Category: readings

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

And just in time for the new year, Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research has just published its latest issue (Volume 12, Issue 2, December 2012). All articles are available at http://gamestudies.org/1202/

Contents

The Algorithmic Experience: Portal as Art
by Michael Burden, Sean Gouglas
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/the_algorithmic_experience

Art requires criticism. Portal transcends videogame tropes: it explores the human struggle against algorithmic processes through complex parallels between the player, Chell, the companion cube, and GLaDOS. Increasingly complex frustrations are experienced directly through the game’s aesthetic of play – a freedom bounded by algorithmic control.

In the Double Grip of the Game: Challenge and Fallout 3
by Sara Mosberg Iversen
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/in_the_double_grip_of_the_game

A broad notion of challenge, conceptualized as both demanding and stimulating situations, is here proposed as a basis for holistic analysis of digital games which takes both the games’ mechanic and semiotic dimensions into equal account. The offered framework is demonstrated through application in an analysis of Fallout 3.

Death Loop as a Feature
by Olli Tapio Leino
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/death_loop_as_a_feature

This essay is a critical examination of the paradigmatic approach of interpreting computer games as games accessible for analysis and critique through ‘research-play’. The essay justifies a differentiation between game design research and game studies, and explores the avenues of analysis and critique of single-player computer games for the latter.

A Study of User Interface Modifications in World of Warcraft
by Sean Targett, Victoria Verlysdonk, Howard J. Hamilton, Daryl Hepting
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/ui_mod_in_wow

This paper studies the effect that user created interfaces have had on WoW and its community of users through an online survey issued to WoW players. The survey results illustrate the varied nature of this community and provide information that may aid in the creation of communities dedicated to modifying the interfaces of other software packages.

Best Before: The Red Queen Dilemma of Preserving Video Games?
by Staffan Björk
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/bjork_book_review

Review of Best Before: videogames, supersession and obsolescence. James Newman, 2012. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York.

Circles tend to return
by David Myers
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/myers_book_review

Review of The magic circle: Principles of gaming & simulation. Jan H. G. Klabbers, 2009. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Forever a moral subject
by Torill Mortensen
http://gamestudies.org/1202/articles/mortensen_book_review

Review of The Ethics of Computer Games. Miguel Sicart, 2009. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

By the way, Well Played 2.1 is out:

Well Played: a journal on video games, value and meaning
http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/volume-2-number-1

Stories from the Seats of Power: Chopper versus Chopper as dueling Travelogues
Matthew Thomas Payne, Michael Fleisch

Unbroken Immersion: The Skyrim Experience
David Simkins, Seann Dikkers, Elizabeth Owen

Super Meat Boy Special Bonus Pack
Caro Williams

Well Suffered
Moses Wolfenstein

Super Meat Boy: A Love Letter
Matthew Thomas Payne, Stephen Campbell

Response to Matthew Thomas Payne and Stephen Campbell’s “Super Meat Boy”
Moses Wolfenstein

Response to Moses Wolfenstein’s “Well Suffered”
Matthew Thomas Payne, Stephen Campbell

Ever since I wrote the Swap Adjacent article on matching tile games, I have been fascinated with the challenge of writing, and visualizing the history of art forms.

Here is Larry Gomley’s History of Film poster (clearly inspired by Reebee Garofalo’s genealogy of Pop/Rock music), in which we can see the major genres developing over time.

Before we pile on the criticism (US-centric etc..), there are three major reasons for attempting things like this:

1. It is an interesting way of condensing a large amount of information into a snapshot.
2. The process of reducing thousands of works into an overview is in itself interesting: how are we thinking about these things, and how would we express them visually?
3. Some of us ( me for example) were told in no uncertain terms during our university education that you just can’t write histories like this. So let’s do it!

 

I missed this the first time around, but Douglas Wilson has posted his PhD dissertation, Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation.

Abstract

Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation -or- How to make friends by trying to kick them!

In this dissertation I explore what it might mean to design games that aim to nurture a spirit oftogetherness. My central claim is that games which are intentionally designed to be confrontational, broken, or otherwise “incomplete” can help inspire a decidedly festive, co-dependent, and performative type of play. Appropriating the political theoretical work of Hannah Arendt, I argue that her concepts of “action” and “plurality” provide useful definitions of performance and togetherness as they relate to gameplay. Drawing primarily on theories of embodied interaction, precedents from the contemporary art world, and various folk game movements, I grapple with the messy relationship between designed systems and sociocultural context. I describe how confronting this relationship head-on opens up fruitful design opportunities. Taking seriously Dave Hickey’s concept of “the pleasures of disputation,” I explore how we players and designers might transmute the acrimony of conflict into something joyful.

Via Doug’s original blog post about the dissertation.

Technology Trees: Freedom and Determinism in Historical Strategy Games

by Tuur Ghys

This article deals with the representation of the history of technology in historical strategy games by the use of evolutionary tree diagrams called technology trees, in relation to the concept of technological determinism. It does so by comparing four important strategy games: Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations and Civilization IV.[more]

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Tombstones, Uncanny Monuments and Epic Quests: Memorials in World of Warcraft

by Martin Gibbs, Joji Mori, Michael Arnold, Tamara Kohn

In this paper memorials in World of Warcraft are described and analysed. The repertoires of materials used to build these memorials within the game world are discussed. We argue that game designers draw on diverse cultural materials to create memorials that resemble and allude to traditional and contemporary forms of memorialization.[more]

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Constitutive Tensions of Gaming’s Field: UK gaming magazines and the formation of gaming culture 1981-1995

by Graeme Kirkpatrick

The paper describes a study of UK gaming magazines in the 1980s and 90s. It argues that a structural transformation of gaming discourse can be discerned in these publications, one which has been fateful both for our understanding of what computer games are and for the identity of the modern ‘gamer’.[more]

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The Agony and the Exidy: A History of Video Game Violence and the Legacy of Death Race

by Carly A. Kocurek

Released in 1976, Exidy’s Death Race precipitated the first moral panic in video gaming. The incident resonates with contemporary debates about video gaming and provides insight into the evolution of violent games as a topic of special concern for moral guardians and the industry.[more]

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“Interactive Cinema” Is an Oxymoron, but May Not Always Be

by Kevin Veale

This article engages with the critical history of ‘interactive cinema’ as a term in order to explore why it has been so problematic, and uses close analysis of case-studies in the context of their affective experience to argue for a class of game texts that are neither ‘watched’ nor ‘played.’[more]
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Pretty Hate Machines: A Review of Gameplay Mode

by Ian Bogost

Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture. Patrick Crogan, 2011. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-5334-8[more]

Markus Montola’s Ph.D. On the Edge of the Magic Circle is now available for download at http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.php?id=1000161

Abstract

New issue of the Well Played journal, this one on romance:

 

Preface
Jane Pinckard

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Technology and emotion: Playing for the love of the game
Richard E. Ferdig & Kristine E. Pytash

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NPC Romance as a Safe Space: BioWare and Healthier Identity Tourism
Heidi McDonald

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Tick Tock: A review of Jason Rohrer’s Passage
Eric Hamel

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Quest for Love: Playing the Women of King’s Quest
Anastasia Salter

Get it here: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/files/WellPlayed_v1n4-12-romance.pdf