Wii Play: The Popular Bad Game?

Enthusiast site Ars Technica declares that “Wii Play becomes first bad game to sell 10 million“.

While Wii Play isn’t my favorite game, perhaps the Ars Technica headline and the 61% GameRanking average are both misleading? I do think it contains a good deal of enjoyable minigames suitable for a lazy afternoon.

In a Gamasutra article on Silver Gamers, Wii Play Cow Racing is even singled out as a popular minigame.

Is Wii Play a bad game? Or is it just a game for an audience other than game journalists?

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(Image from Tiger Direct.)

New Issue of Eludamos

New issue out from Eludamos, the Journal for Computer Game Culture:

Vol 3, No 1 (2009)

Table of Contents

Positions

Reproducing the machine HTML PDF
Mia Consalvo 1-3

Perspectives

Serious games taken seriously HTML PDF
Christian Swertz 7-8
Passionate Digital Play-Based Learning. (Re)Learning in computer games like Shadow of the Colossus Abstract HTML PDF
Konstantin Mitgutsch 9-22
Key Dimensions of Contemporary Video Game Literacy: Towards A Normative Model of the Competent Digital Gamer Abstract HTML PDF
Christoph Klimmt 23-31
Notes on the Biographical Meaning of Games and Online-Games Abstract HTML PDF
Helle Meister, Gerrit Herlyn 33-41
Tanks, Chauffeurs and Backseat Drivers: Competence in MMORPGs Abstract HTML PDF
Diane Carr, Martin Oliver 43-53

Articles

Games and Self-Imagining, a Comparative Media Perspective Abstract HTML PDF
Jan Van Looy 57-68
‘I am Trying to Believe’: Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game Abstract HTML PDF
Alexander Charles Oliver Hall 69-82

Reviews

I HEART LocoRoco – a reading of a gameplay experience Abstract HTML PDF
Emma Westecott 85-93
The pleasurable lightness of being: Interface, mediation and meta-narrative in Lucasfilm’s Loom Abstract HTML PDF
Jaroslav Švelch 95-102
Pure Hardcore? wipEout HD and current game design Abstract HTML PDF
Fares Kayali 103-106
Assembling a Mosaic of the Future: The Post-Nuclear World of Fallout 3 Abstract HTML PDF
Martin Pichlmair 107-113

Game Developers Conference 2009, as told through Twitter

What were the main themes of the Game Developers Conference last week?

I participated in the Real-time Research session where my group (Ulrika Bennerstedt, Mia Consalvo, Jonas Linderoth, Meagan Rothschild, John Sharp + me) examined what participants were twittering about in the #gdc channel. I made a script to collect the twitter data, then we analyzed word frequencies using Wordle.

[Update: Download the pdf here.]

Brief analysis:

  • During the summits on Monday and Tuesday, the iPhone was the most commonly discussed platform.
  • Wednesday and Thursday were dominated by the Satoru Iwata and Hideo Kojima keynotes.
  • Friday was dominated by the all-star panel on the Role of Games in Personal and Social Change.
  • Apart from that, it was a somewhat theme-less conference, with casual, indie and social games taking up still larger parts of the conversation, and some element of a wait-and-see attitude. Are video games recession-proof?

Monday:

monday

Tuesday:

tuesday


Wednesday:

wednesday

Thursday:

thursday

Friday:

friday

Off to (and Speaking at) the Game Developers Conference

I am heading off to the Game Developers Conference once again.

I am giving a talk on the meaning of failure in games: Beyond Balancing: Using Five Elements of Failure Design to Enhance Player Experiences.

If you have been following this blog, you may have noticed that I have been interested in the role of failure lately. This being GDC, the talk is pretty practically oriented, presenting data and concepts, then demonstrating their applicability:


Beyond Balancing: Using Five Elements of Failure Design to Enhance Player Experiences
Speaker: Jesper Juul (Lecturer / Researcher, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab)
Date/Time: Friday (March 27, 2009)   10:30am — 10:50am
Location (room): Room 2022, West Hall
Track: Game Design
Secondary Track: Production
Format: 20-minute Lecture
Experience Level: All

Session Description
This lecture presents a toolbox for improving failure design in single player games. Player research shows that the primary issue is not the frequency of failures, but how failure is communicated, what happens as a result of failing, and whether a given failure design allows the game to be enjoyed within a player’s time constraints. Using concrete examples, this lecture will show how failure can play a positive role in games, how players of casual games are actually not averse to failure, and how developers can get beyond balancing to improve the failure design in their games.

Takeaway
Attendees will be introduced to new research on how players perceive failure in games. A framework of Five Elements of Failure design will be presented. Attendees will be able to use the framework for improving the design, testing, and balancing of video games for different audiences.

Intended Audience and Prerequisites
Designers, producers, testers, and marketers interested in both rethinking the role of difficulty and failure in their games and in tailoring game design to the preferences and time constraints of their audience. Knowledge of game balancing issues is helpful but not required.

The IGDA Casual Games White Paper 2008 is here!

For those interested in casual games and everything about them, the IGDA Casual Games SIG has published the 2008 Casual Games White Paper. (Yes, it is 2009 now, but it has just launched.)

A lot has happened since the 2006 white paper was published, so I am glad that we have an updated resource again.

Dave Rohrl writes:

The white paper is a detailed and thorough overview of the state of casual games.  It weighs in at over 200 pages and is the fruit of hundreds of hours of work from several dozen volunteer writers, editors, and project managers.

It gives in-depth coverage on the basics of casual gaming from both business and creative perspectives.  It has detailed insights not only on downloadable games, but also on ad-supported web games, advergames, console downloads, and microtransaction-supported web games.  It even has a couple of articles on exotic and interesting topics like the state of the casual games market in India and the confluence of casual games and serious games.

Conference Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008

For your theory pleasure, the Conference Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008 have now been published, edited by Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe and Dieter Mersch, with the editorial cooperation of Sebastian Möring. Download it here.

I discussed my own contribution in the previous post, here is the table of contents.

Table of contents

Petra Müller: Preface

Patrick Coppock: Introduction

Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe and Dieter Mersch: Editor’s Note

Keynotes
Ian Bogost: The Phenomenology of Videogames

Richard Bartle: When Openness Closes. The Line between Play and Design

Jesper Juul: The Magic Circle and the Puzzle Piece

Ethics and Politics
Anders Sundnes Løvlie: The Rhetoric of Persuasive Games. Freedom and Discipline in America’s Army

Kirsten Pohl: Ethical Reflection and Emotional Involvement in Computer Games

Niklas Schrape: Playing with Information. How Political Games Encourage the Player to Cross the Magic Circle

Christian Hoffstadt/Michael Nagenborg: The Concept of War in the World of Warcraft

Action | Space
Bjarke Liboriussen: The Landscape Aesthetics of Computer Games

Betty Li Meldgaard: Perception, Action, and Game Space

Stephan Günzel: The Space-Image. Interactivity and Spatiality of Computer Games

Mattias Ljungström: Remarks on Digital Play Spaces

Charlene Jennett/Anna L. Cox/Paul Cairns: Being ‘In The Game’

Souvik Mukherjee: Gameplay in the ‘Zone of Becoming’. Locating Action in the Computer Game

Dan Pinchbeck: Trigens Can’t Swim. Intelligence and Intentionality in First Person Game Worlds

Robert Glashüttner: The Perception of Video Games. From Visual Power to Immersive Interaction

The Magic Circle
Britta Neitzel: Metacommunicative Circles

Yara Mitsuishi: Différance at Play. Unfolding Identities Through Difference in Videogame Play

Eduardo H. Calvillo-Gámez and Paul Cairns: Pulling the Strings.
A Theory of Puppetry for the Gaming Experience

Michael Liebe: There is no Magic Circle. On the Difference
between Computer Games and Traditional Games