Category: games

From the Italian Association for the Study of Semiotics, the collection Computer Games between Text and Practice looks at games from, yes, a semiotic perspective!

Cover (pdf, 488 Kb)

Index and acknowledgements

Introduction (pdf, 108 Kb)
by Dario Compagno and Patrick Coppock

section one
Playing Games: from Cooperation to Interaction

Gabriele Ferri (pdf, 660 Kb)
Interpretive Cooperation and Procedurality.  A Dialogue between Semiotics and Procedural Criticism

Otto Lehto (pdf, 2 Mb)
The Collapse and Reconstitution of the Cinematic Narrative: Interactivity vs Immersion in Game Worlds

section two
Which Role for Narrativity in Computer Games?

Jack Post (pdf, 588 Kb)
Bridging the Narratology – Ludology Divide. The Tetris Case

Alessandro Catania (pdf, 244 Kb)
Les Jeux sont Faits! Immersiveness and Manageability of Game Narratives

section three
Revisiting Enunciation: Embodied Players

Agata Meneghelli(pdf, 620 Kb)
Simulacral and Embodied Enunciation in Computer Games

Adriano D’Aloia (pdf, 768 Kb)
Adamant Bodies. The Avatar-Body and the Problem of Autoempathy

section four
Temporal and Spatial Features of Virtual Environments

Mario Gerosa, Jennifer Grace-Dawson (pdf, 1,0 Mb)
Chronology and Historicization in Virtual Worlds and Video Games

Joaquìn Siabra-Fraile (pdf, 800 Kb)
Manic Miner under the Shadow of the Colossus: A Semiotic Analysis of the Spatial
Dimension in Platform Video Games

Alex Wade (pdf, 472 Kb)
Spatial Typologies of Games

section five
Authorship and Game Creation

Marco Benôit Carbone (pdf, 284 Kb)
The Adam of Videogames. From Invention to Authorship through the Analysis of Primordial Games

Filippo Zanoli(pdf, 505 Kb)
Logos Language in Richard Garriot’s Tabula  Rasa: an Analysis of Symbols, Semantics and  Textual Implications

Drew Davidson’s Well Played anthology is out for purchase or for reading on the web.

What makes a game good? or bad? or better?

Video games can be “well played” in two senses. On the one hand, well played is to games as well read is to books. On the other hand, well played as in well done.

This book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. 22 contributors (developers, scholars, reviewers and bloggers) look at video games through both senses of “well played.”

Content:

• Introduction
• Ico – Charles Herold
• Super Mario Bros. – Patrick Curry
• Advance Wars – Noah Falstein
• Ultima Underworld – Corvus Elrod
• Bully – Kirk Battle (L.B. Jeffries)
• Half-Life 2 – Mark Sivak
• Europa Universalis – Greg Costikyan
• Zork & Kingdom of Loathing – Brett E. Shelton
• Phoenix Wright – Mia Consalvo
• Shadow of the Colossus – Nick Fortugno
• Civilization 4 – Kurt Squire, Shree Durga, Ben Devane
• Parappa the Rapper – Katherine Isbister
• Portal & Passage – Nick Montfort
• Silent Hill 2 – Doris C. Rusch
• Bioshock – Clint Hocking
• Metal Gear Solid 4 – James Paul Gee
• Tempest – Mary D. Flanagan
• Guitar Hero – Jason Vandenberghe
• Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Seth Sivak
• The Secret of Monkey Island – Clara Fernández-Vara
• Mines of Minos – Jesse Schell
• World of Goo – Drew Davidson

Get Well Played here.

25 years young today! Alexey Pajitnov released Tetris on June 6, 1984.

Originally launched in the Soviet Union, the history of Tetris intersects with the cold war, of course.

In the history of video games, Tetris is sometimes claimed to be the first casual game (subject to discussion).

There are now so many versions of Tetris that it feels like a folk game in the public domain – it’s a kind of hello world of games. Yet, the Tetris company is also trying to assert a legal right to the game, threatening some people who implement it. It is one of the those things – Tetris feels universal, like chess or crossword puzzles, that it is counter-intuitive that someone could own or control it. I wish there was a clear solution to this issue.

Happy birthday!

Olli Sotamaa has defended his PhD at the University of Tampere. The PDF is available here. Congrats!

Abstract:

This dissertation presents a cultural approach to player production. The contribution of my work to the current scholarship on players is to broaden the understanding of the relation between play and other forms of game cultural productivity. The dissertation suggests that as the manifestations of gaming hobby break out of “magic circle of play”, the productive activities of players become central to our understanding of games and gaming.

While game studies have so far been pretty good in identifying the structural elements of game systems and the different motivations of players, they have mostly not touched the larger social structures and industrial systems that ultimately shape both the games that are offered to players and the ways they are played. Whilst we know quite a lot about how the rules can be used to guide and constrict players activities, the “rules” that direct player production are scarcely investigated. This dissertation provides an approach to how these regulations and byelaws could be studied.

Instead of sticking to the game world boundaries the dissertation turns the focus to the larger dynamics of game culture and examines the opportunities and constraints provided by the current game industry paradigms. The underlying interest is in outlining games as profoundly co-produced entities which can be only understood if both the contributions of developers and other industry bodies and the investments of players are taken into account.

The dissertation consists of six articles and a lengthy overview section. The introductory chapters provide theoretical and historical background for the approach. The articles introduce practical case studies and apply, discuss and develop further the starting points. While various dimensions of player production are elaborated in the introductory chapters, the articles focus mostly on the players’ productive practices that result in new game elements (game modifications) and the ones that exploit the game software to produce entirely new digital objects (machinima).

The dissertation is committed to a particular notion of the nature of play. I argue that segregating the sphere of play from “ordinary life”, “utility” and “productivity” runs the risk of hiding the similarities and interesting connections between play and the related realms. Rather than happening in a given “magic circle”, the space for play needs to be negotiated. I have in the thesis examined how these negotiations spread beyond the borders of the game as games are increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Secondly the study suggests that also the boundaries between ‘players’ and ‘producers’ are by definition blurred and actively negotiated. I further argue in favour of conceptualizing player production as a network of activities. The composition and dynamics of this network are guided by forms of gaming capital.

Finally, the dissertation seriously questions the tendency of studying media consumption and production in separation. As the media practices are becoming increasingly participatory and co-operative, it is difficult to argue for keeping these domains of research apart from each other. Player production highlights how digital media products are increasingly also tools that allow media consumers not only to personalize their experiences but also to share and circulate their productions. This furthermore underlines the need to abandon the dichotomous and stabile either-or models and the demand for holistic studies of the emerging media culture. While the industry bodies take part in shaping the emerging player cultural formations, it is at the same time increasingly difficult to understand game industry without taking players into account. In this respect, game cultures originate in various sites, often defined both by resistance, exploitation and mutually beneficial relations.

My former colleague Miguel Sicart has just published his book The Ethics of Computer Games on MIT Press.

Description

Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry (and the accompanying emergence of computer games as the subject of scholarly research), we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play.

Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games (using Bioshock as an example), multiplayer games (illustrated by Defcon), and online gameworlds (illustrated by World of Warcraft) from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay.

About the Author

Miguel Sicart is Assistant Professor at the Center for Computer Game Research, IT University Copenhagen

Get your video game theory fix: New issue of Game studies, issue 0901 on “EverQuest – 10 Years Later“.

*