Category: readings

Well Played: volume 1 number 3
Drew Davidson et al. 2012

Time Tech and Tales: The fall and rise of the popularity of narration in games seen through Monkey Island 2 and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Emmanuel Eytan

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Queue’d Up: The Functioning of Randomized Groups in World of Warcraft
Charles Ecenbarger II

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EUROPA UNIVERSALIS II: Conquest, trading, diplomacy from the Middle Ages to Napoleon
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen

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Deus Ex Ludos: Representation, Agency, and Ethics in Deus Ex: Invisible War
Joseph Hogle

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Playing as a Woman as a Woman as if a Man
Gabriela T. Richard

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Get it here.

The Canadian Game Studies Association has just published the Spring 2012 issue of their Loading … Journal.

Vol 6, No 9 (2012)

Drew Davidson has just posted volume 1, number 2 of the Well Played Journal.

BioShock and Portal: A Discussion of Poetics
Yotam Haimberg

We should be heroes… A case study of community building as a dominant strategy
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen

Cracking the Code: Untangling Game Structure, Properties and Player Experience
Elizabeth Goins

A Life in Baseball, Digital and Otherwise
Abraham Stein

Get the PDF here.

For your theoretical pleasure, here is the latest issue of Game Studies: Game Studies 2011-03.

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A Survey of First-person Shooters and their Avatars
by Michael Hitchens
A survey of over 550 first person shooters, The titles are compared by year of release, platform and game setting. Characteristics of avatars within the surveyed titles are also examined, including race, gender and background, and how these vary across platform and time. The analysis reveals definite trends, both historically and by platform…

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Against Procedurality
by Miguel Sicart
This article proposes a critical review of the literature on procedural rhetoric, from a game design perspective. The goal of the article is to show the limits of procedural rhetorics for the design and analysis of ethics and politics in games. The article will suggest that theories of play can be used to solve these theoretical flaws…

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The pastoral and the sublime in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
by Paul Martin
The landscape in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is seen here as a central aspect of the game’s theme of good versus evil. The analysis looks at the game’s distinction between the pastoral and the industrial realms and the way the player’s encounter with the landscape transforms over the course of the game from the sublime to the picturesque mode…

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Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams: Popular Music, Narrative, and Dystopia in Bioshock
by William Gibbons
The science-fiction world of the video game Bioshock (2K Games, 2007) presents a dystopian vision of mid-century America. The game explores the creation and ultimate destruction of the underwater city of Rapture, an Ayn-Rand-inspired capitalist Utopia. Though the game features an award-winning original score, its soundtrack also borrows…

ETC Press has posted the first issue of the new Well Played Journal.

Here is issue 1, volume 1.

Minecraft, Beyond Construction and Survival
Sean C. Duncan

Architecture as teambuilding in Left 4 Dead 2
Matt Haselton

Afterland – From well theorized to well learned?
Konstantin Mitgutsch, Matthew Weise

Little Big Planet and Metal Gear Solid 4: Being Old Sack Snake
Caroline C. Williams

ETC Press has another book out, this time Tabletop: Analog Game Design by Greg Costikyan and Drew Davidson.

Even as the digital revolution has progressed apace, tabletop games — board and card, roleplaying and miniatures — have grown and attracted many new fans. Indeed, in tabletop gaming there is far more diversity and design innovation than in digital games, and tabletop games have become of increasing interest to videogame designers, game design instructors, and people who study games of all forms.

In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.

The third installment in the Well Played series is now out, covering once again close readings & playings of video games.

(Personal comment: Well Played is an important series, but I do think that ETC should work on the formatting of the text online – in fact, there isn’t any at the moment, and no illustrations either.)

• Introduction
• Pokémon – Eli Neiburger
• Final Fantasy XIII – Simon Ferrari
• American McGee’s Alice – Matthew Sakey
• Limbo – Alice Taylor
• The Neverhood – Stephen Jacobs
• Heavy Rain – José P. Zagal
• Fallout 3 – Alex Games
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves – Drew Davidson & Richard Lemarchand
• Mass Effect – Matt McLean
• The World Ends With You – Theresa Chen
• Chrono Trigger – Francisco Souki
• Street Fighter IV – Jason VandenBerghe
• Majora’s Mask – Scott Juster
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver – Mark Sivak
• Toy Soldiers – Charles Palmer
• Siren – Chris Pruett
• The Way of the Samurai 3 – Arthur Protasio
• Limbo & The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom – Andy Jih
• The Path – Heather Chaplin
• La Noche de los Muertos – Greg Trefry
• World of Warcraft – Crystle Martin, Sarah Chu, Dee Johnson, Amanda Ochsner, Caro Williams, & Constance Steinkuehler
• Ico – Drew Davidson
• Well Read – Jim Bizzocchi & Joshua Tanenbaum