Category: games

Emotional Bindung in Graz

There’s a writeup on a talk I have in Graz at fm4.orf.at (Austrian radio).

Did Heidegger say that German was the only language in which you could do philosophy? It certainly adds something.

Um zu zeigen, wie stark unsere emotionale Bindung zu Spielen ist, spielt Jesper Juul mit dem Publikum das “Kopf oder Zahl”-Spiel. Das Auditorium setzt auf Kopf. Juul wirft eine 2 Euro M?nze in die Luft. Als sie am Boden liegt, zeigt die Zwei nach oben – 1:0 f?r den Ludologen.

I’ve just sent of the book manuscript today, so should have more time to post – there were some interesting things at the conference in Graz.

To kill or not to kill: Game seminar November 12th

Should you be in Copenhagen next Friday, Gitte Stald has arranged a seminar on death & violence in video games. Flyer.

Friday November 12, 2004
Conference Room 5.2.29a, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 80

PROGRAMME:
09.15-09.25: Welcome
09.25-10.05: Gitte Stald – Perspectives on Fascination of Death and Violence in Games
10.05-10.45: Kjetil Sandvik – Game Characters with Scruples?
11.00-11.40: Susana Tosca – To Kill or not to Kill: the Butterfly Effect in Blade Runner
11.40-12.20: Troels Degn-Johansson – On Death and Destruction in Strategy Games

13.15-13.55: Jesper Juul – What the Game Means: About Grand Theft Auto 3
14.10-14.50: Charlie Breindahl – Racing Games
14.50-15.30: Jonas Heide Smith – Games, Peacocks, and the Theory of Conflict

Hot hands: Curse of the bambino finally broken

So it happened, Red Sox won the world series.
Again, the idea of winning and losing streaks, curses just always seem to find its way into games.

On my desk is a paper, Heuristics as beliefs and behaviors: The adaptiveness of the ‘hot hand’ (Bruce D. Burns) which discusses the belief in a player having a “hot hand” (likely to score) in a game of basketball.

Update: And at MIT they did their part.

Breaking the curse of the Bambino – do you believe in losing streaks?

Baseball: The Boston Red Sox finally beat the New York Yankees to make it to the World Series.
It’s one of the interesting things around sports, the myth-making, the belief in winning streaks, losing streaks, and curses.
In this case, the Red Sox may have broken “The curse of the Bambino“, which is the idea that the Red Sox were cursed because they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1918 – and true enough, Red Sox haven’t won the world series since.

Perhaps all this because it’s hard to understand & predict why one team wins the match, but we humans cannot prevent ourselves from seeing patterns everywhere, curses, magic.

Update: There’s a New York Times piece where the writer explains that the Red Sox always lose if he watches them play. This time they won because he didn’t watch.