The Ludologist – Page 5 – My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things.

This is an excerpt from my history chapter, “A selective History of Independent Games”. My concern here is the prehistory of independent games and the central question: is independent game development new or old?

https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/15/20962788/indie-development-history-handmade-pixels

Real Games: What’s Legitimate and What’s Not in Contemporary Videogames

Proud to announce Real Games: What’s Legitimate and What’s Not in Contemporary Videogames by Mia Consalvo and Christopher Paul.

This is the 8th(!) book in the Playful Thinking series.

How we talk about games as real or not-real, and how that shapes what games are made and who is invited to play them.

In videogame criticism, the worst insult might be “That’s not a real game!” For example, “That’s not a real game, it’s on Facebook!” and “That’s not a real game, it’s a walking simulator!” But how do people judge what is a real game and what is not—what features establish a game’s gameness? In this engaging book, Mia Consalvo and Christopher Paul examine the debates about the realness or not-realness of videogames and find that these discussions shape what games get made and who is invited to play them.

Consalvo and Paul look at three main areas often viewed as determining a game’s legitimacy: the game’s pedigree (its developer), the content of the game itself, and the game’s payment structure. They find, among other things, that even developers with a track record are viewed with suspicion if their games are on suspect platforms. They investigate game elements that are potentially troublesome for a game’s gameness, including genres, visual aesthetics, platform, and perceived difficulty. And they explore payment models, particularly free-to-play—held by some to be a marker of illegitimacy. Finally, they examine the debate around such so-called walking simulators as Dear Esther and Gone Home. And finally, they consider what purpose is served by labeling certain games “real.”

Loading journal, 12/20.

For your theoretical processing: Loading journal, 12/20.

“The Father of Survival Horror”: Shinji Mikami, Procedural Rhetoric, and the Collective/Cultural Memory of the Atomic Bombs
Ryan Scheiding

Playing Past and Future: Counterfactual History in Fallout 4
Sam McCready

Taking College Esports Seriously
Nyle Sky Kauweloa, Jenifer Sunrise Winter>

“No one gives you a rulebook to raise a kid”: Adoptive Motherhood in The Walking Dead Video Game Series
Sarah Marie Stang

The Role of Architecture in Constructing Gameworlds. >Examples from Dishonored>
Anthony Zonaga, Marcus Carter

Buying Time: Capitalist Temporalities in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Rainforest Scully-Blaker

This is not a Pipe interview about the Art of Failure

Chris Richardson was kind enough to interview me about The Art of Failure for his This is not a Pipe podcast series.

https://www.tinapp.org/episodes/artoffailure

On the page I also mention some of the books that have inspired me as a writer.

Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA conference in Kyoto

Here are all the published papers from the 2019 DiGRA conference.

http://www.digra.org/digital-library/forums/digra-19/

The Handmade Pixels interviews

For Handmade Pixels, I did a rather extensive series of interviews with developers and festival organizers.

I was interested in general questions of how they framed their own role and how they saw the history of independent games, as well as in the concrete details of their development or festival-organizing practices.

I am dropping half the interviews now, and will publish the rest during the later months of 2019.

Anna Anthropy

Game designer known for games such as Dys4ia, author of the Rise of the Videogame Zinesters manifesto.

Bennett Foddy

Educator and game developer behind punishing games such as QWOP and Getting over it with Bennett Foddy.

Bernie DeKoven

Pioneer in physical and communal games, including with the New Games movement.

Celia Pearce

Educator, writer and game developer who has worked with games, VR, and multimedia since the late 1980s.

David Kanaga

Composer and game developer of games such as Proteus and Oikospiel.

Jason Rohrer

Independent game developer of games such as Passage and One Hour One Life.

Jonathan Blow

Independent game developer, best known for Braid and The Witness.

Kelly Wallick

Chairperson of the Independent Games Festival since 2015, CEO and founder of Indie MEGABOOTH.

Tale of Tales

Belgium-based artist duo—Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn—known for their earlier work with experimental and experiential games such as The Path and The Graveyard.