{"id":2163,"date":"2015-11-04T13:17:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T12:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=2163"},"modified":"2015-11-04T13:19:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T12:19:22","slug":"how-games-move-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2015\/11\/04\/how-games-move-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Katherine Isbister: How Games Move Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Set for launch in February 2016, we are proud to present the fifth book of the Playful Thinking\u00a0Series<\/a>. Katherine Isbister’s\u00a0How games Move Us<\/a>:\u00a0Emotion by Design is an\u00a0<\/em>examination of how video game design can create strong, positive emotional experiences for players, with examples from popular, indie, and art games.<\/p>\n

This is a renaissance moment for video games\u2014in the variety of genres they represent, and the range of emotional territory they cover. But how do games create emotion? In How Games Move Us<\/i>, Katherine Isbister takes the reader on a timely and novel exploration of the design techniques that evoke strong emotions for players. She counters arguments that games are creating a generation of isolated, emotionally numb, antisocial loners. Games, Isbister shows us, can actually play a powerful role in creating empathy and other strong, positive emotional experiences; they reveal these qualities over time, through the act of playing. She offers a nuanced, systematic examination of exactly how games can influence emotion and social connection, with examples\u2014drawn from popular, indie, and art games\u2014that unpack the gamer\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

Isbister describes choice and flow, two qualities that distinguish games from other media, and explains how game developers build upon these qualities using avatars, non-player characters, and character customization, in both solo and social play. She shows how designers use physical movement to enhance players\u2019 emotional experience, and examines long-distance networked play. She illustrates the use of these design methods with examples that range from Sony\u2019s Little Big Planet<\/i> to the much-praised indie game Journey <\/i>to art games like Brenda Romero\u2019s Train<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Isbister\u2019s analysis shows us a new way to think about games, helping us appreciate them as an innovative and powerful medium for doing what film, literature, and other creative media do: helping us to understand ourselves and what it means to be human.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set for launch in February 2016, we are proud to present the fifth book of the Playful Thinking\u00a0Series. Katherine Isbister’s\u00a0How games Move Us:\u00a0Emotion by Design is an\u00a0examination of how video game design can create strong, positive emotional experiences for players, with examples from popular, indie, and art games. This is a renaissance moment for video … Continue reading “Katherine Isbister: How Games Move Us”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-readings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}