My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things.
I am giving a talk November 18 at the Institute for Film and Dramaturgy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz.
Title: Stories that Games Tell: The Future of Time and Narratives in Video Games
The talk will bridge my earlier work on games and narratives with my more recent work on casual games.
November 18, 19:00-21:00. Hörsaal der Filmwissenschaft, Medienhaus – Wallstraße 11, 55122 Mainz.
I am speaking about A Casual Revolution this Monday at GAMBIT at MIT:
11/9/09: Jesper Juul leads A Casual Revolution
A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
Monday, November 9, 2009
5-6 PM at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Spending the winter of 2006-07 in New York City, I was beginning to lose count of the times I had heard the same story: somebody had taken the new Nintendo Wii video game system home to parents, grandparents, partner, none of whom had ever expressed any interest whatsoever in video games, and these non-players of video games had been enthralled by the physical activity of the simple sports games, had enjoyed themselves, and had even asked that the video game be brought along for the next gathering. What was going on?
Jesper Juul chronicles the rise of the casual games: puzzle games, the Nintendo Wii, and music games. These are video games that reach beyond the traditional video game audience; games that redefine what a video game can be, and who can be a video game player.
This Thursday November 5th, the NYU Game Center is hosting a panel discussion about independent games.
Thursday, November 5, 2009, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
721 Broadway, Lower Level, Room 006, New York 10003
The Indie Games panel will be a discussion of the design, development and culture surrounding independent games with three innovative and provocative indie developers:
The talk is open to students, faculty, and the general public. We welcome everyone, whether your research and teaching is related to games or you are simply curious about this rapidly evolving field.
Refreshments will be served.
Anna Anthropy kindly made an unofficial poster for the event:
I believe that games can help you consider ethical dilemmas, but it requires that the player takes the game seriously as such, rather than simply optimizing …
(Via the Rampant Coyote.)
In time to satisfy our late-October theory cravings, Eludamos maintains a good publication velocity and now brings us a new issue, volume 3, issue 2.
| Doubly Real: Game Studies and Literary Anthropology; or, Why We Play Games | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Philipp Schweighauser | 115-132 |
| Generations and Game Localization | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Darshana Jayemanne | 135-147 |
| Video Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Dominic Arsenault | 149-176 |
| Generations of Game Analytics, Achievements and High Scores | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Ben Medler | 177-194 |
| Fahrenheit and the premature burial of interactive movies | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Jonathan Lessard | 195-205 |
| Chopin’s Dream as Reality: A Critical Reading of Eternal Sonata | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Johansen Quijano-Cruz | 209-218 |
| Letter from the Wilderness | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Mark Mullen | 219-244 |
| Just Gaming: On Being Differently Literate | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Alex Kendall, Julian McDougall | 245-260 |
| An Analysis of Persistent Non-Player Characters in the First-Person Gaming genre 1998-2007: a case for the fusion of mechanics and diegetics | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Dan Pinchbeck | 261-279 |
| Playing with one’s self: notions of subjectivity and agency in digital games | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Alec Charles | 281-294 |
| Repelling the Invasion of the “Other”: Post-Apocalyptic Alien Shooter Videogames Addressing Contemporary Cultural Attitudes | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Ryan Lizardi | 295-308 |
| Ten years later | Abstract HTML PDF |
| Gerit Götzenbrucker, Margarita Köhl | 309-324 |
From the not-so-casual department, here is a new game, Pierre: Insanity Inspired.
Pierre was created at my previous workplace, the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
I functioned as a product owner on this game, which at GAMBIT means that I posed a research question that the game should answer.
Research question: How do different ways of communicating failure influence the player’s experience and performance?
The excellent team was then free make a game (more or less) within the constraints of that research question. You can play the game here.
For more about the creation of the game, have a look at the GAMBIT updates this week. Introduction video here.
As usual when I am posting games for research purposes, I will keep the further details close to the vest, and then post results later.
In the meantime, please play the game! Thanks!
A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players has just been published by MIT Press.
A Casual Revolution is my take on what is happening with video games right now:
A Casual Revolution is a 256-page book about what is important: The joy of the casual video games that we play during a work break, on phones, with the family, or with friends at a late-night party.
The book includes 100 illustrations as well as interviews with game players and developers.
Get A Casual Revolution from your neighborhood bookstore or from your favorite online retailer.
The book’s companion website is: http://www.jesperjuul.net/casualrevolution/
The official MIT Press page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11844
Thanks to everybody who made this book possible!
-Jesper
As if it was response to my earlier discussion of paragaming (the enjoyment of bad games), XKCD posts this commentary:
Good question how that translates to games! Having watched the Star Wars Holiday Special, I agree with the sentiment even if I do feel my having watched it gives me a kind of positive cultural capital.
The Big Rigs game that Jason discussed at our bad games panel is clearly as bad as to be on the very far right end of the graph in the drawing – but it’s nevertheless enjoyable as a paragame. So the question may not be how far along the game is on a “good/bad” scale, but about having a sufficient number of laughable moments pr. minute. A laughable moment, I think, involves open conflicts between the contents of a “bad” game and the game quality criteria we operate by.
A game level that is 50% too long is not enjoyably bad, but a game level that is 500% too long is. A bad game has to be much too much to be useful for paragaming!