The Ludologist

BBC has made an “edition two” of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure. The new version has graphics. Click here to play it.

About the graphics, do they enhance the game? Discuss.

Via Intelligent Artifice, The Guardian Gamesblog features a pretty nice guide on how to defeat end-of-level bosses. Highlights:

1. Keep moving. Whatever you do, don’t stand still. Even for a second. This is the only cue an end-of-level boss needs to swipe at you with a giant fist or blast you with deadly lasers.
2. If the boss stops, panic. Bosses usually move about – when they stop it means they’re about to unleash their signature move, the aforementioned fist or laser blast.
3. Scan for weak spots. Every boss has one, sometimes more. They’re either permanently vulnerable but hard to hit, or they only become vulnerable at certain moments, usually after their signature attack.
4. The quarter rule. Keep checking the boss’s energy gauge – when there’s around a quarter left, more often than not, they’ll introduce a new attack, which throws you off-guard.

It reminds me a bit of the “How to be an evil overlord” list in that it’s an analysis of genre conventions posing as a practical guide.
OK, so it’s a list of genre conventions. But can you spot the pattern in the conventions?

Rules 2-4 all involve reversals:

• Stopping > dangerous assault.
• Seemingly invulnerable boss > weak spot.
• Terrifying attack > weak spot exposed.
• Allmost no energy > new attack introduced.

I think even Kirby’s Canvas Curse followed these conventions.

Here I am supposed to write something about that games designers should start thinking outside the box, and that these are just random conventions that could easily be changed.

But really, I think the current boss conventions work quite well because reversals are basically exciting, dramatic if you will.

Rune Klevjer has written the new DiGRA Hardcore column, about the issue of genre:

There is a curious lack of genre studies in our field, which strikes me as a bit of a missed opportunity. It means that variation, tension and significant detail too easily fall below the radar of academic game studies. It also means that we are less able to bridge the gap between the very specific and the very general, and less able to describe the connections between aesthetic convention and social practice.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired office assistant Edward Greenwood IX for playing Solitaire at work:

“The workplace is not an appropriate place for games,” Bloomberg said. “It’s a place where you’ve got to do the job that you’re getting paid for.”

Edward finds it a little harsh:

“It’s not like I’m the only one that ever did this,” said the 39-year-old father of a toddler.

I think it’s time to review the computer use policies where we work. As a game researcher, I guess I can’t be fired for playing games but only for, say, reading a novel…

This may be too obvious to blog about, but the question of games of skill vs. games of chance just comes up often, and discussions invariably involve some confusion. Here is a simple way of explaining it:

Chance means two different things.

It’s the same issue with Roger Caillois’ distinction between Alea (chance) and Agon (competition) – after all, many games of competition also contain chance elements.

Chance can mean either:

1. That a game contains a chance element or mechanic.
2. That the outcome of a game is determined by chance (the game is not a game of skill).

And the two meanings are constantly mixed up. That’s all.