Category: readings

Game Studies 13/1 is out

For your theoretical pleasure, Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research has just published its latest issue (Volume 13, Issue 1, September 2013). All articles are available at http://gamestudies.org/1301/

Contents

A Kinesthetic Theory of Videogames: Time-Critical Challenge and Aporetic Rhematic
by Veli-Matti Karhulahti

http://gamestudies.org/1301/articles/karhulahti_kinesthetic_theory_of_the_videogame

This article looks into the mostly unexplored difference between kinesthetic and nonkinesthetic videogame challenge. The difference is refined into a challenge-based theory for understanding the videogame and its peculiar rhetorical character.

 

Sonic Mechanics: Audio as Gameplay
by Aaron Oldenburg

http://gamestudies.org/1301/articles/oldenburg_sonic_mechanics

The work discusses the past and potential future intersections between game design and theories within contemporary sound art. The author will describe his design process in the creation of several experimental audio games. These range from music composition based on chance game events to silent games that simulate aspects of sound.

Automatic-Play and Player Deskilling in MMORPGs
by Stefano De Paoli

The concept of automatic-play refers to the use of game bots, macros and other software that allow a total or partial automation of gameplay and in particular avatar levelling. The paper theorizes a key aspect of the automation of gameplay: the deskilling of players with the transfer of human skills to automatic-play software. 

A Review of Ludoliteracy: Defining, Understanding and Supporting Games Education
by Siobhán Thomas

http://gamestudies.org/1301/articles/zagal_book_review

Ludoliteracy: Defining, understanding, and supporting games education (2010). by José P. Zagal. Pittsburgh, PA: The ETC Press. ISBN:978-0-557-27791-9.

Game Developer Magazine, complete archive 1994-2013

I felt it a bit sad when Game Developer Magazine closed down in July. Though it was for a long clear that specialist magazines were threatened by, well, the internet, GDMag did provide an edited sense of what was happening in the game industry at any given time (with a North American slant, of course). I also remember poring over introductions to network programming in (it must have been) 1995 or so.

Now the entire back archive of the magazine is available directly for free, in PDF form. http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag

It is pretty good as a document of 20 years of video game history. Remember when we were all (and all students were) aspiring to be AAA developers? It really happened, and here is the documentation.

Well Played: volume 2 number 2 – Theories

And here is volume 2, number 2 of the Well Played Journal titled Theories, John Sharp et al. 2013.

Inhabiting Games Well (If not Uncomfortably…) – Casey O’Donnell

Critical Literacy: Game Criticism for Game Developers  – Yotam Haimberg

Well-played and well-debated: Understanding perspective in contested affinity spaces – Sean Duncan

On justification: WoW, EQ2 and Aion forums – Thibault Philippette, Baptiste Campion

Why we Glitch: process, meaning and pleasure in the discovery, documentation, sharing and use of videogame exploits – Alan Meades

Greg Costikyan’s new book, Uncertainty in Games

Bringing your attention to Greg Costikyan’s new book Uncertainty in Games. This is the second volume in the Playful Thinking Series that I co-edit with Geoffrey Long and William Uricchio.

Get it from MIT Press, Amazon US, UK. (Sorry about all the stores I am not linking to.)

Description

Uncertainty in GamesIn life, uncertainty surrounds us. Things that we thought were good for us turn out to be bad for us (and vice versa); people we thought we knew well behave in mysterious ways; the stock market takes a nosedive. Thanks to an inexplicable optimism, most of the time we are fairly cheerful about it all. But we do devote much effort to managing and ameliorating uncertainty. Is it any wonder, then, asks Greg Costikyan, that we have taken this aspect of our lives and transformed it culturally, making a series of elaborate constructs that subject us to uncertainty but in a fictive and nonthreatening way? That is: we create games.

In this concise and entertaining book, Costikyan, an award-winning game designer, argues that games require uncertainty to hold our interest, and that the struggle to master uncertainty is central to their appeal. Game designers, he suggests, can harness the idea of uncertainty to guide their work.

Costikyan explores the many sources of uncertainty in many sorts of games—from Super Mario Bros. toRock/Paper/Scissors, from Monopoly to CityVille, from FPS Deathmatch play to Chess. He describes types of uncertainty, including performative uncertainty, analytic complexity, and narrative anticipation. And he suggest ways that game designers who want to craft novel game experiences can use an understanding of game uncertainty in its many forms to improve their designs.

Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association 1, 1

Just out, the inaugural issue of Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA).

ToDiGRA is meant as a venue for publishing some of the best papers from DiGRA conferences.

Vol 1, No 1 (2013)

A selection of best papers from the DiGRA 2011 conference in Hilversum, the Netherlands.

Table of Contents

Annika Waern, José Zagal: Introduction – HTML PDF

Jason Begy: Experiential Metaphors in Abstract Games – HTML PDF

René Glas: Breaking Reality: Exploring Pervasive Cheating in Foursquare – HTML PDF

Ioanna Iacovides, James Aczel, Eileen Scanlon, Will Woods: Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement? –HTML PDF

Jonas Linderoth: Beyond the digital divide: An ecological approach to gameplay – HTML PDF

Gareth Schott, Jasper van Vught: Replacing preconceived accounts of digital games with experience of play: When parents went native in GTA IV – HTML PDF

New issue of G|A|M|E, the Italian Journal of Game Studies

New issue of G|A|M|E, the Italian Journal of Game Studies.

vol. 1, 2013 – Journal: TECHNOLOGY EVOLUTION AND PERSPECTIVE INNOVATION

 

Get it here: http://www.gamejournal.it/issues/game-n-22013/

My new book: The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

artoffailure_cover_180x264[1]My name is Jesper, and I am a sore loser.

And my new book The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games is fresh out on MIT Press!
(On Amazon.com. UK.)

To wit: I hate to fail in games. I think I enjoy playing video games, but why does this enjoyment contain at its core something that I most certainly do not enjoy?

We tend to talk of video games as being fun, but in The Art of Failure, I claim that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, we frown, grimace, and shout in frustration. So why do we play video games even though they often make us unhappy?

In the book I compare game failure to tragic literature, theater, and cinema. Where stories concern the inadequacies of others, game failure is special in that it concerns our personal inadequacies

The book covers the philosophy and psychology of failure, as well as the problem of interactive tragedy, and it shows how different types of game design makes failure personal.

Finally, I argue for our right to be just a little angry, and more than a little frustrated, when we fail.

Where to get it

Get The Art of Failure from your neighborhood bookstore, your favorite online retailer, or from the book’s companion website: http://www.jesperjuul.net/artoffailure/

The book is available in both paper and ebook formats.

Official MIT Press page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-failure

Thanks to everybody who made this book possible!

-Jesper

Endorsements

  • “Frankly, I hadn’t expected to enjoy a book about failure nearly as much as I did. Jesper Juul brings many different fields of study to the table and provides an engaging learning experience.”
    —Brenda Brathwaite Romero, game designer, COO and Co-Founder of Loot Drop
  • “I can think of no other medium that so constantly forces its participant to contemplate their own demise. The act of playing games is one dotted with near-endless failure. Yet we plow on. Jesper Juul’s new book is exactly the sharp examination of failure I need to keep myself from stabbing my eyes out when I get frustrated.”
    —Jamin Warren, Founder, Kill Screen
  • “In The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul explores an interesting idea and asks provocative questions. This book will be of interest to developers, players, scholars, journalists, and readers with related interests, such as chess players or athletes.”
    —Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections, Stanford University

International Journal of Role-Playing Issue 3:

International Journal of Role-Playing Issue 3:

  • Editorial: The state of our art.
  • Karl Bergström: Creativity Rules. How rules impact player creativity in three tabletop role-playing games.
  • Petri Lankoski and Simo Järvelä: An embodied cognition approach for understanding role-playing.
  • Mikael Hellstrom: A tale of two cities: Symbolic capital and larp community formation in Canada and Sweden.
  • Mikko Meriläinen: The self-perceived effects of the role-playing hobby on personal development – a survey report.

http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-content/issue3/IJRPissue3.pdf