Category: games

Game Studies 11/01: Special Issue on Game Reward Systems

The new special issue of Game Studies on Game Reward Systems is out. This issue was edited by Mikael Jakobsson and Olli Sotamaa.

Editorial

Editorial.

by guest editors Mikael Jakobsson and Olli Sotamaa

The guest editors introduce this special issue on game reward systems by discussing its origin, the focus, the need for further studies, and by presenting the included papers.

Articles

by Christopher Moore
Virtual millinery items were introduced as achievement based rewards for players of Team Fortress 2 in 2009. With attention to these highly sought after items, this article is concerned with promoting attention to the many ‘affects’ involved in the design and play of First Person Shooter (FPS) games.
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by Jason Begy, Mia Consalvo
Multiple frameworks for examining the motivations and achivements of MMO players exist, but many are based on assumptions about what kinds of fictional worlds these games contain. Using examples from the casual MMO Faunasphere, this paper argues that any such examinaton must start with the particular game’s fiction and rule systems.
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by Mikael Jakobsson
Xbox 360 achievements are explored through casuals, hunters and completists. The dichotomy between MMOs and console games is questioned by framing Xbox Live as a MMO. The ambiguity towards achievements is seen as a result of deeply rooted ideas of what games should be; while at the same time appealing to some of games’ most fundamental pleasures.
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by Alison Gazzard
By exploring ideas surrounding exploration, obstacles and avatar death, this article seeks to understand the various ways in which both space and time create reward systems in the gameworld. New categories of rewards are defined in relation to how goals may be constructed within different genres of videogames.
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by Ben Medler
This article presents a framework for understanding player dossiers, data-driven visual reports comprised of a player’s gameplay data. The framework describes how dossier systems validate player motivations and contextualize recorded gameplay allowing players to analyze or share the resulting data.
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by Paul Williams, Keith V. Nesbitt, Ami Eidels, David Elliott
This paper outlines the development of a top-down shooter designed to investigate the psychological phenomenon known as the ‘hot hand’. Such a game requires a well-balanced risk and reward structure. We chronicle the iterative tuning process, focusing on quantitative analysis of how players adapt their risk taking under varying reward structures.
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by Douglas Wilson
This article presents a case study of designing an intentionally “broken” console party game. Using Henning Eichberg’s concept of the “impossible game” and Bernie DeKoven’s notion of the “Well-Played game,” the article argues that “self-effacing” games of a certain type can help nurture a distinctly self-motivated and collaborative form of play.

A History of Choose Your Own Adventure

Slate has a nice write-up on the history of choose your own adventure books.

As usual, the article has a reference to Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, but there is more detail to the history than I have seen before. I did not know (or had forgotten) that B.F. Skinner was part of the story.

A more prosaic early attempt at interactive texts were psychologist B.F. Skinner’s “programmed learning” books that culminated with Doubleday’s interactive TutorText series, which debuted in 1958 with the thrilling The Arithmetic of Computers. Basically an extended multiple-choice quiz, a correct answer sent you forward in the text while an incorrect answer sent you to a page explaining just how wrong you were. But all of these efforts were eclipsed by the bedtime story Edward Packard told his two daughters in 1969.

Julio Cortázar’s 1963 Hopscotch novel goes unmentioned though. And you could have discussed OuLiPo. I can’t help but wonder if there are more non-English branching narratives that we have neglected.

(Via Nick Montfort.)

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.