Category: games

Title: What Makes Casual Games so Appealing, so Attractive: Looking for ‘the Casual’ in Casual Video Games

Abstract: Given that video games are as wonderful as they are, why would someone choose not to play video games? It seems that video games for a long period of time have alienated a large part of the population by way of their themes, their assumptions about the player’s familiarity with video game conventions, and by the demands games have placed on the player’s time. With the Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero, and downloadable games like Diner Dash, however, video games appear to be reaching beyond the traditional game audience. In this talk, I will discuss why many people do not play video games, and identify the broader appeal of today’s casual games.

Details:
Thursday, April 10
06:00 PM to 08:00 PM
Columbia University
2960 Broadway
New York, NY – 10027
Room: Thompson Hall, Room 510 at Teachers College, Columbia University, between Broadway and Amsterdam on 120th Street. Check in with security (located in between Broadway and Amsterdam on 120th) and they will direct you the correct room.

The Italian airline Alitalia is floundering, so let me kick them when they’re down.

I was flying with them last summer, and to my surprise the cabin crew informed me that I was not allowed to use my Nintendo DS for the duration of the flight. Lo and behold, the safety instructions specifically illustrate that you can’t play Gameboy. Why? Who knows?

I tried to get into a philosophical discussion with the crew regarding their definition of games, the distinction between playing a game on a PDA (which they allowed) and on a dedicated device, and whether the ban only concerned games played with a D-pad. They did not bite.

Are game graphics at a point of diminishing returns?

In that case, what do we mean by “diminishing returns”?

• Does it mean that an increase in the graphical budget of a game does not increase sales correspondingly?
• Or does it mean that, subjectively, we are at a point where things look “good enough”?
• Or are we talking negative returns? That increasing polygon count makes humans look worse due to the uncanny valley?

We could also look at a case study. Megan Fox and Stuart Compton have an article in the latest Game Developer Magazine about Ambient Occlusive Crease Shading.

(Disclaimer: I certainly respect the work done here, and I do not mean to pick on these authors. The stated goal is even of moving away from the “imitative” towards the “illustrative”, which I find good. And perhaps things will look different once they start moving.)

Nevertheless: How big a difference do you see between figure 5 with, and figure 6 without ambient occlusion? How much effort is it worth going from figure 6 to figure 5? Is this not diminishing returns?

(Illustration by Fox & Compton, from Game Developer Magazine, March 2008)

If you are interested in video games, game design, and emotions, Aki Järvinen‘s complete PhD Games Without Frontiers has been made available here.

The Polish Journal Kultura i Historia has been kind enough to publish a translation of my article Without a Goal: On Open and Expressive Games.

The Polish title is: Bez celu. O grach otwartych i ekspresyjnych.

In the sense that today I am speaking at the Clash of Realities conference in Cologne with the talk Video Games: The Most Emotional of all Media.

And on Saturday I am in Finland as official opponent on Aki Järvinen’s PhD which is very much about emotions in games.

Emotions, emotions everywhere!

I have been looking at the rhetoric surrounding console launches. This is, for real, from Sony’s 2005 press release announcing the Playstation 3:

Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies and experience the excitement in real-time.

The same old drab way of selling a new console, of course, promising better graphics (joy!). But spot the really wonderful mistake of using literally as a modifier for emphasis: The selling point is not that games will feel more like movies, but that diving in is not a metaphor at all! You will literally be jumping headlong into your television set. Wow! Can’t wait!

PS. On the other hand, since we all so massively seem to agree that realistic 3d is not the way to go, I am beginning to hope that someone will actually stand up for 3d photo-realistic graphics. Any takers?