Author: Jesper

“The Emerging Emergence” & “Is interactive narrative an oxymoron?”

Slides from Jon Weinbren’s talk “Is interactive narrative an oxymoron?” at European Developers Forum early September.

That title sounds vaguely familiar, wait, it’s in Andy Cameron’s Dissimulations article from 1995.

[…] the term interactive narrative is an oxymoron

Perhaps it’s time to adopt a cyclical view of history?
Or perhaps it just tells us something basic about the video game medium.

*

More interesting, Warren Spector’s keynote “The Emerging Emergence” threads ground that is becoming familiar (perhaps I’ve been to too many Harvey Smith talks). I am certainly trying to spoon-feed the students at my current game design course with this stuff.

Question: Will discussions of emergence reappear cyclically in the future?

BE John Kerry: Kuma War gets political

Latest twist in the serious game department: Kuma War is about to launch an episode based on John Kerry’s much-discussed Vietnam heroics.

News.com has a writeup here.

What does a game mean? I wonder if games are persuasive when they represent historical events. After all, the game is likely to have several possible outcomes, and the outcome you want for the John Kerry game probably depends on what outcome would fit your pre-existing convictions?
I don’t exactly have a background in empirical research, but I think it would be really interesting with some studies to see if a game can change people’s minds!

Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios

It’s starting to look like a pattern: In order to get into the game industry in a big way, simply create a top-notch mod for a bestselling game.
In this case, Trauma Studios, makers of the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 has been bought by Digital Illusions.

DIGITAL ILLUSIONS BUYS TRAUMA STUDIOS

Digital Illusions buys New York based game developer Trauma Studios Inc.
Initially Trauma will work with the development of a concept for a new PC game.

– Through Desert Combat Trauma showed they are remarkably good at developing products the consumer wants. They understand our technology and are experienced and skillful game developers. This was the major factor to our acquisition, said Patrick S?derlund, CEO at Digital Illusions.

– With Digital Illusions award winning team and Trauma Studios’ talent, I am confident we will be very successful together. We really look forward to being part of the Digital Illusions family, said Frank DeLise, CEO at Trauma Studios Inc.

Digital Illusions buys all assets of Trauma and employ all its employees. Digital Illusions thereby buys the trademarks Desert Combat and Trauma Studios.

Continue reading “Battlefield 1942: Digital Illusions buys Trauma Studios”

Canada in June: Changing Views – Worlds in Play CFP

The official call for papers for the DiGRA video games conference at Simon Fraser university is up. Deadline is November 30th.

Hope to see you in all June 16th-20th 2005.

Where are we on the graph and what does the graph look like? Was DiGRA 2003 in Utrecht the peak or a small harbinger of things to come? Is there one game studies field or will it splinter into several? To be continued…

Honestly, WE are the good guys. Here is what you should believe.

Off-topic, I continue to marvel at the ferocity of people who are promoting an esoteric intellectual idea that is somehow understood to be good in some absolute sense. OK, so everybody is doing it, but a sense of history could be of value. Terry Eagleton writes in a book review in the New Statesman:

We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity – all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.

It’s strange, but so it goes.

Wittgenstein: Food Forms a Family

[This is #2 in a series of experimental writings: I am trying to write with styles and arugments that I would not normally use. Here, I take on Wittgenstein’s famous argument that “games” cannot be defined.]

[66.] Consider for example the objects we call ‘food”. I mean pork roast, waffles, pasta, lamb casseroles, and so on. What is common to them all? Don’t say, ‘There must be something common, or else they would not be all called “food”‘, but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to them all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! Look, for example, at pork roasts, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to waffles, here you will find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to pasta, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all ‘nutritious’? Compare pig’s stomach [Saumage] with Creme Brulee. Or is there always an appetizer and a main course, or even a swallowing of the food? Think of chewing gum. In breakfast cereal there is the process of eating and the feeling of being full afterwards, but when a child throws his potato mash into the air, this feature has disappeared. Look now at the parts played by spices, and at the difference between chili in in Kashmir Lamb and chili in Tom Yum Soup. Think now of cafeteria food; here is the social element of eating, but now many other characteristic features have disappeared. And we can go through the many, many other groups of food in the same way, and we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the result of this examination is this: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
[67.] I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’, for the various resemblances among members of the same family: build, features, color of eyes, walk, temperament, etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say, food forms a family.’
(Wittgenstein 1958, segment 66-67.)