Category: games

Speaking on A Casual Revolution November 9 at 5pm

I am speaking about A Casual Revolution this Monday at GAMBIT at MIT:casualrevolution_200

11/9/09: Jesper Juul leads A Casual Revolution

A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
Monday, November 9, 2009
5-6 PM at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

Spending the winter of 2006-07 in New York City, I was beginning to lose count of the times I had heard the same story: somebody had taken the new Nintendo Wii video game system home to parents, grandparents, partner, none of whom had ever expressed any interest whatsoever in video games, and these non-players of video games had been enthralled by the physical activity of the simple sports games, had enjoyed themselves, and had even asked that the video game be brought along for the next gathering. What was going on?

Jesper Juul chronicles the rise of the casual games: puzzle games, the Nintendo Wii, and music games. These are video games that reach beyond the traditional video game audience; games that redefine what a video game can be, and who can be a video game player.

Indie Games Panel November 5th at NYU

This Thursday November 5th, the NYU Game Center is hosting a panel discussion about independent games.

Thursday, November 5, 2009, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
721 Broadway, Lower Level, Room 006, New York 10003

The Indie Games panel will be a discussion of the design, development and culture surrounding independent games with three innovative and provocative indie developers:

The talk is open to students, faculty, and the general public. We welcome everyone, whether your research and teaching is related to games or you are simply curious about this rapidly evolving field.

Refreshments will be served.

Anna Anthropy kindly made an unofficial poster for the event:

indie_games_talk_flyer

New Issue of Eludamos, Journal for Computer Game Culture

In time to satisfy our late-October theory cravings, Eludamos maintains a good publication velocity and now brings us a new issue, volume 3, issue 2.

Vol 3, No 2 (2009)

Table of Contents

Positions

Doubly Real: Game Studies and Literary Anthropology; or, Why We Play Games Abstract HTML PDF
Philipp Schweighauser 115-132

Perspectives

Generations and Game Localization Abstract HTML PDF
Darshana Jayemanne 135-147
Video Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation Abstract HTML PDF
Dominic Arsenault 149-176
Generations of Game Analytics, Achievements and High Scores Abstract HTML PDF
Ben Medler 177-194
Fahrenheit and the premature burial of interactive movies Abstract HTML PDF
Jonathan Lessard 195-205

Articles

Chopin’s Dream as Reality: A Critical Reading of Eternal Sonata Abstract HTML PDF
Johansen Quijano-Cruz 209-218
Letter from the Wilderness Abstract HTML PDF
Mark Mullen 219-244
Just Gaming: On Being Differently Literate Abstract HTML PDF
Alex Kendall, Julian McDougall 245-260
An Analysis of Persistent Non-Player Characters in the First-Person Gaming genre 1998-2007: a case for the fusion of mechanics and diegetics Abstract HTML PDF
Dan Pinchbeck 261-279
Playing with one’s self: notions of subjectivity and agency in digital games Abstract HTML PDF
Alec Charles 281-294
Repelling the Invasion of the “Other”: Post-Apocalyptic Alien Shooter Videogames Addressing Contemporary Cultural Attitudes Abstract HTML PDF
Ryan Lizardi 295-308
Ten years later Abstract HTML PDF
Gerit Götzenbrucker, Margarita Köhl 309-324

The Failure Game: Pierre, Insanity Inspired

pierre_posterFrom the not-so-casual department, here is a new game, Pierre: Insanity Inspired.

Pierre was created at my previous workplace, the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

I functioned as a product owner on this game, which at GAMBIT means that I posed a research question that the game should answer.

Research question: How do different ways of communicating failure influence the player’s experience and performance?

The excellent team was then free make a game (more or less) within the constraints of that research question. You can play the game here.

For more about the creation of the game, have a look at the GAMBIT updates this week. Introduction video here.

As usual when I am posting games for research purposes, I will keep the further details close to the vest, and then post results later.

In the meantime, please play the game! Thanks!

A Casual Revolution is out!

A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players has just been published by MIT Press.

casualrevolution_200A Casual Revolution is my take on what is happening with video games right now:

  • Why is the Nintendo Wii more successful than the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3?
  • Why is the audience for video games expanding?
  • Who plays Bejeweled, and why?
  • What is a casual player? What is casual game design?
  • Are casual games a return to the arcade game, or are they something new?
  • How did Solitaire become one of the most popular video games?
  • What is the secret behind the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band?
  • Why is Parcheesi/Ludo a social game? Why is Animal Crossing?
  • Does the rise of casual games mean the downfall of hardcore games?
  • … and more.

A Casual Revolution is a 256-page book about what is important: The joy of the casual video games that we play during a work break, on phones, with the family, or with friends at a late-night party.

The book includes 100 illustrations as well as interviews with game players and developers.

Get A Casual Revolution from your neighborhood bookstore or from your favorite online retailer.

The book’s companion website is: http://www.jesperjuul.net/casualrevolution/

The official MIT Press page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11844

Thanks to everybody who made this book possible!

-Jesper

When is a Bad Game Too Bad?

As if it was response to my earlier discussion of paragaming (the enjoyment of bad games), XKCD posts this commentary:

so_bad_its_worse

Good question how that translates to games! Having watched the Star Wars Holiday Special, I agree with the sentiment even if I do feel my having watched it gives me a kind of positive cultural capital.

The Big Rigs game that Jason discussed at our bad games panel is clearly as bad as to be on the very far right end of the graph in the drawing – but it’s nevertheless enjoyable as a paragame. So the question may not be how far along the game is on a “good/bad” scale, but about having a sufficient number of laughable moments pr. minute. A laughable moment, I think, involves open conflicts between the contents of a “bad” game and the game quality criteria we operate by.

A game level that is 50% too long is not enjoyably bad, but a game level that is 500% too long is. A bad game has to be much too much to be useful for paragaming!