Speaking at Indiana University, Georgia Tech

Indiana University

12:30-1:45 pm on Friday, March 28, 2008
Indiana University Bloomington, Dept. of Telecommunications, Room RTV 226

Talk: Games for Making Friends and Enemies: A Small Theory of Games in Social Contexts.

It is easy to forget that before the single player video game, most video games were for more than one player. In this work in progress talk, I will argue that many of the more successful multiplayer games, from Parcheesi to Rock Band to Animal Crossing acquire their power by piggybacking on existing social relations, thus acquiring many layers of meaning when played, as well as ambiguously threatening to rewrite these relations. By use of digital and non-digital examples, I will outline a theory of how games acquire meaning from the context in which they are played.

Georgia Tech

Monday, March 31st
TSRB 132
1:30-2:30 pm

Talk: Hardcore players of casual games: Locating the “casual” in casual games.

Casual games are usually described as relaxing games to be played for short periods of time, but studies have shown that many players of casual games play more than 10 hours a week. In essence, it seems that casual players play in “hardcore” ways. In this talk I will discuss the problematic distinction between “hardcore” and “casual” players by examining the new field of casual games and answering the question: Should we talk about casual games or casual players?

America,

America,
    Why is it is always too hot or too cold?

America,
    I’ve got one word for you: Thermostats

America,
    When we came to Brooklyn, the landlord said we should
    open the window if it got too warm

America,
    You know how this hurts my fragile northern soul

America,
    It is not exactly rocket science

America,
    The right temperature is patriotic too

America,
    I have a truckload of Danish radiator controls to sell you

America,
    Who cheers when you open that window?

 

 

 

(With apologies to Allen Ginsberg.)

Better Graphics, Diminishing Returns

Are game graphics at a point of diminishing returns?

In that case, what do we mean by “diminishing returns”?

  • Does it mean that an increase in the graphical budget of a game does not increase sales correspondingly?
  • Or does it mean that, subjectively, we are at a point where things look “good enough”?
  • Or are we talking negative returns? That increasing polygon count makes humans look worse due to the uncanny valley?

We could also look at a case study. Megan Fox and Stuart Compton have an article in the latest Game Developer Magazine about Ambient Occlusive Crease Shading.

(Disclaimer: I certainly respect the work done here, and I do not mean to pick on these authors. The stated goal is even of moving away from the “imitative” towards the “illustrative”, which I find good. And perhaps things will look different once they start moving.)

Nevertheless: How big a difference do you see between figure 5 with, and figure 6 without ambient occlusion? How much effort is it worth going from figure 6 to figure 5? Is this not diminishing returns?

Fox & Compton - Ambient Occlusive Crease Shading

(Illustration by Fox & Compton, from Game Developer Magazine, March 2008)

Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies

I have been looking at the rhetoric surrounding console launches. This is, for real, from Sony’s 2005 press release announcing the Playstation 3:

Gamers will literally be able to dive into the realistic world seen in large screen movies and experience the excitement in real-time.

The same old drab way of selling a new console, of course, promising better graphics (joy!). But spot the really wonderful mistake of using literally as a modifier for emphasis: The selling point is not that games will feel more like movies, but that diving in is not a metaphor at all! You will literally be jumping headlong into your television set. Wow! Can’t wait!

PS. On the other hand, since we all so massively seem to agree that realistic 3d is not the way to go, I am beginning to hope that someone will actually stand up for 3d photo-realistic graphics. Any takers?

On the Game Studies Download 3.0 Shadow List

My article Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games made it to the “shadow list” of this year’s Game Studies Download session at the Game Developers Conference.

I’ll quote the shadow list description of the paper:

Juul, Jesper. “Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games.” Artifact journal, Volume 2, 2007. Also available at http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/swapadjacent/.

Games discussed: Tetris, Centipede, Puzzle Bobble, Zuma, Luxor, many others


Country: Denmark

The casual games marketplace puts conflicting pressures on game developers: Innovate enough to differentiate, but make the game sufficiently like other games that players find it easy to pick up and play. When player picks up a game, they are also using their conception of video game history to understand the new game.

The article presents a history of matching tiles games, including a complex family tree of influence and innovation. Categories in the family tree include timed vs. non-timed, methods of tile manipulation, and criteria for matching.

Innovation in casual games is incremental, and based on combinations of mechanics from existing games. This creates a somewhat schizophrenic environment of cutthroat competition between developers simultaneously trying to out-innovate and out-clone each other.

The basic development method has been analyzing existing games, identifying their basic components, and then creating prototypes that combined elements in new ways in order to create a moderately innovative matching tile game.

Takeaway: The key finding here for our audience is that the actual historical origins and influences of casual games developers are less important than the ones that the players come to the game with. The innovations that will be legible to these players depend strongly on their experience with specific previous games.