Category: Computer Games

International Conference on Japan Game Studies

I am part of a team putting together a International Conference on Japan Game Studies. We are organizing this with the Prince Takamado Japan Centre at the University of Alberta and the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies in Kyoto. The deadline for proposals is in two weeks. We are looking for papers on:

  • Cross cultural study of games and toys
  • Localization of games
  • Assessment of educational aspects of games
  • Preservation of games and game culture
  • Understanding player culture
  • Game industry (in Japan and transnationally)
  • Games and transmedia phenomena
  • Games of chance

Reacting to the Past

Reacting to the Past is the name of a set of games designed to get students thinking about historical moments. Students play out the games that are set in the past and use texts to inform their play. The instructor then just facilitates the class and grades their work. It reminds me of role playing events like the Model United Nations, but with history and ideas being modeled. Now I have to find a workshop to go to to learn more because the materials are behind a password.

GAME THEORY in the NYTimes

Just in time for Christmas, the New York Times has started an interesting ArtsBeat Blog called GAME THEORY. It is interesting that this multi-authored blog is in the “Arts Beat” area as opposed to under the Technology tab where most of the game stories are. Game Theory seems to want to take a broader view of games and culture as the second post on Caring About Make-Believe Body Counts illustrates. This post starts by addressing the other blog columnists (as if this were a dialogue) and then starts with Wayne LaPierre’s speech about how to deal with the Connecticut school killings that blames, among other things, violent games. The column then looks at the discourse around violence in games including voices within the gaming industry that were critical of ultraviolence.

Those familiar with games who debate the medium’s violence now commonly assume that games may have become too violent. But they don’t assume that games should be free of violence. That is because of fake violence’s relationship with interactivity, which is a defining element of video games.

Stephen Totilo ends the column with his list of the best games of 2012 which includes Super Hexagon, Letterpress, Journey, Dys4ia, and Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask.

As I mentioned above, the blog column has a dialogical side with authors addressing each other. It also brings culture and game culture together which reminds me of McLuhan who argued that games reflect society providing a form of catharsis. This column promises to theorize culture through the lens of games rather than just theorize games.

Japanese Game Centers

One of the things I noticed about Japanese game culture when I was there was the importance of game centers or arcades. I ended up taking a number of pictures at some of the game centers I visited – see Arcade and Pachinko Flickr set. I’ve just found a great MA thesis by Eric Eickhorst on “Game Centers: A Historical and Cultural Analysis of Japan’s Video Amusement Establishments” (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Kansas, 2006). The thesis is a readable work that covers the history, the current state (as of 2006), Japanese attitudes and otaku culture. One interesting statistic he discusses has to do with housewives,

Surprisingly, the number one occupation listed by survey participants was housewife, representing 17.3% of the total number of respondents. This perhaps unexpected result merits a closer examination of the function of game centers for housewives. In response to the question of why they visited game centers, 38.6% of housewives replied that their intent was to change their mood or as a means of killing time, suggesting that such audiences may visit game centers as a way of taking a break from household duties. The function of changing one’s mood or killing time at a game center was the second most common response among all survey respondents, accounting for 32.0% of answers to that question. (p. 51-2)

Bonfire of the Humanities

I’m sitting at Congress 2012 in the beer tent at Wilfred Laurier. I’ve been writing a conference report of SDH/SEMI 2012. But in the beer tent they are talking about the ARG that Neil Randall (may have) started called Bonfire of the Humanities. Apparently the dean may have shut it down, but traces are left, see #bonfireofthehumanities. See also the YouTube video, Torch Institute Declares War Against University of Waterloo.

Because some may misunderstand, the Torch Institute is probably is Alternate Reality Game (ARG) satirizing the academy. With ARGs you never know what is real or not. The dean shutting things down, like the removal of the YouTube above may or may not be part of the game script. (You can see other Torch Institute videos here.) The guiding idea behind ARGs is TINAG (This is not a game.) ARGs are supposed to be games only in so far as you play with what may or may not be the game. Who knows about the Torch Institute.

‘The Demise of Guys’: How video games and porn are ruining a generation

CNN has a story on ‘The Demise of Guys’: How video games and porn are ruining a generation. The book is The Demise of Guys: Why Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It and it is by retired Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan. The book builds on a TED Talk that argues that:

  • The statistics show that guys are underachieving.
  • Guys are shyer than before. Few guys know how to talk to women.
  • Guys prefer homosocial situations which Zimbardo calls Social Intensity Syndrome.
  • All this is caused by computer games and internet porn.

“Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive.” (Zimbardo)

Compare this to Hanna Rosin: New data on the rise of women who argues that “the global economy is becoming a place where women are more successful than men.” She argues that there has been a hollowing out of the middle-class jobs men held for service jobs that women do better. Could the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy be responsible for the “demise of guys?”

 

InSight: Visualizing Health Humanities

The GRAND group has a work being exhibited at the InSight: Visualizing Health Humanities show that starts tonight. We used Unity to create a FPS (First Person Shooter) type of game for medical communication. The game, called CatHETR, lets players move through a ward dealing with communicative situations. This project was supported by the GRAND Network of Centres of Excellence.