The Ludologist

Dan Hunter, Greg Lastowka, Julian Dibbell and Edward Castronova anounce their new shared blog on virtual worlds, Terra Nova.

The purpose of the blog is to report and comment on critical developments in the area of emergent collective reality spaces, aka virtual worlds. Our focus is not on the worlds themselves but on the economic and legal implications of the behavior they generate.

The blog already has some interesting posts, but “emergent collective reality spaces”? What does emergent mean in this context?

Entering the last three weeks of my Ph.D..
21 days of work if I want to meet the official deadline of October 1st.
I’ll be exhausted by the end of it, but it’s also one of those times where everything is connected. The smallest break immediately brings 10 ideas that I rush to write down. It’s also a kill your darlings-moment: I see all the brilliant flashes of insight that I can’t put in my Ph.D.; it’s unlikely I will have the time to explain why Auerbach’s Figura enlightens us on the interpretation of Super Mario Sunshine. The small amount of procrastination that I do get done is conveniently spent playing relevant games. Real procrastination is then to play irrelevant games, though my mind picks up strange connections anyway.
I am past Tim Henman and Jim Courier in Virtua Tennis on my NTSC Dreamcast, 4th seeded in the world, but beating King is really, really hard. This was meant to be a pure waste of time, but I’ve already written about how Virtua Tennis is a stylized simulation of real tennis in that many aspects of the real sport has been removed: You can’t leave the court; the player automatically positions himself for a smash. And is it cheating to quit a game in career mode if it’s not going well or should you play it to the end?

Nice page listing and explaining the game design terminology that Ion Storm uses.
(Link courtesy of Kurt Squire.)

The big question is this: Should the terminology used by game academics converge or diverge from the one used by game industry? It would be so nice if could all get along and immediately understand each other.

Here’s the definition of fun, another one of those things that I need large amounts of qualifiers and references to talk about as an academic:

Fun
The holy grail of games, but an ill-defined term for purposes of game analysis. Marc LeBlanc’s GDC speech on complexity warns against the word “fun” being vague. He describes ways in which players often derive pleasure from games. (Subsequently, we’ve added to that list.)

Clearing: Many games allow the player to clean up a scattering of interactive elements. There?s a simple pleasure players seem to get from “Hoovering” their way across a room full of gold coins or revealing the blacked out sections of the maps in RTS games or RPG?s.

Collection: The act of accumulating things. (Could be referred to as Consumerism.) Sometimes tied to the desire to complete a set. Examples: Collecting coins in Mario. Collecting Magic cards. Buying things in The Sims.

Creation: Bringing something into existence. Building something that feels like it belongs to you. Examples: Constructing and growing a city in SimCity. Creating and arranging a fish tank in El-fish.

Discovery: Space to explore and gain mastery over. Sometimes conceptual space, like the rules to a new game. Examples: It’s fun to range over a new (often blackened-out) map in many strategy games like Warcraft or Sacrifice. You can see players go through phases when playing successive games of Onhe Furcht und Adel–they gain enjoyment over discovering the parameters of the game (and the successful strategies therein), then mastering the game.

Diversion: Pleasure derived from performing routine game system activities–the mechanical act of manipulating the game. Examples: Playing an hour of Windows Solitaire.

Expectation: Waiting with exciting for some perceived reward or entertaining moment. Examples: The thrill of gambling; blindly waiting to see if you’ve ‘won’ playing slots. (DX1 featured a similar chest lock picking dynamic–the player spend a lock pick and waited for a few expectant seconds to see what he had won.)

Experience: Allowing the player to engage in a real-world activity that is beyond his practical means. Examples: Killing a person with a pistol. Flying a fighter plane in a flight sim. Driving crash-up derby cars in a mud arena car game. Getting to play against Tiger Woods in a golf match.

Expression: Self discovery/exploration. Identity expression. Examples: Choosing a self-gratifying nickname, character name or call sign in a game like Quake, EverQuest or X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter. Choosing a character race/group in an RPG that is identified with an archetype or demeanor. Deck construction in Magic the Gathering.

Fantasy: Vehicle for imaginative or impossible activity. Examples: Flying on the back of a red dragon. Battling the undead. Piloting a space ship.

Fellowship: Social aspects of gaming. Examples: Working with squad mates in FireTeam to form a plan and attempt to score a goal. Standing around, chatting in the town in Diablo.

Goal-completion: Being given a clear goal and actually recognizing that it has been accomplished. Example: Completing a bridge level in Bridge Builder. Completing a mission in C&C (in which the player is often given very clear goals, like, “Build at least 12 tanks.”).

Investment: Spending time on some game element and thus coming to value it. Examples: Slowly building up a 60th level druid in EverQuest.

Media-migration: Players desire to interact with familiar (and often well-liked) fictional elements from other media. The keys to this are familiarity (with the established fiction) and interaction. For instance, during beta-testing of the Aliens vs. Predator game, players demanded the option of carrying and using Hicks’ shotgun, even though it was an antiquated, inferior weapon. In Star Trek games, players get excited at the option of attempting their own solutions to classic problems/encounters posed by the television series. Using a light saber from Star Wars carries its own appeal.

Narrative: Drama that unfolds over time, creates tension, engages us. Examples: Learning of “Tommy and Rebecca’s” situation in System Shock 2 and finally seeing them run down the hall toward escape. (Embedded narrative.) The dramatic events that occur in a Quake deathmatch as a result of the players’ actions. (Emergent narrative.)

Obstacle: Encountering a challenge and overcoming it. Examples: Making a difficult jump in SSX.

Sensation: Aurally or visually pleasing aesthetics. Examples: The first time the player steps out onto a hill and overlooks the world in Sacrifice, with its amazing art, he is in sheer awe and feels pleasure.

Victory: Putting the beat-down on an opponent. Some people are driven to compete and gain pleasure from winning. Examples: Players love being the top-ranking player in a Quake deathmatch.

From various sources, a game called Carabella Goes To College: You play the role of Carabella who begins at college – you then have to make decisions about what personal information you want to share with various companies and institutions.

It’s a game for the slightly paranoid and most of the decisions are pretty clear: The game is hosted on a site called privacyactivism.org. Do they think that you should be giving your email address away?

It makes me think of Gonzalo Frasca‘s call for political games: I always fear this kind of thing – some set-in-stone ideology that the game wants to hammer into your head. I just don’t believe that the plainly didactic is ever that interesting – art needs to have some sort of doubt or open-endedness to be worthwhile.

I tend not to write much about my work-in-progress, but let me try:

One of my basic arguments is that the rules of a game are designed to (and evolve to) be so clear and unambiguous that it is always clear whether a given action is allowed or not.
At the same time, actually playing a card game, board game, or any outdoor game like croquet tends to lead to much discussion about what rules to follow. I have played thousands of games and seen thousands of games played where discussion erupted around these things: Can you shoot the ball through the center hoops of the croquet field in any direction? Can you borrow money from other players in Monopoly? Can you move both clockwise and counterclockwise during the same turn in Trivial Pursuit?

I have seen this arguing about rules so many times, but for academic purposes, I need a source: Did anybody ever write about this? Any anthropological studies?

It is one of those academic moments: It would be much easier if I could quote somebody else saying this. (Perhaps I should write that article myself under pseudonym?)

The alternatives are 1) to plainly claim that that’s the way it is or perhaps 2) to do a microscopic anthropological study:
“Copenhagen, the evening of August 14th 2003. 4 young men are playing croquet on Halmtorvet. As the leader of the game shoots his ball through the center hoops of the playing field, a violent discussion erupts: Must you shoot through the center hoops from a specific angle; do you need to pass through both hoops or is one enough?”

Any sources, any ideas?

Which is the better game, Snood or Bust’a’move?

Let me get that: Bust’a’move (AKA Puzzle Bobble) is a wonderfully simple puzzle game with tons of Japanese cool:

Snood is a cheap, poorly executed ripoff with graphics seemingly done in Windows Paint.

Don’t know why, but a lot of people (especially in North America?) play Snood rather than Bust’a’move, Henry Jenkins here.

Hello? Stop playing Snood and get the real thing instead!

Still, if anyone could explain why a large white worm comes out of Pukadon’s belly when you select him (Super Bust’a’move on PS2) … ehr, what is this supposed to signify?

More details are emerging about Sony’s upcoming game handheld, the PSP.

There seems to be nothing really new about the device, rather it’s an amalgam of current technology and conventional projections for the future:

Sony is taking a page from Nintendo’s GameCube by introducing a new small disc format (60mm), the “Universal Media Disc” (“Universal” apparently means “Proprietary”.)

It will also feature wireless gaming capabilities like the Nokia N-Gage. (Though Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth.)

This is nice enough, and lots of tech specs pointing to better 3d. But what I’m less sure about is whether we are really always looking for more 3d capabilities? The Gameboy games I enjoy are all 2d: Chu Chu Rocket, Denki Blocks, Zelda, Advance Wars, but the 3d Super Monkey Ball jr. does nothing for me. I could be wrong, but I feel that 2d is more natural when playing on a small device – especially when in a train, car, or on a plane.
My non-corroborated explanation would be that when your body and what you are interfacing with is fixed on a desk and a chair, you can use your brain’s center for motor control to navigate in a 3d game world, but that when your body or the Gameboy is moving, your brain is preoccupied with controlling the body and can’t really spare that energy on the 3d game world.
So this would be the argument that portable gaming will always be primarily 2d.

Similarly, it appears that 3d games take more time getting used to than 2d – I’ve seen lots of small kids (and older non-gamers) having a really hard time interfacing with a 3d world, moving their bodies instead of using the gamepad etc… Is 3d always less casual than 2d? Is Sony barking up the wrong tree?