The Ludologist

(Posting this after everybody else.)

Julian Dibbell’s new article at the New York Times on Chinese Gold Farmer.

As already Roger Caillois was on to, professionalization raises the basic question, Is it still a game?

And, apparently, yes, sort of.

It is hard, in any case, for Zhou to say where the line between work and play falls in a gold farmer’s daily routines. “I am here the full 12 hours every day,” he told me, offhandedly killing a passing deer with a single crushing blow. “It’s not all work. But there’s not a big difference between play and work.”

I turned to Wang Huachen, who remained intent on manipulating an arsenal of combat spells, and asked again how it was possible that in these circumstances anybody could, as he put it, “have sometimes a playful attitude”?

He didn’t even look up from his screen. “I cannot explain,” he said. “It just feels that way.”

*

As a video game theorist, I can sympathize with the line of reasoning. I get similar questions on occasion:

Q: Are games still fun when you are studying them professionally?

A: Yes.

Some games have actually become more fun. When playing a game that really isn’t that good, I can think about more interesting theoretical perspectives on the game. On the other hand, I do rely on a continuing supply of quirky games. Where would we be without Rhythm Tengoku?

It’s extremely hard to take the current commotion about Resistance Fall of Man seriously.

The Church of England is outraged that Resistance Fall of Man features a location with likeness to the Manchester Cathedral, Tony Blair is asked to comment, and the church would be willing to calm down for a price.

Something is seriously wrong – everybody seems to basically understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction, but when it comes to video games, otherwise intelligent people will happily short-circuit and claim that a sci-fi game “encourages people to have guns battles in the building“.

The part about encouragement comes from the bishop of Manchester, and it raises the question whether he personally felt very encouraged to engage in gun battles after playing the game? I think he needs to step forward on this issue: Did he feel a strong urge towards real gun violence that he could only barely control?

Or is it rather a sort of interpretation-by-proxy along the following lines: All these weird people who play video games must surely feel encouraged to engage in gun battles in the cathedral. (Though I have no basis for this assumption whatsoever. Please send money.)

How can you not desperately want to own this game?

Wired article on Soviet Era arcade games.

I mean – old, broken, mysterious arcade games I have never played, very exciting. On my wish list.

These days, I am quite fascinated with the idea of studying the development of a genre, game type, or game series over the years. It just hasn’t been done much (seems we have mostly been doing the very big picture or general musings on a single game), and the payoff from studying details is often surprisingly high. (To see the world in a grain of sand.)

Via GameSetWatch, here’s Blogging Ultima, where CageBlogger has been playing his way through the Ultima series since February.

From the introduction:

Welcome to what will presumably be a long-running Ultima blog. The purpose is to blog the experience of playing the now-defunct Ultima series by Origin Systems (plus a few other names here and there) from beginning to end. I will be including all the non-remake spin-offs that I am aware of, under the theory of “If I’m gonna do it, might as well go all the way.” I am not blogging as if I am a character in the game, or giving reviews. I’m going to write about the process of playing, the annoying things, the fun things, and the assorted mental musings that arise from any long-term activity.

Details are good.

It’s hard to argue with Blizzard these days, but the announcement of StarCraft II stirs many emotions for me.

One is respect for the game design of the original game (balancing three entirely different races that well!), but the other is that I experienced my own playing as a long plateau: I would admire the game design, but feel that I just wasn’t getting any better at the game. Perhaps, this time.

I have put up a new article, “Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games.”

Swap Adjacent Gems is an attempt at writing the history of matching tile games through the last 20 years.

This is a quite detailed article that discusses a large number of small games. It touches on a few things I consider underexplored:

• How does a game genre develop historically?
• What is special about casual games and the casual games channel?
• How do developers perceive the issue of originality in casual games?
• How does a player make sense of a new game?

Swap Adjacent Gems is slated to appear in the Artifact Journal, October 2007.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to everybody who helped me by commenting on my earlier post about matching tile history.