Games Studies 0102: The myth of the ergodic videogame. By James Newman. Some thoughts on player-character relationships in videogames by James Newman Introduction One of the most common misconceptions about videogames is that they are an interactive medium.
By this, I do not mean to draw attention to the problematic and ideologically charged notion of "interactivity" (see Aarseth, 1997 for example) or even to the difficulty in conceiving videogames as a medium as Friedman (forthcoming) has noted. Www.digra.org/dl/db/11307.08157.pdf. Www.digra.org/dl/db/11310.07353.pdf. Against Procedurality. By Miguel Sicart Abstract This article proposes a critical review of the literature on procedural rhetoric, from a game design perspective.
The goal of the article is to show the limits of procedural rhetorics for the design and analysis of ethics and politics in games. The article suggests that theories of play can be used to solve these theoretical flaws. Keywords: Procedural rhetorics, critical theory, ethics, politics, game design, game ontology Introduction It all starts in a sanitized environment. On the DVD commentary for the film, critic Philip Kemp paraphrases Tati: “If Playtime has a plot, it’s how the curve comes to reassert itself over the straight line” (Tati, 1967; minute 7:20).
This article questions the capacity of proceduralist rhetorics to address issues on the morality, politics, or cultural impact, particularly in multiplayer games. This article is divided in three sections. Interactive Media and the Poetic: An Exploration into the Elements of Interactive Media. This thesis investigates interactive media's capacity to communicate the poetic.
"Poetic" meaning the ability of language to communicate abstract and conceptual messages, as opposed to informational language that focuses on objects and their relationships to physical space. Introduction Different mediums have unique elements that they use to communicate. Photography uses elements like camera angle, film grain, and focal length as a kind of vocabulary to communicate both informationally and poetically. Poetically speaking, a photographer could use a low camera angle to give the viewer a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. Within the context of interactive media, the obvious examples of this vocabulary are the actions of the mouse (e.g. rollover, click, drag) and the keyboard (e.g. pressing keys, pressing combinations of keys). International Journal of Design. Www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132302/persuasive_games_the_.php?page=1.
Are games art?
Last year, what Jim Preston wrote drove the nail into the coffin of this absurd and useless question: To think that there is a single, generally agreed upon concept of art is to get it precisely backwards. Americans' attitude towards art is profoundly divided, disjointed and confused; and my message to gamers is to simply ignore the "is-it-art? " debate altogether. Preston sheds light on a fatal problem with the "games as art" conversation. There are many reasons for such a development, perhaps the most important being that the avant garde changed art for good.
Interactivity, Inhabitation and Pragmatist Aesthetics. By Phillip D.
Deen Abstract As the cultural presence of video games continues to grow and pop culture has become even more of a subject for philosophy, a debate has raged over the aesthetic character of video games. While refraining from the familiar debate over whether games are in fact art, this article argues that a valuable and previously unexplored framework for analyzing their aesthetic character is John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics. Dewey's Aesthetics. First published Fri Sep 29, 2006; substantive revision Mon Mar 4, 2013 John Dewey is well known for his work in logic, scientific inquiry, and philosophy of education.
His fame is based largely on his membership in the school of American Pragmatists of which Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were the leading early figures. He has also had a great deal of influence in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. His work Art as Experience (1934) is regarded by many as one of the most important contributions to this area in the 20th century. Yet it is not as widely discussed as that evaluation would indicate. Features - Game Design - Theory And Practice: The Elements of Gameplay. This excerpt from Richard Rouse III's , covers several key game design issues, which contribute to what Rouse calls "The Elements of Gameplay.
" The book covers all aspects of game design, from coming up with a solid idea to writing the design document, from implementing the gameplay to playtesting the final product. —Julian Gollop, talking about his game What are the game design elements that make up a really good game? Of course, there is no definitive answer to such a question. Nonetheless, as a game designer you will be expected to intuitively know exactly what the answer is. Theory and Principles of Game Design. Nels Anderson's Blog - Say No to "Fun"
Seriously folks, we need to stop talking about "fun. " Or at least talk about it less. I've made this comment in various locales, but I thought given the resurgence of the topic , it would be good to put my stake in the ground here. In Defence of Criticism: The Close Reading » Medium Difficulty. By Lana Polansky In what has become the standard model of “games criticism,” a game’s value is broken into a rubric, where each of its component parts examined and measured.
Graphics, sound, gameplay, story—each one isolated and evaluated according to a very strict set of requirements. Beyond Definitions of Game. The endless discussions about the plausible definitions of what constitutes a ‘game’ have ceased to be productive.
It is time for a new game about games – to stop being concerned about the question “what is a game?” And instead focus our interest on the wider and deeper question of “what is a great game?”. And to do this, we have to replace our fixation with the definition of ‘game’ with an attempt to recognise the different aesthetic positions within game design and game criticism.
Player attention is what matters, says Lemarchand. GDC 2012: Forget 'immersion' -- player attention is what matters, says Lemarchand Understanding how human attention works is essential to the core of a good game experience, believes Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand.
“I’m hungry for knowledge about the human mind,” he says. In particular, Lemarchand feels a personal dislike for words like “immersion” and “immersive”, and their relatives “engaging” and “engagement.” “We use these words all the time when we’re talking about what makes games great, but do we really understand what they mean?” Analysis of this issue played a major part in Lemarchand's well-attended presentation at GDC 2012's game design track.
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play established the concept of the prevalent “immersive fallacy” idea that claims that the pleasure in gaming comes from making the player believe he or she is actually sensorily involved in an imaginary world. When well designed, "gameplay is like mental catnip to us," Lemarchand says. Arcade-Style Game Design: Postwar Pinball and the Golden Age of Coin-Op Videogames. Ngm.png (1713×712) Interactive Experience Design. "Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. " Unknown In the time since this thesis was conceived the game design industry, and games as a medium, have undergone a momentous metamorphosis. Surely and inevitably, games are changing. Www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf.