{"id":221,"date":"2005-11-24T17:29:58","date_gmt":"2005-11-24T15:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.dk\/ludologist\/?p=221"},"modified":"2005-11-24T18:56:26","modified_gmt":"2005-11-24T16:56:26","slug":"goals-and-life-itself-digra-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2005\/11\/24\/goals-and-life-itself-digra-column\/","title":{"rendered":"Goals and Life Itself (DiGRA Column)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a new “hardcore” column up at the DiGRA website today<\/a>. Called Goals and Life Itself<\/em>, it tries to point at some of the problems and fault lines I see in video game studies today, and does so by discussing goals, vitalism, and genre theory (in a marginally provocative way, was my intention):<\/p>\n

A short theory of goals: You are playing a card game with some friends. A few rounds into the game the group begins arguing. One player claims that the goal of the game is to gain as many tricks as possible; another claims that the goal is to avoid getting any tricks.
\n…
\nOne of the recurrent events the past few years has been the researcher who questions “formalist” theories of games in favor of “in-context” or “situated” methods. This is a special position, where the speaker argues that other researchers are forcing rigid theories upon a complex world, while the speaker asserts that he or she is studying actual game playing.
\n…
\nThis type of assertion is constantly repeated in video game studies: Most obviously in an occasional skepticism towards general theories of games in favor of localized studies, but it is also present when the game developer claims to have a perfect understanding of actual games, as opposed to the researchers locked in their ivory towers, away from the real world. The outlines of the stance can be seen when researchers reject theories from other fields in favor of their own brand new theories of games, or when yet other researchers claim to emphasize the warmth of the story compared to the coldness of the rules. The problem is that this never ends – anybody can reject other theories as cold, stale, and rigid, while declaring their own to be the real thing, a true reflection of what games are really like, of actual game playing.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The whole article is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new “hardcore” column up at the DiGRA website today. Called Goals and Life Itself, it tries to point at some of the problems and fault lines I see in video game studies today, and does so by discussing goals, vitalism, and genre theory (in a marginally provocative way, was my intention): A … Continue reading “Goals and Life Itself (DiGRA Column)”<\/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":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","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=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}