s kitsch and Hip hop, the time has come to build a game around classical minimalist composers, with Terry Riley, John Cage, et al. as starring characters.
Probably not, but it would be outside the box.
During GDC I played Peggle, and I picked up the design term juicy from Chaim Gingold: A juicy interface is one that gives excessive amounts of feedback for all of your actions – particle effects (you can’t have too many), halos, sounds, things that glow, bounces, echoes, and so on. Juicy interfaces are usually incredibly satisfying, and it is one of the things that PopCap excel at creating. Juicy interfaces are generally quite addictive, in the positive sense.
So I realized that my email program for years has been set up to make me addicted to the wrong thing: There is a bell when a mail comes in, which gives me your old variable interval reinforcement “ah, yes, that’s the stuff”-feeling. So I get addicted to checking my mail, which is completely unproductive.
I want to be addicted to replying to mail, so I removed the sound for when mail comes in and I’ve set up a sound for when I send an email. Now, sending a mail is much juicier than it used to be, and my email experience is much better.
Technically, I would like the mail program to provide extra feedback for when I reply to a mail vs. sending a mail (can’t see how to do that in Eudora). Why not particle effects, halos, sounds, things that glow, bounces, echoes?
I want a really juicy email experience.
[Update: I now realize that Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, Matt Kucic, and Shalin Shodhan discussed juiciness a while ago on Gamasutra.]
To follow up on my previous post about the Metagame at GDC: It would have been out of line to openly brag.
“It was all about creating discussion”, but as a member of the losing blue team, I did see some smugness in the eyes of the winning red team (Jonathan Blow, Tracy Fullerton, Warren Spector).
And afterwards, I did keep returning to how we might have rephrased our final question. But I tried to hide it.
There you have it: a real-life negotiation of the border between what is in the game and what is outside the game.
I am on my way to the MetaGame session where we are to play a video game discussion game.
And I realize that I am in a position that I have written about theoretically: Since we haven’t played the game before, not with these people, and not in this context, I don’t know how much bragging is allowed. Can I sulk if we lose? Is it about discussion, or is about winning? What is the balance?
What is the lusory attitude of my own team? What is the attitude of the other team? What is the attitude of the audience?
In San Fransisco for the Game Developers Conference.
I wonder what the mood will be like this year. I think GDC ’05 was all about next-gen worries, ’06 was more about prototyping, and ’07 will be … what?
I guess most people will be happy about the Wii (innovation, smaller budgets), but that the big issue remains the platform holders controlling what games get in. Casual games and downloads in general remain the big hope, but how high can you go?
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My session this year is the MetaGame: A Battle of Videogame Smarts, which is all about discussing games with a pretty cool group of people:
The Metagame: A Battle of Videogame Smarts
Speaker: Frank Lantz (Creative Director, area/code), Eric Zimmerman (CEO, Gamelab), Warren Spector (PRESIDENT, JUNCTION POINT STUDIOS), Marc LeBlanc, Jesper Juul (Video Game Theorist/Assistant Professor, IT University of Copenhagen), Clint Hocking (Creative Director, Ubisoft Divertissements Inc), Jonathan Blow, Tracy Fullerton (Professor, University of Southern California)
Date/Time: Friday (March 9, 2007) 9:00am ? 10:00am
Session Description
Which game is more beautiful: Asteroids or Virtua Fighter? Is Sim City more innovative than Super Mario 64? Does Grand Theft Auto tell a better story than Planetfall? If you have ever discussed, fought over, or even just thought about questions like these, then you are ready to experience The Metagame. Combining a game show format with boardgame strategy and lively debate, The Metagame pits two teams of game experts against each other to debate and discuss vital questions of game aesthetics.
In this contest of strategy and smarts, our teams of game developers, critics, and theorists have to decide which games are more elegant, more influential, a better way to waste 10 years, or a better way to waste 10 minutes than others. When disagreement erupts, teams will challenge each other to debate the best answer but the audience will make the final decision.
Gameology pointed me to Rosemarie Fiore’s long exposure shots of old arcade games.
By strange coincidence, I have been working on something similar lately. (For the sake of truth, not beauty.) Here are two time lapses from the beginning and the end of a level of Asteroids:
Here is the same for Defender:
The aim here was to illustrate how the spatial layout of each game changes during a level – this is part of a piece for the Space Time Play anthology.
Asteroids goes from few large rocks > many small rocks. The Defender images are not quire as revealing, but the radar shows how aliens are initially distributed throughout the world, but hone in on the player at the end of a level.
This weekend saw the 2nd Nordic Game Jam held at the IT University in Copenhagen. In Danish, here is the press release and some pictures. With 80 participants, it seems to be the largest game jam in the world so far.
Since I wasn’t an organizer this year, I could focus on actually making a game. With the great team of Thomas Dougans, Rasmus Keldorff, Mike Sj?rslev Khamphoukeo, Tim Nielsen and myself, we created the two-player strategy game Baa-aah: The Lord is my Shepherd.
The core of the game is protecting your sheep from drowning in the rising water, while attacking your opponents’ sheep. To this end, you can terraform the land, building and breaking dams. Additionally, your sheep can be sacrificed to dramatically raise and lower a portion of the playing field. Here is a screenshot towards the end of a game:
Method-wise, we started by creating a level editor before making anything playable, and then we simply toyed around with making different levels, playing them, and refining the basic gameplay.
The game isn’t anywhere finished, but it’s actually playable and fairly fun, and I am quite proud that we did this in <48 hours.
Oh, and we were voted best game of the event by the participants ;)
(There’s a jury prize and an audience prize.)
The IT University (http://www.itu.dk/), home of the Center for Computer Games Research (http://game.itu.dk), is seeking applicants for two positions as Associate or Assistant Professor of game development. The faculty will teach in our international English language program that focuses on game design, analysis, and technology (http://www.itu.dk/mtg/). Relevant areas of research and teaching are:
For full information about the positions and application procedures please visit http://www1.itu.dk/sw58262.asp. Application deadline is 16 April 2007 at 12:00 noon. Questions about the position can be directed to Associate Professor T.L. Taylor (tltaylor@itu.dk).