Comments on: Researchers At Play (fieldwork)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 03:28:34 +0000

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By: Yow Chuan

Yow Chuan — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:33:28 +0000

I completely agree with JP, the fact that human has the ability to use “projectiles” does indeed put us ahead of the other living creatures on this planet. Colin Tudge mentioned this particular feat in his book THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY on mankind’s revolution, which gave us alot of advantage over other predators. With projectile weaponaries, we are able to inflict damage on other entities without being too close to them, and as we master this skills, we become almost invulnerable to “melee” attacks. :-)

By: Tore

Tore — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 16:36:35 +0000

Yikes…

By: Espen Aarseth

Espen Aarseth — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 06:19:32 +0000

Don’t worry, Tore, I’ll be in Norway all day tomorrow. But when I get back to ITU, perhaps we can playtest adding a rugby element?

By: Tore Vesterby

Tore Vesterby — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 12:35:34 +0000

There is something innately horrifying about 250 lbs. of Espen Aarseth chucking things at you. I get the shivers everytime I look at that image. Maybe you can introduce that game after your talk on Friday – without the huge Norwegian participant.

By: Jesper Juul

Jesper Juul — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 08:26:37 +0000

JP: I completely agree about throwing, But I also think there is some special form of social contact in throwing stuff at other people – it’s kind of making contact. You only throw stuff at people to whom you are not indifferent.

By: greglas

greglas — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 00:39:41 +0000

I think you’re having way too much fun. I also think that if you really get into tweaking the design of this, you may get addicted to it and never stop playing. :-)

By: JP

JP — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 23:23:44 +0000

That makes a lot of sense when you consider that throwing is one of the few physical feats where we out-perform just about every other creature on Earth. Throwing leverages our 3D vision, uniquely constructed (upright-walking) arms and our eye-hand coordination. Unsurprisingly shooting, which is just tool-assisted throwing (arm > sling > bow > gun), has received exhaustive attention in the videogame medium.

It’s almost like direct, individual-against-individual combat, with shooting, is one of the most natural types of agonistic play. Easy to see why Quake deathmatch was such a sensation back in the day.

By: Jesper Juul

Jesper Juul — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 18:51:22 +0000

Yep, combat is always straightforward. And easy to explain too.
Additionally, it seems to always be fun to throw things at other people?

By: JP

JP — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:27:16 +0000

Interesting how the path of least resistance in game design generally tends towards concepts of “attack”, “defense”, etc, no matter how abstract the mechanics are? I guess at heart they’re still about conflict, and those concepts are intrinsic to conflict.

Always interested to hear about folks in the academic sphere trying their hand at design!