Video Games and Human Values Initiative
A new kind of conversation about games in culture
June 28 - July 4, 2009: Week in Review
That summer lull in writing due to school schedules doesn't seem to have materialized. I'm compensating with coffee and overplaying of Judas Priest's "Electric Eye."
Tom Cross (GameSetWatch's Diamond in the Rough) continues his look at narrative in games, and sorts out some misunderstandings about what "emergent narrative" is. It should be noted that Tom is here arguing in favor of a certain definition of the term, which obviously has been understood differently by others. I know it's common to dismiss semantic arguments, but I've always seen such discussions as laying a foundation of common understanding on which more substantial conversations can be built.
John Harris (Gamasutra) takes a stab at defining the RPG canon.
Ray Barnholt (1up) tries to explain why Japanese gamers seem to not grow tired of text-heavy games.
Randy Smith (Edge Magazine Blog) tries to figure out what prevents and produces emotional involvement in players, and why it seems to much easier to get audiences in other media to suspend disbelief and invest themselves. He wonders if the real trick is just not jarring players out of their engagement. It's an interesting question. I've certainly run into gamers that, when cornered about emotional responses to character circumstances, will insist on more mechanical reasons -- "I put too much time into leveling that character to lose it!" instead of "That character represents a part of my psyche and even a part of my self-image, and it hurts to see that be proven both vulnerable and transitory." Part of me thinks the answer is a cultural shift that endorses immersing ourselves more fully into our make-believe, feelings and all.
From the Nostalgia-Laced "Everything Is Getting Worse" Department
Matthew Kaplan (Game In Mind) wonders if "edgy" narratives need to swing back from the incipient norm of playing against "good guys" like police officers. Relatedly, Benj Edwards (Gamasutra News) wonders if games' progress towards more and more realism is leading to the point that games may allow for "virtual murder." My apologies for Benj's bombastic phrasing.
Side note: I only saw Benj's Gamasutra News piece because it was linked in Tom Allins' blog response on Gamasutra. I don't subscribe to Gamasutra's news feed since I'm mostly not trying to keep up with news so much as I'm doing my best to track thoughts and conversations. I shouldn't complain, though, as Gamasutra is at least kind enough to offer several different RSS content feeds. Not all big sites are quite as accessible.
Josh Raisher (Push Pause to Reflect) is put off by the meaninglessness of death in mainstream games and the failure of designers to embrace tragedy.
Narrative, Character and Emergence in Specific Games
L.B. Jeffries (PopMatters) explains his view of The Path: The game is about change and the loss of innocence, but also inescapably subjective.
Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer) endorses The Darkness. Hm? Oh yes, the game, not just the concept or some Platonic ideal. Michael claims that the game stands out not for standard game elements, but for the emotions and negotiation between the player, the character and the character's dark temptations.
Fraser McMillan (Resolution Magazine) dredges Gutter.
Robert Florence (DowntimeTown) explains the mechanics and play of War on Terror: The Boardgame. He lightly touches on how the satirical game starts to bring out real questions about labels in international politics.
G. Christopher Williams (PopMatters) surveys the narrative and visual elements of Mario games.
Lewis Denby (Eurogamer) looks back on the flawed diamond that is Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines.
Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer) announces the next title for the Vintage Games Club: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Edge Magazine looks back with admiration at the transition from Ocarina of Time to Majora's Mask, and Daniel Johnson (Daniel Primed) evaluates how Zelda: Twilight Princess attempts to stay innovative while staying true to the expectations and context of its long-lived and heavily lauded series.
Justin Keverne (Groping the Elephant) works out a taxonomy of the characters in Left 4 Dead.
Angelo (Gamer Quest) presents something of a critical compilation on Lost Odyssey .
Emily Short is experimenting with emergent elements of Sims 3.
Sean "Elysium" Sands (Gamers With Jobs) autopsies zombies as antagonist, story element and design element.
JZig (Double Buffered) believes that in order to make a compelling reward, loot needs to be both "cool" and useful. Speaking for myself, I've never been much for loot in general. If I can't find a less materialistic reason for my character to do something, then it's not likely to be done. Maybe that will change when NPCs learn to better respect their heroes.
Daniel Helbig (Rational Game Design and Gamasutra Expert Blogs) explains how to create weapons systems and balance them for affect. His post is loaded with useful links. Tangent: You may note that I'm a fairly big fan of links -- I take the view that the universe is a mess of infinite things and ideas just waiting to be properly linked together.
Nick Schager (IFC.com) looks back on Flower as a wonderful accomplishment that stands on the shaky shoulders of giants.
Jeriaska (GameSetWatch's Sound Current) holds an indie game music roundtable.
Alan Jack sees innovations in Splinter Cell as a major leap in game design, from player as puppeteers to players as inhabitants of other personae.
Nick Montfort (Post Position) points us to the slides from Andrew Plotkin's May 3, 2009 Penguicon talk on "Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction."
Ian Bogost (Gamasutra's Persuasive Games Column) evaluates the potential of meaning in gestural control schemes in video games in light of other physical interactions with games such as Train. Leigh Alexander (Kotaku) counters with a "defense of the classic controller." (via Jason Rohrer on Twitter) Matthew Kaplan (Game In Mind) responds to Ian Bogost's comments.
Steven Totilo discusses swimming and water hazards in games.
Arcade Berg (Gamasutra Blogs) breaks down the mechanics of Terminator: Salvation.
Scott Juster (Experience Points) concludes his look at difficulty in games. Mike Rousseau (Fierce Punch) looks at the other end: player skill.
Auntie Pixelantie goes back to the Mario well to explain great level design. I've seen a few Mario design retrospectives, and while they're uniformly fascinating, I worry that their lessons aren't easily extrapolated to other genres beyond platformers.
Gregory Weir (GameSetWatch's Interactive Palette) explains game compilation offerings as "game albums."
Michal Migurski (Tecznotes) proclaims that we're now a culture that reads on screens rather than paper. Along the way, he points out a pet peeve of mine: academic papers published online in the archaic PDF format. He doesn't get to my related complaints about lack of RSS support in academic journal sites.
Daniel Johnson (Lingua Franca at GameSetWatch) tries to capture the gamer lexicon.
KidIcarus222 (Drew at Back of the Cereal box) explains the term "zugswang" and postulates that it's a term with broader potential use.
Raph Koster compares game design to music, asking if there are parallels in the composing, performing and production.
Greg Lastowka at Terra Nova passes along research by Jonathan Kinkley, who just completed his Masters Thesis in Art History at University of Illinois at Chicago. The work looks at social formations in Second Life.
New peer-reviewed publication Computer Game Education Review, with Editor in Chief Stephen Jacobs, will be accepting submissions for the first edition until December 1, 2009. (via Ian Bogost) The link may not work yet; try this.
GDC Austin will have sessions on subscription-based MMOs as well. GDC Austin speaker announcements have also begun.
Raph Koster announces that MetaPlace supports embedding worlds within web pages.
PhD vacancy in Norway: Vacant PhD position within communication design in museums and cultural heritage institutions -- Deadline for applications: 24 August 2009
Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Clooney Center wants to emphasize the positive potential of games. The press release is here. (PDF)
IGDA South Florida level-design contest (PDF)
International Conference on Computational Creativity call for papers, due Sept 22. (via Nick Montfort)
Atari 7800 ProSystem source code was unofficially released for the system's 25th anniversary. (via GSW)
Review of the Games and Transnationality Panel At GLS last month.
As always, feel free to contact me (here via note or comment, or @erik_a_hanson on Twitter) if you would like to point out something you think I missed, or if you'd like me to check out a site to add to my weekly review. I'm pretty sure our events section here is missing a couple things in July. Feel free to add them or let me know what's missing!
Narrative, Character and Emergence
Borut Pfiefer (Plush Apocalypse) thinks games focus too much on plot and not enough on characterization.Tom Cross (GameSetWatch's Diamond in the Rough) continues his look at narrative in games, and sorts out some misunderstandings about what "emergent narrative" is. It should be noted that Tom is here arguing in favor of a certain definition of the term, which obviously has been understood differently by others. I know it's common to dismiss semantic arguments, but I've always seen such discussions as laying a foundation of common understanding on which more substantial conversations can be built.
John Harris (Gamasutra) takes a stab at defining the RPG canon.
Ray Barnholt (1up) tries to explain why Japanese gamers seem to not grow tired of text-heavy games.
Randy Smith (Edge Magazine Blog) tries to figure out what prevents and produces emotional involvement in players, and why it seems to much easier to get audiences in other media to suspend disbelief and invest themselves. He wonders if the real trick is just not jarring players out of their engagement. It's an interesting question. I've certainly run into gamers that, when cornered about emotional responses to character circumstances, will insist on more mechanical reasons -- "I put too much time into leveling that character to lose it!" instead of "That character represents a part of my psyche and even a part of my self-image, and it hurts to see that be proven both vulnerable and transitory." Part of me thinks the answer is a cultural shift that endorses immersing ourselves more fully into our make-believe, feelings and all.
From the Nostalgia-Laced "Everything Is Getting Worse" Department
Matthew Kaplan (Game In Mind) wonders if "edgy" narratives need to swing back from the incipient norm of playing against "good guys" like police officers. Relatedly, Benj Edwards (Gamasutra News) wonders if games' progress towards more and more realism is leading to the point that games may allow for "virtual murder." My apologies for Benj's bombastic phrasing.
Side note: I only saw Benj's Gamasutra News piece because it was linked in Tom Allins' blog response on Gamasutra. I don't subscribe to Gamasutra's news feed since I'm mostly not trying to keep up with news so much as I'm doing my best to track thoughts and conversations. I shouldn't complain, though, as Gamasutra is at least kind enough to offer several different RSS content feeds. Not all big sites are quite as accessible.
Josh Raisher (Push Pause to Reflect) is put off by the meaninglessness of death in mainstream games and the failure of designers to embrace tragedy.
Narrative, Character and Emergence in Specific Games
L.B. Jeffries (PopMatters) explains his view of The Path: The game is about change and the loss of innocence, but also inescapably subjective.
Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer) endorses The Darkness. Hm? Oh yes, the game, not just the concept or some Platonic ideal. Michael claims that the game stands out not for standard game elements, but for the emotions and negotiation between the player, the character and the character's dark temptations.
Fraser McMillan (Resolution Magazine) dredges Gutter.
Robert Florence (DowntimeTown) explains the mechanics and play of War on Terror: The Boardgame. He lightly touches on how the satirical game starts to bring out real questions about labels in international politics.
G. Christopher Williams (PopMatters) surveys the narrative and visual elements of Mario games.
Lewis Denby (Eurogamer) looks back on the flawed diamond that is Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines.
Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer) announces the next title for the Vintage Games Club: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Edge Magazine looks back with admiration at the transition from Ocarina of Time to Majora's Mask, and Daniel Johnson (Daniel Primed) evaluates how Zelda: Twilight Princess attempts to stay innovative while staying true to the expectations and context of its long-lived and heavily lauded series.
Justin Keverne (Groping the Elephant) works out a taxonomy of the characters in Left 4 Dead.
Angelo (Gamer Quest) presents something of a critical compilation on Lost Odyssey .
Emily Short is experimenting with emergent elements of Sims 3.
Game Design
I know that's not a great title for this section, but these all focus on game design or on individual elements of games.Sean "Elysium" Sands (Gamers With Jobs) autopsies zombies as antagonist, story element and design element.
JZig (Double Buffered) believes that in order to make a compelling reward, loot needs to be both "cool" and useful. Speaking for myself, I've never been much for loot in general. If I can't find a less materialistic reason for my character to do something, then it's not likely to be done. Maybe that will change when NPCs learn to better respect their heroes.
Daniel Helbig (Rational Game Design and Gamasutra Expert Blogs) explains how to create weapons systems and balance them for affect. His post is loaded with useful links. Tangent: You may note that I'm a fairly big fan of links -- I take the view that the universe is a mess of infinite things and ideas just waiting to be properly linked together.
Nick Schager (IFC.com) looks back on Flower as a wonderful accomplishment that stands on the shaky shoulders of giants.
Jeriaska (GameSetWatch's Sound Current) holds an indie game music roundtable.
Alan Jack sees innovations in Splinter Cell as a major leap in game design, from player as puppeteers to players as inhabitants of other personae.
Nick Montfort (Post Position) points us to the slides from Andrew Plotkin's May 3, 2009 Penguicon talk on "Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction."
Ian Bogost (Gamasutra's Persuasive Games Column) evaluates the potential of meaning in gestural control schemes in video games in light of other physical interactions with games such as Train. Leigh Alexander (Kotaku) counters with a "defense of the classic controller." (via Jason Rohrer on Twitter) Matthew Kaplan (Game In Mind) responds to Ian Bogost's comments.
Steven Totilo discusses swimming and water hazards in games.
Arcade Berg (Gamasutra Blogs) breaks down the mechanics of Terminator: Salvation.
Scott Juster (Experience Points) concludes his look at difficulty in games. Mike Rousseau (Fierce Punch) looks at the other end: player skill.
Auntie Pixelantie goes back to the Mario well to explain great level design. I've seen a few Mario design retrospectives, and while they're uniformly fascinating, I worry that their lessons aren't easily extrapolated to other genres beyond platformers.
Media Comparisons, Games as a Medium and Game Culture
Leigh Alexander (Sexy Video Game Land) and David Wildgoose (Kotaku) are talking about the perennial issue of games seeming to focus on masculine audiences.Gregory Weir (GameSetWatch's Interactive Palette) explains game compilation offerings as "game albums."
Michal Migurski (Tecznotes) proclaims that we're now a culture that reads on screens rather than paper. Along the way, he points out a pet peeve of mine: academic papers published online in the archaic PDF format. He doesn't get to my related complaints about lack of RSS support in academic journal sites.
Daniel Johnson (Lingua Franca at GameSetWatch) tries to capture the gamer lexicon.
KidIcarus222 (Drew at Back of the Cereal box) explains the term "zugswang" and postulates that it's a term with broader potential use.
Raph Koster compares game design to music, asking if there are parallels in the composing, performing and production.
Greg Lastowka at Terra Nova passes along research by Jonathan Kinkley, who just completed his Masters Thesis in Art History at University of Illinois at Chicago. The work looks at social formations in Second Life.
News
Julianne Greer (Escapist Magazine) is handing over the reins to Russ Pitts.New peer-reviewed publication Computer Game Education Review, with Editor in Chief Stephen Jacobs, will be accepting submissions for the first edition until December 1, 2009. (via Ian Bogost) The link may not work yet; try this.
GDC Austin will have sessions on subscription-based MMOs as well. GDC Austin speaker announcements have also begun.
Raph Koster announces that MetaPlace supports embedding worlds within web pages.
PhD vacancy in Norway: Vacant PhD position within communication design in museums and cultural heritage institutions -- Deadline for applications: 24 August 2009
Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Clooney Center wants to emphasize the positive potential of games. The press release is here. (PDF)
IGDA South Florida level-design contest (PDF)
International Conference on Computational Creativity call for papers, due Sept 22. (via Nick Montfort)
Atari 7800 ProSystem source code was unofficially released for the system's 25th anniversary. (via GSW)
Review of the Games and Transnationality Panel At GLS last month.
As always, feel free to contact me (here via note or comment, or @erik_a_hanson on Twitter) if you would like to point out something you think I missed, or if you'd like me to check out a site to add to my weekly review. I'm pretty sure our events section here is missing a couple things in July. Feel free to add them or let me know what's missing!
Comment
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Comment by Erik Hanson on July 6, 2009 at 3:53pm - But I'm more than happy to plug thoughtful and/or insightful writing about games wherever I find it. Keep it up and I'll keep linking to you! :)
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Comment by Erik Hanson on July 6, 2009 at 3:53pm
- Sorry about the ambiguity. I used scare quotes to avoid asserting that all cops are good (or even all guys), but realize that also could be interpreted as a quote attributed to you.
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Comment by Matthew G Kaplan on July 6, 2009 at 3:27pm - Many thanks for the double-nod! Just a teensy-weensy correction: I don't call police officers the definitive "good guys"; on the contrary, I explicitly claim that not all police officers ARE heroic (nor should they be depicted as such). However, I do say that these games should reconsider normalizing the killing of the police in the sense of destroying amoral cardboard cutouts or at least provide some kind of space for player reflection after mass-murdering them (or anyone else, for that matter). Thanks again!
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