Category: games

Recent Theses: Abstract Games, Character-Driven Game Design, the Mind Module

Here are three interesting recent video game Master and PhD theses for your theoretical enjoyment.

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Jason Begy’s (my former research assistant at GAMBIT) Comparative Media Studies thesis:

Interpreting Abstract Games: The Metaphorical Potential of Formal Game Elements

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Petri Lankoski’s PhD thesis, Aalto University:

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Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari’s PhD thesis, Teeside University:

Characterising Action Potential in Virtual Game Worlds Applied with the Mind Module

Game Studies 10/01 is Out

(Yes, 10 years of Game Studies!)
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by J. Alison Bryant, Anna Akerman, Jordana Drell

This article details the “user-centered” research process adopted to create Nintendo DS games for preschoolers and addresses how new titles for specific populations can be approached. We review the role of exploratory and formative research in game development for young audiences and provide findings and design tips from the laboratory and field. [more]
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Tags, Threads, and Frames: Toward a Synthesis of Interaction Ritual and Livejournal Roleplaying
by Sarah Wanenchak

This paper examines a game where sociological rules of interaction are adapted to fit an online context free from face to face encounters, and where these adapted rules are further stretched to fit interactions designed to construct a narrative that exists on both the individual and the communal levels. [more]
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Game designers often limit the availability of powerful cards in collectible card games. This approach can have negative consequences on a game’s suitability for casual play. This paper explores case studies of two online collectible card games and a design philosophy that argues that powerful game effects should be commonly available to players. [more]

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This article criticises influential MMO scholarship approaching virtual worlds as if they were outside the real world, and presents an alternative view based on Anselm Strauss’s concept of overlapping social worlds. MMOs are seen as sites where the world of players meshes with families and workplaces, and often flows over to other sites and forums. [more]

Interview

by Celia Pearce
Rand Miller, who with his brother Robyn designed Myst, the first blockbuster CD-ROM, talks about his legacy of vanguard game design, and the complex history of its multiplayer sequel Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. This interview, conducted via e-mail, took place shortly before the third re-opening of Uru. [more]

Book Reviews

by Richard Bartle
Review of “Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader” edited by Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg, (MIT Press, 2008). [more]
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by Frans Mäyrä Review of “Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames” by Mia Consalvo, (MIT Press 2007). [more]
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by Cynthia Haynes
Review of “Critical Play: Radical Game Design” by Mary Flanagan (MIT Press, 2009) [more]
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by Ragnhild Tronstad
Review of “Critical Play: Radical Game Design” by Mary Flanagan, (MIT Press, 2009). [more]

Your Theory Fix: New Issue of Eludamos

For your theory pleasure, the new issue of Eludamos is out.

(Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board now.)

Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture

Vol 4, No 1 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/issue/view/vol4no1

Articles
Postcolonial Playgrounds: Games and postcolonial culture (1-6)
Sybille Lammes

Why so serious? On the relation of serious games and learning (7-24)
Johannes S. Breuer,     Gary Bente

The Computer Game as a Somatic Experience (25-40)
Henrik Smed Nielsen

Discourse Engines for Art Mods (41-56)
Cindy Poremba

Exploring the Creative Potential of Values Conscious Game Design:
Students’ Experiences with the VAP Curriculum (57-67)
Jonathan Belman,        Mary Flanagan

Indoor Fireworks: The Pleasures of Digital Game Pyrotechnics (69-83)
Simon Niedenthal

Interviews
The Museology of Computergames—An interview with the curator of the
Computerspiele Museum, Andreas Lange, and art historian and archivist Dr.
Winfried Bergmeyer, Berlin. (87-100)
Claudia Costa Pederson

Development in Context (101)
Judd Ethan Ruggill,     Ken S. McAllister

“Stay Small and Keep it All”: Making a Big Splash in Boutique Game
Development (103-107)
Ken S. McAllister,      Judd Ethan Ruggill

Evoking the Inexpressible: The Fine Art and Business of Games (109-115)
Jennifer deWinter,      Ken S. McAllister,      Judd Ethan Ruggill

No B.S.: The Contemporary Practice of Game Education, Design, and
Development (117-122)
Ken S. McAllister,      Judd Ethan Ruggill

Reviews
Planets as small as your house. A review of Super Mario Galaxy (125-128)
Ruben Aize Meintema

Book Review: The Ethics of Computer Games by Miguel Sicart (129-131)
Matthew Geyer Kaplan

Bad Apple

I was previously writing about how Apple’s apparently random iPhone App Store policies could actually be so by design. (Because they save Apple from having to define and defend a universally acceptable set of policies, and because it can easily give special treatment when it so desires.)

Another example here, with a political cartoon app banned and then unbanned after the story got out.

Weirdly, what really got to me was how Apple recently changed their policies to prohibit developers from working in their language of choice:

“Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

As a programmer, I find this particularly offensive because:

  1. I think developers have a right to use whatever tools get the job done.
  2. There are great applications out there written in Unity3D, for example, and horrible apps written in Objective-C.
  3. Apple’s benefits are fairly obvious and obviously hurtful for everyone else: Prevent cross-platform development; control innovation. (Flash included, of course.)
  4. It means that you cannot have a programming environment on the iPhone. Ever.
  5. The official argument from Steve Jobs is unashamed BS: “Intermediate layers” decrease application quality. Actually, no. There is a reason why developers use middleware, 3D engines, scripting languages and so on: Because they increase application quality. Apple’s argument is a variation on the old claim that “we should write everything in assembler because it runs faster”. This, like Apple’s claim, only holds true for developers with infinite resources and infinite time. There aren’t a whole lot of developers like that, so maximum application quality is reached by using the best tools for the given task and resources. Publishers should not try to decide those tools ahead of time.

A lot has been made out of how the lack of Flash on the iPhone/iPad prevents access to most video on the net. Perhaps that is a red herring. Video could run in HTML5.

The bigger program is that there are a lot of interesting (indie) games being done in Flash, and HTML just isn’t close to be being a game platform. (Can you even play sounds yet?) No indie Flash games for you, buy something from the app store instead.

Bad Apple.

NYU Announces No Quarter: An Exhibition of Games

On May 6th, starting at 5pm, the NYU Game Center will be hosting a reception for No Quarter: An Exhibition of Games.

No Quarter consists of four games that explore the possibilities for social play in real-world environments, to imagine a new arcade that generates complex, surprising, and playful interactions in the public setting of a gallery space.

Three of the games were commissioned specifically for the exhibit:

Raging Hadron is a two player competitive game by independent game designer Mark ‘messhof’ Essen that combines swashbuckling swordplay with 8-bit psychedelia.

Deep Sea is a graphics-free, audio-only game about the terrors of deep sea diving by sound designer Robin Arnott.

Recurse is a manic game of twisting bodies, quick reactions, and physical feedback by game designer Matt Parker.

The exhibition will also feature 16 Tons, a four-player game of strategy and negotiation by the team of Game Center faculty Eric Zimmerman and architect Nathalie Pozzi, which was created for the Art History of Games Conference.

One of the goals of the Game Center is to support the New York game scene and to encourage experimental and innovative work by local independent game designers. To pursue this goal we intend to commission small-scale games on an ongoing basis. We believe that games, like other creative forms, can thrive outside the context of commercial development.

Please join us then on May 6th for a reception featuring all of these games and a chance to meet with their creators. The event is open to students, faculty, and the general public.

Food and wine will be served.

After the reception the games will be on display in the Game Center lobby through June 4th.

721 Broadway, 9th floor, New York, NY 10003

A Casual Revolution one of Five Essential Books on Video Games

In The New Yorker, Jamin Brophy-Warren lists A Casual Revolution as one of the five essential books on video games. In good company with Huizinga, Caillois, James Paul Gee and Tom Bissell.

To combat the idea that the only people who play games are teenage males and housemothers, Jesper Juul’s “A Casual Revolution” is a deftly argued and thoroughly researched recommendation. With the advent of the Nintendo’s Wii and social games like FarmVille on Facebook, video games of many shapes and sizes have become standard fare as swaths of previously ignored players now find themselves with controllers in hand. The result has been a muddling of the archetypes of “hardcore” and “casual” players. Juul, the visiting professor at New York University’s Game Center, paints a world of middle-aged women trying to kick fifty-hour-a-week-video-game habits and young professional men only clocking a few hours a week on their Xbox 360s before shuttling off to their cubicles.

NYU Game Center Announces the Spring Fighter Tournament

Upcoming event here at the NYU Game Center:

On April 17th the Game Center will be hosting Spring Fighter, its first Street Fighter IV tournament.

The Spring Fighter tournament will some of the best street fighter players at NYU and around New York and a prize will be awarded to the one player who can push their way through the double-elimination tournament and take the top spot. All are welcome and there will be food available to the participants and anyone else who comes to cheer on their favorite fighters.

Only 30 spots are available in the tournament so to sign up and participate please email gamecenter@nyu.edu with your name and contact information. If the tournament is already full you’ll be put on a waitlist and contacted if spots open up.

The Game Center will be providing controllers for each participant, but if you prefer to use an arcade stick or other type of special controller you’ll have to bring your own.

Spectators are welcome! We hope to see you there!

The Spring Fighter Tournament
April 17th at 2pm
721 Broadway, 9th Floor, New York, NY
RSVP: gamecenter@nyu.edu