posted my final paper for game studies online.
it goes without saying that it needs more work but i wanted to upload here because of it’s relevance towards my thesis.
some quotes from reading: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/Boalian
“… videogames need the active participation of the user not just for interpretational matters, but also for accessing its content.”
“In temporal terms, narrative is about what already happened while simulation is about what could happen.”
from “Theater of the Oppressed”
“If I utter the word “revolution,” obviously everyone will realize that I am talking about a radical change, but at the same time each person will think of his or her “own” revolution, a personal conception of revolution. But if I have to arrange a group of statues that will signify “my revolution,” here there will be no denotation-connotation dichotomy. THe image synthesizes the individual connotation and the collective denotation.”
“Maybe the theater in itself is not revolutionary, but these theatrical forms are without a doubt a rehearsal of revolution. The truth of the matter is that the spectator-actor practices a real act even though he does it in a fictional manner.”
“The spectator is less than a man and it is necessary to humanize him, to restore to him his capacity of action in all its fullness. he too must be a subject, an actor on an equal plane with those generally accepted as actors, who must also be spectators.”
A Method For Discovering Values in Digital Games
– Mary Flanagan, Jonathan Belman, Helen Niseenbaum, Jim Diamond
Through the design process, values and beliefs become embedded in games whether designers intend them or not.
It is not enough to stop at the point of recognizing that human principles (negative and positive) could be embodied in design, but to set forth particular principles as design aspirations.
irst, designers discover the values relevant to their project, and decide which values should be integrated into the design. Then, they translate those values into concrete design features. Finally, they systematically verify that those values have indeed been embedded in the game.
“I think the most interesting type of values game has those values manifested through the basic mechanics of interaction. Not the story, not the goal, but the activity the player performs.”[sic]
… game should be studied as designed experienced, that is, as technical artifacts constructed by individuals whose decisions and skills as developers are informed by their own indeological dispositions and by their own experiences in the world.
Decisions about game mechanics, which dictate how players may and may not function in a game world, and narrative content, which sets the rule system within a coherent framework, may reflect designers’ conscious and unconscious considerations of values and their beliefs about “how the world works,” even when that world is fictional.
Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek – MDA
“The difference between games and other entertainment products (such as books, music, movies, and plays) is that their consumption is relatively unpredictable.”
“Mechanics describes the particular components of the gmae, at the level of the data reresentation and algorithms.
Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others’ outputs over time.
Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.”
“From the designer’s perspective, the mechanics give rise to dynamic system behavior, which in turn leads to particular aesthetic experiences. From the player’s perspective, aesthetics set the tone, which is born out in observable dynamics and eventually, operable mechanics.”
Jesper Juul – A History of Matching Tile Games
“When [a] player picks up a game, they are also using their conception of video game history to understand the new game.”
A match-3 game’s design consists primarily of (paraphrased from reading):
– short playing sessions
– auto-save
– mouse control
– very simple rules
– moderate innovation
– multiple levels of success
– much positive feedback
– little negative feedback
“From a game player’s perspective, it may not matter whether actual inspiration took place: the player or developer may identify a game as being derived from another game, regardless of whether there is any truth to this. In other words, the history is a snapshot of a perception of the history of matching tiles games.”
*****
first assignment topic:
history of bullet hell/shoot ’em up game genre.
Bernard Suits – What Is a Game?
“The belief that working and playing games are quite different things is very widespread, yet we seem obliged to say that playing a game is another job to be done as competently as possible.”
“Rules in games thus seem to be in a some sense inseparable from ends. To break a rule is to render impossible the attainment of an end. … If the rules are broken the original end becomes impossible to attainment, since one cannot (really) win the game unless he plays it, and one cannot (really) play the game unless he obeys the rules of the game.”
“Rules are lines that we draw, but in games the lines are always drawn short of a final end or a paramount command.”
“It is much more likely that the belief that games are not serious means what the proposal under consideration implies: that there is always something in the life of a player of a game more important than playing the game, or that a game is the kind of things that a player could always have reason to stop playing.”
“My conclusion is that to play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than the would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.”