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.
Not sure why, but I have been posting only audio and video the last week or so.
Anyway, this year’s Game Developers Conference had a still growing contingent of independent game developers to the extent that it was becoming something of a scene (in a positive sense – see you at the Cellar next year).
But what is Indie anyway? This video from the Independent Games Festival frames that question:
Ryan Wiancko of Industry Broadcast has been kind to make a podcast of my paper Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games.
Something of a mashup: a song by the Mountain Goats framed as being sung by Toad.
(Via Peggy Wang via Free Williamsburg.)
I’m a little late to blogging this, but here is the list of the top 10 Game Studies findings, presented at the Game Developers Conference by Ian Bogost, Mia Consalvo and Jane McGonigal.
The audience voted on the papers in order of importance, and my own Fear of Failing came in at #5.
The session slides are here.
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10. Stewart Woods: “(Play) Ground rules: The social contract and the magic circle”.
9. Jose Zagal and Amy Bruckman: “Novices, gamers, and scholars: Exploring the challenges of teaching about games”.
8. Karen Collins: “Game sound: An introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design”.
7. Charlie Breindahl: “Play to win or win to play? The material culture of gaming”.
6. Gareth Schott: “Relating the pleasures of violent game texts”.
5. Jesper Juul: “Fear of failing: The many meanings of difficulty in video games”.
4. Matt Barton: “How’s the weather: Simulating weather in virtual environments”.
3. Betsy James DiSalvo, Kevin Crowley and Roy Norwood: “Learning in context: Digital games and young black men”.
2. Michael Nitsche: “Video game spaces: Image, play, and structure in 3D worlds”.
1. Susana Tosca & Lisbeth Klastrup: “Because it just looks cool!’ Fashion as character performance—the case of WoW”.
Enthusiast site Ars Technica declares that “Wii Play becomes first bad game to sell 10 million“.
While Wii Play isn’t my favorite game, perhaps the Ars Technica headline and the 61% GameRanking average are both misleading? I do think it contains a good deal of enjoyable minigames suitable for a lazy afternoon.
In a Gamasutra article on Silver Gamers, Wii Play Cow Racing is even singled out as a popular minigame.
Is Wii Play a bad game? Or is it just a game for an audience other than game journalists?
(Image from Tiger Direct.)
New issue out from Eludamos, the Journal for Computer Game Culture:
Vol 3, No 1 (2009)
Table of Contents
Positions
| Reproducing the machine | HTML PDF |
| Mia Consalvo | 1-3 |
Perspectives
| Serious games taken seriously | HTML PDF |
| Christian Swertz | 7-8 |
| Passionate Digital Play-Based Learning. (Re)Learning in computer games like Shadow of the Colossus | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Konstantin Mitgutsch | 9-22 |
| Key Dimensions of Contemporary Video Game Literacy: Towards A Normative Model of the Competent Digital Gamer | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Christoph Klimmt | 23-31 |
| Notes on the Biographical Meaning of Games and Online-Games | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Helle Meister, Gerrit Herlyn | 33-41 |
| Tanks, Chauffeurs and Backseat Drivers: Competence in MMORPGs | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Diane Carr, Martin Oliver | 43-53 |
Articles
| Games and Self-Imagining, a Comparative Media Perspective | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Jan Van Looy | 57-68 |
| ‘I am Trying to Believe’: Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Alexander Charles Oliver Hall | 69-82 |
Reviews
| I HEART LocoRoco – a reading of a gameplay experience | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Emma Westecott | 85-93 |
| The pleasurable lightness of being: Interface, mediation and meta-narrative in Lucasfilm’s Loom | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Jaroslav Švelch | 95-102 |
| Pure Hardcore? wipEout HD and current game design | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Fares Kayali | 103-106 |
| Assembling a Mosaic of the Future: The Post-Nuclear World of Fallout 3 | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Martin Pichlmair | 107-113 |
What were the main themes of the Game Developers Conference last week?
I participated in the Real-time Research session where my group (Ulrika Bennerstedt, Mia Consalvo, Jonas Linderoth, Meagan Rothschild, John Sharp + me) examined what participants were twittering about in the #gdc channel. I made a script to collect the twitter data, then we analyzed word frequencies using Wordle.
[Update: Download the pdf here.]
Brief analysis:
