New Issue of Game Studies: EverQuest Revisited

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

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Special Issue – EQ: 10 Years Later

by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

Reviews the place of EverQuest in the history of virtual world studies; lays out some of the critical issues that emerge from the study of MMORPGs; and introduces the essays in this issue….
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by Nick Yee

This paper explores how the social architectures in virtual worlds can lead to behavioral changes at the community level by shaping norms and expectations…
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by Greg Lastowka

This article describes EverQuest as a fictive text, a computer game, and an online community and explains how these three distinct frameworks lead to different legal regulatory modalities. It concludes that the optimal legal regulation for virtual worlds like Norrath is a question that must be addressed by the political process…
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by Sal Humphreys

Explores issues of ownership, governance, labour, rights and obligations in MMOGs, using research conducted in EQ. The clash between product and service, between proprietary space and public space and between amateur and professional raise questions for policy makers and lawyers considering the rights and obligations of different stakeholders…

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by Lisbeth Klastrup

This articles discusses online gameworlds as a new form of engaging fictional universes, and how to analytically approach and describe the player’s experience of “worldness” with EverQuest as an illustrative example. It argues that such an analysis should incorporate the study of design, aesthetics, means of expression and sociality…

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by Bart Simon, Kelly Boudreau, Mark Silverman

This article experiments with a biographical method for exploring memories and play experiences of EverQuest in the lives of two player/researchers. We posit a notion of ‘played sociality’ modeled on biographical understandings of lifecourse and attempt to show how different forms of commitment to the game reverberate through the lives of players…

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by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

This article addresses the interaction of players and designers in the creation of Norrathian geography. In the context of contemporary geographic theory, the authors examine the ways in which EverQuest players have worked both with and against the game’s delineation of meaningful places within the virtual world, arguing that the game’s virtual geography is best understood in the context of the real world geographies within which it is situated…

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by Eric Hayot

Chris Lena worked as a Producer of EverQuest at Sony Online Entertainment where he was involved in the creation of the 6 most recent expansions. He has been Assistant Producer and Designer on EverQuest Online Adventures as well as a coordinator of game localization efforts for the company. He worked on EQ 2003-2006…
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by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

Brad McQuaid worked as co-designer of EverQuest and development manager from the project’s inception until its launch. Kevin McPherson was one of the first EverQuest team members who primarily worked on the EverQuest client and writing the original background and setting for the Ruins of Kunark expansion…

If You’re not Indie …

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:

http://www.youtube.com/v/617lGZjYyNo&amp

On the Game Studies Download 4.0 at GDC

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”. 

Wii Play: The Popular Bad Game?

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?

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(Image from Tiger Direct.)

New Issue of Eludamos

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