Category: games

Easy to Use and Incredibly Difficult: On the Mythical Border between Interface and Gameplay

Should a good game have an easy interface, but difficult gameplay? How can we tell the difference between the two, between interface and gameplay?

“Easy to Use and Incredibly Difficult: On the Mythical Border between Interface and Gameplay” is a paper I co-wrote with Marleigh Norton and which we presented at the Foundations of Digital Games Conference in April 2009.

The paper is meant as an in-depth examination of the common argument that the interface of a game should be easy-to-use. We argue that this is not necessarily the case.

In the paper we make the case that first of all, there is no way to clearly distinguish between interface and gameplay. Secondly, even when we can identify the interface in a given game, a difficult-to-use interface may very well be part of the core challenge of the game. In other words, no: good game does not equal easy interface + difficult gameplay.

For example, Street Fighter II has an interface that makes it easier to move your character than the interface of Toribash does, but that does not mean that it is a better game. It simply means that Toribash places part of its challenge in the basic movement of the character.


Street Fighter II

Toribash


Paper abstract:

In video game literature and video game reviews, video games are often divided into two distinct parts: interface and gameplay. Good video games, it is assumed, have easy to use interfaces, but they also provide difficult gameplay challenges to the player. But must a good game follow this pattern, and what is the difference between interface and gameplay? When does the easy-to-use interface stop, and when does the challenging gameplay begin? By analyzing a number of games, the paper argues that it is rare to find a clear-cut border between interface and gameplay and that the fluidity of this border characterizes games in general. While this border is unclear, we also analyze a number of games where the challenge is unambiguously located in the interface, thereby demonstrating that “easy interface and challenging gameplay” is neither universal nor a requirement for game quality. Finally, the paper argues, the lack of a clear distinction between easy interface and challenging gameplay is due to the fact that games are fundamentally designed not to accomplish something through an activity, but to provide an activity that is pleasurable in itself.

Olli Sotamaa’s Phd: The Player’s Game: Towards Understanding Player Production Among Computer Game Cultures

Olli Sotamaa has defended his PhD at the University of Tampere. The PDF is available here. Congrats!

Abstract:

This dissertation presents a cultural approach to player production. The contribution of my work to the current scholarship on players is to broaden the understanding of the relation between play and other forms of game cultural productivity. The dissertation suggests that as the manifestations of gaming hobby break out of “magic circle of play”, the productive activities of players become central to our understanding of games and gaming.

While game studies have so far been pretty good in identifying the structural elements of game systems and the different motivations of players, they have mostly not touched the larger social structures and industrial systems that ultimately shape both the games that are offered to players and the ways they are played. Whilst we know quite a lot about how the rules can be used to guide and constrict players activities, the “rules” that direct player production are scarcely investigated. This dissertation provides an approach to how these regulations and byelaws could be studied.

Instead of sticking to the game world boundaries the dissertation turns the focus to the larger dynamics of game culture and examines the opportunities and constraints provided by the current game industry paradigms. The underlying interest is in outlining games as profoundly co-produced entities which can be only understood if both the contributions of developers and other industry bodies and the investments of players are taken into account.

The dissertation consists of six articles and a lengthy overview section. The introductory chapters provide theoretical and historical background for the approach. The articles introduce practical case studies and apply, discuss and develop further the starting points. While various dimensions of player production are elaborated in the introductory chapters, the articles focus mostly on the players’ productive practices that result in new game elements (game modifications) and the ones that exploit the game software to produce entirely new digital objects (machinima).

The dissertation is committed to a particular notion of the nature of play. I argue that segregating the sphere of play from “ordinary life”, “utility” and “productivity” runs the risk of hiding the similarities and interesting connections between play and the related realms. Rather than happening in a given “magic circle”, the space for play needs to be negotiated. I have in the thesis examined how these negotiations spread beyond the borders of the game as games are increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Secondly the study suggests that also the boundaries between ‘players’ and ‘producers’ are by definition blurred and actively negotiated. I further argue in favour of conceptualizing player production as a network of activities. The composition and dynamics of this network are guided by forms of gaming capital.

Finally, the dissertation seriously questions the tendency of studying media consumption and production in separation. As the media practices are becoming increasingly participatory and co-operative, it is difficult to argue for keeping these domains of research apart from each other. Player production highlights how digital media products are increasingly also tools that allow media consumers not only to personalize their experiences but also to share and circulate their productions. This furthermore underlines the need to abandon the dichotomous and stabile either-or models and the demand for holistic studies of the emerging media culture. While the industry bodies take part in shaping the emerging player cultural formations, it is at the same time increasingly difficult to understand game industry without taking players into account. In this respect, game cultures originate in various sites, often defined both by resistance, exploitation and mutually beneficial relations.

The Ethics of Computer Games

My former colleague Miguel Sicart has just published his book The Ethics of Computer Games on MIT Press.

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Description

Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry (and the accompanying emergence of computer games as the subject of scholarly research), we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play.

Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games (using Bioshock as an example), multiplayer games (illustrated by Defcon), and online gameworlds (illustrated by World of Warcraft) from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay.

About the Author

Miguel Sicart is Assistant Professor at the Center for Computer Game Research, IT University Copenhagen

New Issue of Game Studies: EverQuest Revisited

Get your video game theory fix: New issue of Game studies, issue 0901 on “EverQuest – 10 Years Later“.

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Special Issue – EQ: 10 Years Later

by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

Reviews the place of EverQuest in the history of virtual world studies; lays out some of the critical issues that emerge from the study of MMORPGs; and introduces the essays in this issue….
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Befriending Ogres and Wood-Elves: Relationship Formation and The Social Architecture of Norrath

by Nick Yee

This paper explores how the social architectures in virtual worlds can lead to behavioral changes at the community level by shaping norms and expectations…
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Planes of Power: EverQuest as Text, Game and Community

by Greg Lastowka

This article describes EverQuest as a fictive text, a computer game, and an online community and explains how these three distinct frameworks lead to different legal regulatory modalities. It concludes that the optimal legal regulation for virtual worlds like Norrath is a question that must be addressed by the political process…
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Norrath: New Forms, Old Institutions

by Sal Humphreys

Explores issues of ownership, governance, labour, rights and obligations in MMOGs, using research conducted in EQ. The clash between product and service, between proprietary space and public space and between amateur and professional raise questions for policy makers and lawyers considering the rights and obligations of different stakeholders…

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The Worldness of EverQuest: Exploring a 21st Century Fiction

by Lisbeth Klastrup

This articles discusses online gameworlds as a new form of engaging fictional universes, and how to analytically approach and describe the player’s experience of “worldness” with EverQuest as an illustrative example. It argues that such an analysis should incorporate the study of design, aesthetics, means of expression and sociality…

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Two Players: Biography and ‘Played Sociality’ in EverQuest

by Bart Simon, Kelly Boudreau, Mark Silverman

This article experiments with a biographical method for exploring memories and play experiences of EverQuest in the lives of two player/researchers. We posit a notion of ‘played sociality’ modeled on biographical understandings of lifecourse and attempt to show how different forms of commitment to the game reverberate through the lives of players…

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Towards a Critical Aesthetic of Virtual-World Geographies

by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

This article addresses the interaction of players and designers in the creation of Norrathian geography. In the context of contemporary geographic theory, the authors examine the ways in which EverQuest players have worked both with and against the game’s delineation of meaningful places within the virtual world, arguing that the game’s virtual geography is best understood in the context of the real world geographies within which it is situated…

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Interview with Chris Lena

by Eric Hayot

Chris Lena worked as a Producer of EverQuest at Sony Online Entertainment where he was involved in the creation of the 6 most recent expansions. He has been Assistant Producer and Designer on EverQuest Online Adventures as well as a coordinator of game localization efforts for the company. He worked on EQ 2003-2006…
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Interview with Brad McQuaid and Kevin McPherson

by Eric Hayot, Edward Wesp

Brad McQuaid worked as co-designer of EverQuest and development manager from the project’s inception until its launch. Kevin McPherson was one of the first EverQuest team members who primarily worked on the EverQuest client and writing the original background and setting for the Ruins of Kunark expansion…

If You’re not Indie …

Not sure why, but I have been posting only audio and video the last week or so.

Anyway, this year’s Game Developers Conference had a still growing contingent of independent game developers to the extent that it was becoming something of a scene (in a positive sense – see you at the Cellar next year).

But what is Indie anyway? This video from the Independent Games Festival frames that question:

http://www.youtube.com/v/617lGZjYyNo&amp