Category: Computer Games

Armchair Arcade! is an online journal and discussion forum on classic gaming. They are onto their third issue. I like the retro look to the issue “covers”. The articles so far seem mostly written by the site’s authors – they need to widen the pool of authors. What is not clear is how submissions are reviewed which may discourage academics (not that academics, with our strange rituals of promotion, are good writers for such venues.) They model themselves more on a magazine than a journal.
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Computer games, media and interactivity by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen and Jonas Heide Smith is an English translation of a part of their book that appears in the Game Research site.

The beginning is really good raising the question Aarseth asks as to whether interactivity is meaningful any longer. The paper then wanders off into various hot topics like violence and gender. I’m not sure of the coherence, but this is an excerpt.

Ludology Meets Narratology is an essay on the “similitude and differences between (video)games and narrative.” He argues for a theory of games (ludology) as games, and discusses play and games in terms of narrative.

Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction by Nick Monfort (2003) is an excellent and thorough paper on Interactive Fiction. A lot of what it does is define terms.
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The Walrus Magazine | Game Theories is an article about Edward Castranova, the researcher who studies the economies of online game communities like EverQuest. What is interesting about the article is that he got offered tenur on the basis of articles only published online. Is this true?

How are computer games presented to parents and teachers? The Concerns About Video Games | Excessive Playing is one in a collection of resources available for parents and teachers at the Media Awarness site (search for games and you get more). See especially the work by Stephen Kline from the Media Analysis Lab at SFU, Video Game Culture: Leisure and Play Preferences of B.C. Teens | Study. The study comments on the disparity between the economic importance of games and the amount of research into the effects of computer games. On the whole Kline’s study and the Awareness site seems balanced – they avoid the sort of hyped criticism of “we’ve found another bad thing you didn’t know about” journalism.
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Peter Suber, Nomic is a page by the philosophy prof Peter Suber on the game he invented in 1982 called Nomic which is a game where changing the rules is a move. Rebecca could, if each move involved changing one program, become a programming form of Nomic.
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What would a Creative Technology programme look like? Would there be a need for graduates?

Following on Beyond Productivity I have been asking if there is a need for such arts/computing graduates. Here is a story in the Globe and Mail in the Globetechnology section. The game industry seems especially hungry for appropriate employees.
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Guardian Unlimited: Playground evolution is a review of a book by games designer Eric Zimmerman called “Rules of Play.” This presents itself as an examination of the field of game design. Should be good. From MIT.

Flak Magazine: Baking a Progress Quest, 12-17-02 is an article about the game Progress Quest which satirizes RPGs. You run it, you chose your character, and then it just runs a story that never ends.
Continue reading Progress Quest, RPG