game studies – Page 51 – frans goes blog

the escapist

The new eMagazine The Escapist looks like a great thing: smart writing on games, crossing the boundaries, filling the niche between academic journals and popular games press. Looks like there is a market already for this kind of independent and intelligent stuff. See: The Escapist home page.

rpg studies, on/off

Our lab will soon put out a call for a seminar in RPG studies (taking place in March 2006 over here), and tonight I again came across this CAR-PGa list of RPG studies. It is curious how disconnected the RPG studies field actually is. There is the English language newsgroup discussion which led to the three-way model. There is the interactive drama stuff (e.g. these pages by Brian David Phillips). There is the Scandinavian larp theory, put forward in the Knutepunkt/Solmukohta conventions and related book projects. And there must be so many other subfields out there. You might do well by following things like Markus Montola’s reading diary.

Much is being hidden/revealed through the craft of table-top RPG game masters, or digital RPG designers (or online world designers & producers). This evening I also watched (well, mostly only listened) through the GDCTV recording of Bioware’s Greg Zeschuk giving presentation “Storytelling Across Genres“, captured during this spring’s GDC. Nice points about character creation, the (artificial character) “uncanny valley” and many other different fascinating issues. Also some interesting Jade Empire demos. But as a player principally educated among various table-top RPGs, I keep thinking whether interacting with a computer-driven NPC is actually phenomenologally same thing as “role-playing” in the sense I understand it. When it is a simulated conversation agent, or “robot”, this fact always somehow affects the suspension of disbelief, and downplays the “role-playing” part (“What can these people come up with together?”), while emphasising the systemic aspect (“How can I solve this puzzle, which is offered to me in the form of “dialogue”, or “story?”). But, that said, many of these character or story-driven games are immensely enjoyable, and I respect the effort. RPGs, after all, are so much more my cup of tea than a typical FPS, for example.

arrangements

Rainy. Still eating antibiotics. I used some time this Sunday to update my web pages, put couple of articles (one on horror fiction in Finnish, the gameplay experience paper from DiGRA-05 with Laura, in English) available into my university home page, then updated the links in the photo album page (in Finnish; you can also go directly into my server pics-folder with mostly uncommented stuff).

While going through all those materials, I started thinking whether I should have some “selected few” pictures collection somewhere. So, I went back to my old flickr account, and put a few of my favourites there. Hope you like them, too – and find them this way more easily accessible than in the larger achive folders.

galvanize!

Another tidbit making rounds in the gaming blogosphere, the
GALVANIZE! flash game, promoting the most recent Chemical Brothers album. As far as the web games go, this is actually rather fun – and a proof that you get nicely away with the gameplay of pinball, as long as the theme, music and (mostly) visual jokes kick ass.

sex in the (sin?) city

While going through the blog post from the previous week (I think there was c. 750 on those few blogs that I currently subscribe to), I came across this discussion in WaterCoolerGames.org on Ian’s critique of the new “Sex & Games SIG” IGDA has helped to put into motion.

Sex, violence, oh well. Certain old topics keep up stirring the minds, and provoking discussions from year to year. Human nature? I used to study classical tragedies in the past, and many of those took up themes from history and mythology that can easily remind you from the tabloids (or reality tv) of today. But, you must admit, the artistic execution does have certain differences here. That being the key issue here, I am of course in favour of allowing the full spectrum of human emotion and condition to figure as the the starting points for interactive cultural forms, too, but what I am really interested to see is that what new the developers can come up with from these themes.

future studies

Participating in a Finnish Future Studies Society’s seminar, I’ve been presenting my tentative view on future-oriented game studies (keyword: game cultures), and getting a nice mix on the seminar themes, marginality and centrality. The trick, of course is, how to identify those marginal phenomena which are somehow symptomatic, or “weak signals” telling about our future. What is your current favourite future?

rag doll kung fu

Heh, this video (that Valve’s Steam offered us) literally “kicks ass” — it is so great to see people taking the medium, ranning away into some crazy direction and just having plain old fun. See: RagDoll KungFu video (an indy game familiar from the GDC).

Johnson on the us gta controversy

There would be so much to write about the ways in which the relative “harmfullness” of sexual and violent in-game representations are framed by some in the US, but I just want to point to the short piece Steven Johnson recently wrote, as an open letter to Hillary Clinton: Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over.

If you want to read some more around the “GTA Sex Mod Frenzy”, take first a look at the links collected by Jason Della Rocca
in his blog.

facade release

Oh yes, they have finally made it into an official release; Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas have provided Façade, a “one-act interactive drama” as a whopping 800 megabyte BitTorrent download. Good to see academic games research being applied in practise! See the Procedural Arts Press Release.

chinese online addicts get the cure

Hm. Seems that the Chinese officials are getting rather experimental in curing the net/game addiction problem – administering electric pulses and intravenous medication, wow. See the AP story in CNN.com and elsewhere.