Category: general

Sorry, but You Can’t Do That: Talk at University of California, San Diego, April 18th

When

Date: Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Time: 12:00 ? 2:00 PM

Where

University of California, San Diego
San Diego Supercomputer Center Auditorium
10100 Hopkins Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093?0505
Visitor Information

Sorry, but You Can’t Do That: How We Make Sense of Video Games

“We have yet to see a Citizen Kane of video games.”

In this talk, I will argue that there have been many Citizen Kanes of video games. By this, I mean video games created with a deep understanding of the medium, while simultaneous pushing the boundaries of what video games can be: Examples such as StarCraft, and the Legend of Zelda and Grand Theft Auto series fit in that category. These are, however, also Citizen Kanes in the sense that they are hard to play, and that they speak primarily to a specialized market of players with prior experience with video games.
Compared to other media, video games are really missing The Da Vinci Code or Night at the Museum: somewhat shallow but easily enjoyable games that require no specialized knowledge to use or understand. The question therefore becomes to understand gaming literacy: to identify the conventions and cues that trained gamers understand, but which are incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
By playing games with the audience, I will illustrate what it means to be literate in video games, what happens when you pick up a game, how a player makes sense of a game, how small changes in a game design can radically change the gameplay of the game, and how the player changes his or her understanding of the game over time.

Thinking Outside The Game Box

Judith Faifman, an educator and codirector of the Digital Cultures Research and Design Group, will follow with a discussion on the impact of video games on modes of thought. Faifman will also discuss how literacy in new media can promote social inclusion for students from low-income and minority families.

Faifman has sought to integrate new, digital cultures into existing educational environments. Her group is collaborating with the National Ministry of Education in Argentina to develop youth-media production. She is seeking to provide solid, theoretical foundations for digital, pedagogical practice for social inclusion.

Juicy: Using Game Design to improve the Email Experience

During GDC I played Peggle, and I picked up the design term juicy from Chaim Gingold: A juicy interface is one that gives excessive amounts of feedback for all of your actions – particle effects (you can’t have too many), halos, sounds, things that glow, bounces, echoes, and so on. Juicy interfaces are usually incredibly satisfying, and it is one of the things that PopCap excel at creating. Juicy interfaces are generally quite addictive, in the positive sense.

So I realized that my email program for years has been set up to make me addicted to the wrong thing: There is a bell when a mail comes in, which gives me your old variable interval reinforcement “ah, yes, that’s the stuff”-feeling. So I get addicted to checking my mail, which is completely unproductive.

I want to be addicted to replying to mail, so I removed the sound for when mail comes in and I’ve set up a sound for when I send an email. Now, sending a mail is much juicier than it used to be, and my email experience is much better.

Technically, I would like the mail program to provide extra feedback for when I reply to a mail vs. sending a mail (can’t see how to do that in Eudora). Why not particle effects, halos, sounds, things that glow, bounces, echoes?

I want a really juicy email experience.

[Update: I now realize that Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, Matt Kucic, and Shalin Shodhan discussed juiciness a while ago on Gamasutra.]

Back in Copenhagen

Back in Copenhagen today after spending the last 5.5 months in New York, visiting Parsons School of Design and beginning some research with GameLab.

It is unpleasantly cold and rainy here, but this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it was unpleasantly cold and rainy in Brooklyn when I left.

I have begun quite a few papers that I want to finish this semester. And who knows, perhaps I will be back in NY in the not too distant future.

Without a Goal: On Open and Expressive Games

I have posted a new article for your perusal: Without a Goal: On Open and Expressive Games.

The article discusses the recent popularity of games without goals or with optional goals, such as Sims, the Grand Theft Auto series, and World of Warcraft.
It is slated to appear in the forthcoming Videogame/Player/Text anthology edited by Tanya Krzywinska and Barry Atkins.

Without a Goal can be considered the academic version of my Game Developer’s Conference 2006 talk on A New Kind of Game. I.e. more references, fewer practical suggestions, and broader theoretical strokes.

Ludology All Over

Wired’s jargon watch lists ludology as on of the four featured terms this month:

LUDOLOGY
n. The academic study of videogames. Taking its name from the Latin word for game, and deriving techniques from literary and film theory, ludology analyzes EverQuest as art and Grand Theft Auto as cultural artifact.

Via Gonzalo at, eh. ludology.org.

I think this means we’re mainstream now.