Category: games

BE John Kerry: Kuma War gets political

Latest twist in the serious game department: Kuma War is about to launch an episode based on John Kerry’s much-discussed Vietnam heroics.

News.com has a writeup here.

What does a game mean? I wonder if games are persuasive when they represent historical events. After all, the game is likely to have several possible outcomes, and the outcome you want for the John Kerry game probably depends on what outcome would fit your pre-existing convictions?
I don’t exactly have a background in empirical research, but I think it would be really interesting with some studies to see if a game can change people’s minds!

Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios

It’s starting to look like a pattern: In order to get into the game industry in a big way, simply create a top-notch mod for a bestselling game.
In this case, Trauma Studios, makers of the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 has been bought by Digital Illusions.

DIGITAL ILLUSIONS BUYS TRAUMA STUDIOS

Digital Illusions buys New York based game developer Trauma Studios Inc.
Initially Trauma will work with the development of a concept for a new PC game.

– Through Desert Combat Trauma showed they are remarkably good at developing products the consumer wants. They understand our technology and are experienced and skillful game developers. This was the major factor to our acquisition, said Patrick S?derlund, CEO at Digital Illusions.

– With Digital Illusions award winning team and Trauma Studios’ talent, I am confident we will be very successful together. We really look forward to being part of the Digital Illusions family, said Frank DeLise, CEO at Trauma Studios Inc.

Digital Illusions buys all assets of Trauma and employ all its employees. Digital Illusions thereby buys the trademarks Desert Combat and Trauma Studios.

Continue reading “Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios”

Canada in June: Changing Views – Worlds in Play CFP

The official call for papers for the DiGRA video games conference at Simon Fraser university is up. Deadline is November 30th.

Hope to see you in all June 16th-20th 2005.

Where are we on the graph and what does the graph look like? Was DiGRA 2003 in Utrecht the peak or a small harbinger of things to come? Is there one game studies field or will it splinter into several? To be continued…

Wittgenstein: Food Forms a Family

[This is #2 in a series of experimental writings: I am trying to write with styles and arugments that I would not normally use. Here, I take on Wittgenstein’s famous argument that “games” cannot be defined.]

[66.] Consider for example the objects we call ‘food”. I mean pork roast, waffles, pasta, lamb casseroles, and so on. What is common to them all? Don’t say, ‘There must be something common, or else they would not be all called “food”‘, but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to them all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! Look, for example, at pork roasts, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to waffles, here you will find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to pasta, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all ‘nutritious’? Compare pig’s stomach [Saumage] with Creme Brulee. Or is there always an appetizer and a main course, or even a swallowing of the food? Think of chewing gum. In breakfast cereal there is the process of eating and the feeling of being full afterwards, but when a child throws his potato mash into the air, this feature has disappeared. Look now at the parts played by spices, and at the difference between chili in in Kashmir Lamb and chili in Tom Yum Soup. Think now of cafeteria food; here is the social element of eating, but now many other characteristic features have disappeared. And we can go through the many, many other groups of food in the same way, and we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the result of this examination is this: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
[67.] I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’, for the various resemblances among members of the same family: build, features, color of eyes, walk, temperament, etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say, food forms a family.’
(Wittgenstein 1958, segment 66-67.)

Japanese Children Playing (Rules and Enjoyment)

[I am working on my book manuscript. To prevent myself from simply writing like I always do, I am going to do a series of experimental game writings. In these, it is not strictly “me” speaking – they are rather explorations of possible directions in which to work.]

4 Japanese children are playing. As far as I can see, these are the rules: One child (“the guesser”) walks away and closes his/her eyes. The remaining three perform a clapping sequences and chooses between them who is “it”. The child who walked away returns and has to guess who is “it”.
The guesser can guess as many times as he/she wants.

This is a game according to my definition.
There are rules, quantifiable outcome, valorization of outcomes, player effort, player attachment to outcome, and “negotiable consequences” of the outcome.

But this does not explain why the game would be enjoyable.
There are many things of course:
-The shared ritual.
-The rhythm.
-Playing with distinguishing between people.
-The thrill of being special.
-The relation between individuality and arbitrary distinctions.
-Exploring your emotions towards the other players.
-Examining the signals and expressions of the other players.
-Trying to conceal the signals that you send.

The consequences assigned to the game are rather weak. Also in the sense that there is no winner of a game, only an individual performance, but that the game is played multiple times. It would be possible to play 15 games and write down the performance of each player and pick a winner. However, this is not done. Overall performance rating is therefore rather imprecise. This is not a bug, it’s a feature.
The game also contains strong chance element, making the skill of the individual less important.

As we can see, the formal setup of the game means a lot for how it can be used socially and what pleasures can be derived from it. But the other aspect of the setup, that the game is being played many times without the children keeping a score, also makes it a special kind of not-that-competitive game.

The game is designed collectively by human children, who pass specific rules on because they enjoy the experiences that they get from playing with them.

Why can’t we play this game as adults? Discuss.

First Person: Star Wars and the Media Ecology

Julian K?cklich has posted a fairly grumpy review of First Person on Dichtung Digital.

I’ll just pick on one thing, K?cklich writes about Henry Jenkins’ Game Design as Narrative Architecture:

Jenkins should be lauded for his attempt to mediate between the two schools. He helpfully points out points of agreement between ludologists and narratologists, but he also identifies ludology’s “conceptual blind spots” in regard to narrative. Chief among these is ludology’s failure to understand that narratives can operate across different media and do not have to be self-contained. As Jenkins usefully points out in response to Jesper Juul: “The Star Wars game may not simply retell the story of Star Wars, but it doesn?t have to in order to enrich or expand our experience of the Star Wars saga”.

Actually, I was pointing out that the old Star Wars arcade game did not reproduce the story of Star Wars (unlike what a Star Wars cartoon or novel might do). Jenkins writes that:

This is a pretty old fashioned model of the process of adaptation. Increasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia story-telling, one which depends less on each individual work being self-sufficient than on each work contributing to a larger narrative economy.

This is one place where I believe two different things are being discussed – I am discussing whether narratives move across media to games like they do to, say, novels. And I concluded that this wasn’t the case. This does not conflict with Jenkins’ observation that such a game still plays a role in our general understanding of the Star Wars universe. A battle of words, really.

(And of course, it’s pretty strange to be criticized (by K?cklich) for not understanding how narratives can operate across media when the whole original argument was based on an examination of transmedial storytelling and how narratives can (fail to) move across media to games. Oh well.)