Games: April 2004 Archive Page

though Limbaugh is wrong to decide that video games are entirely like other games, his comparison opens up interesting possibilities for anyone wanting to develop a theory of video games as a medium because it suggests that any such theory ought to deal with both sides of video gaming's cultural history. Though many readers in English departments will be more comfortable with the expressive aspects of games that essentially resemble those of more familiar forms like film or literature (even as they may be suspicious of the right of any popular medium to claim for itself the relevance of those forms), the present seems an opportune time for expanding the range of what literary and cultural study might do with new media. --Hayot and Wesp --Reading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communities  (Postmodern Culture)

Via TerraNova.

In the 1980s millions of teenagers world-wide would battle dragons armed with just dice, paper and pens. D&D became part of youth sub-culture but as the game celebrates its 30th birthday, is anyone still playing? --Darren Water --Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons? (BBC)

Colorado-based independent scholar Marie-Laure Ryan, author of Narrative as Virtual Reality and editor, most recently, of Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, who has offered comments here at GTxA, spoke about the ludology vs. narratology debate, admitting that she was preaching to the converted, not to the heathens...

She took on the anti-narrativst arguments advanced by Aarseth, Eskelinen, Frasca, and Juul and offered convincing answers to them. All right, I admit: I was already convinced. She suggested that a cognitive approach to narrative, which saw story as a world that had characters and objects undertaking meaningful actions, actions that had consequences in a system with rules and laws, was particularly amenable for use in understanding some computer games.

My basic reaction was, Yes! --Nick Montfort --Montfort on Narratology vs. Ludology (Grand Text Auto)

Nick Montfort also makes a few good-natured jabs at his ludologist friends in this post, a summary of part of a narrative conference sponsored by the University of Vermont and Middelbury College. Once again, at a conference geared towards literature, it's not surprising to see the narratological approach to computer games dominant. I like Nick's observation that if we focus too much on finding a theory that accounts for Tetris, we risk specializing in Tetris Studies.

Update: "May all future discussions be both ludolicious and narratasty." --Andrew Stern

Instead of simply cruising the distant reaches of other worlds in search of alien targets, Red Vs. Blue zeroes in on the small gangs of soldiers and gets into their heads.

"This is what happens when the game's off, basically," said Mike `Burnie' Burns, 31, one of the Red Vs. Blue's creators. "They're chatting away, spending their idle time like the rest of us do, just passing the day away."

And so they do -- gossiping, arguing, strategizing and generally wondering what the heck they're doing out here, in the middle of nowhere, fighting blue guys or red guys for no apparent reason. The comedy, absurdist, military, and oddly bureaucratic, was compared by one critic to the plays of Samuel Beckett. --Spielbergs with a joystick (Toronto Star)

Tonight I'll be discussing LPattern Recognition with my literature class... that book centers around the underground cult phenomenon of a strange film being released on the Internet as anonymous clips.

This article also includes a reference to "My Trip to Liberty City," by new media artist Jim Munroe.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: "Score a few points for Bud!"Dorky but bookish (therefore fun) 'open the nearest book to page 23' meme

Found in several places this week. The one that actually prompted me to post was here.

Instead of starring a busty young woman or a porn stud with rock-hard abs, the Flash-powered site features an actor in a chicken suit, dressed in lingerie. And unlike previous big-business attempts to cash in on an Internet trend, the Subservient Chicken site quickly became an Internet hit. --Chris Ulbrich --Porno Hen Hawks for Burger King (Wired)

I noticed this story last week, but didn't blog it because 1) it's a Flash site, and 2) I hadn't found a straightforward newsy-account of what the heck it was all about.

I confess I still haven't visted the site, but now that I see it apparently uses some kind of text parser (or at least it looks for keywords) it should probably count as a kind of text game.

While I study the classic interactive fiction works that don't include any pictures at all, many games during the genre's heyday mixed words with images; the hybrid genre hasn't attracted much attention.

The 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition has opened for business. The yearly competition, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, is for short pieces of interactive fiction. At this point IF authors can sign up to take part in the competition, and everyone can learn how to judge the games when they are released in October of this year. --Interactive Fiction Competition Opens (Slashdot Games)

Sigh... I remember when I had time to code for events like this. I've got a WIP ("work in progress") dating back to 1998... I don't think I've touched it in two years. Someday... someday...

It's been almost thirty years since young Laura and Sandy Crowther sat down at a Teletype and took their first steps into the mysterious subterranean world their father, Will, created for them. Now, if Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction is any indication, Crowther and Woods's pioneering computer game Adventure and its descendants are finally beginning to garner the critical recognition they deserve. At only 286 pages, Twisty Little Passages is a small, accessible book that addresses a deep and complex subject. The author's stated intention is to bring us the first book-length consideration of interactive fiction (IF) as a legitimate literary field, and he has certainly succeeded. --John Miles --Twisty Little Passages [Review] (Slashdot Books)

Researchers are finding players can make sharper soldiers, drivers and surgeons. Their reaction time is better, their peripheral vision more acute. They are taking risks, finding themselves at ease in a demanding environment that requires paying attention on several levels at once.

While there are countless examples of children vegetating in front of the box, real learning is going on as well. Children who go online to play the World War II shooter fantasy Medal of Honor Allied Assault might last all of 14 seconds if they just hit the Normandy beaches with guns blazing. To succeed, they must come up with a plan - either by typing messages or talking through headphones to teammates whom they may never have met. --Daniel Rubin --Ahead of the game? (Philly.com)

This reporter still equates videogames with juvenile behavior -- the "cute" conclusion equates studying videogames with never having to grow up. Other than that, this is a good article, which very quickly moves beyond soccer-mom fears about computer games.

Computer games represent one of the fastest-growing, most profitable entertainment businesses. Making movies, by contrast, is getting tougher and more expensive, now costing, with marketing fees, an average of $103 million a film. That is one reason, among others, that those with power in Hollywood are avidly seeking to get into the game business while also reshaping standard movie contracts so they can grab a personal share of game rights.--Laura M. Holson --Out of Hollywood, Rising Fascination With Video Games (NY Times)

--After some discussion all the outstanding issues in game studies had been settled. (Barry Atkins | Yahoo! Photos)

A great collection of cartoons... I do wish the captions were searchable. This one about a deep space anomaly is also good.

Atkins is the video game scholar whose talk at the Princeton video game conference, amplified by weblog reports (including mine) and further amplified by readers commenting on those weblog reports, touched off some fireworks in the "narratology vs. ludology" debate. (That is, are computer games best understood as kinds of stories, or as a complex set of rules that may or may not include story-like attributes?)

Via buzzcut.

Researchers found that doctors who spent at least three hours a week playing video games made about 37 percent fewer mistakes in laparoscopic surgery and performed the task 27 percent faster than their counterparts who did not play video games.... Rosser has developed a course called Top Gun, in which surgical trainees warm up their coordination, agility and accuracy with a video game before entering the operating room. --Verna Dobink --Surgeons Who Play Video Games Err Less (AP Wire/MyWay)

Infocom is long gone, but never mind. The original Infocom games are available for download at www.latz.org, and also for free play through AIM. A Web programmer named Andrew Baio has written an "AIM bot" that makes it possible.

Bots are simple programs that act like a human being who's subscribed to an instant messaging program. Hundreds of such bots have been written; America Online, for instance has its Safety Bot, which tells Internet users how to protect their privacy. Any AIM user can try it by adding AOLSafetyBot to his buddy list.

You can play some of the old text-based games in the same way. Just install one of Baio's bots, named InfocomBot, InfocomBot2, or InfocomBot3. Send a greeting to your new "buddy," then pick from one of several Infocom classics. Not sure what to do next? Visit brasslantern.org, where you'll find a beginner's guide to text-based gaming. It's all free, and you don't even need a buddy. --Hiawatha Bray --With IMs, friends can be foes (Boston Globe)

Bray did a great job on this piece. Great to see not only the Old Skool games mentioned in the mainsream press, but brasslantern.org -- a great resource by Stephen Grenade, a tireless promoter of current events in the IF world.

Via GoogleNews (where I've set up a bot to send me an e-mail when a new article shows up with the words "interactive fiction").

Say, how do you feel about ice cream? Fan of the ice cream? Maybe it'll help soften the punch of Quality Inn's video game assortment. You've got three different kinds of ice cream bars to choose from, and they'll only cost you a buck and a half each. Finally, Atlantic City has a stereotypical bargain to match Vegas' gamut of three dollar all-you-can-eat buffets. There's just one little problem...


It's filled with crap, and I know what you're thinking. It's just gooey melted ice cream. Gross, but not too gross. You don't want to touch it, but even if you were unable to keep the ice cream wrapper from touching it, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker.
--The Worst Game-Room Ever! (X-Entertainment)

I'm laughing so hard my eyes are watering. That definitely beats my encounter with poorly-designed signs in a hotel game room.

To cut to the chase:

• The game industry currently doesn't believe in "game research". You're either working on a shippable product, or you're bullshitting around. Shippability implies minimizing risk; minimizing risk implies minimizing innovation.
• There are regions of design space that cannot be reached incrementally. That is, there exist new game genres that can't be invented through a sequence of incremental, shippable products.
• Academia currently has no funding mechanism (and potentially, no tenure mechanism) to support research inventing new game genres (research that often, along the way, involves solving some hard, first class technical problems).

So neither industry nor academia will do the non-incremental work necessary to explore these hard to reach regions in design space. Who will?

Michael Mateas --Whither Game Research (Grand Text Auto)

Mateas focuses on interactive drama.

The only way to get the industry to take risks on games that explore the missing themes of human experience -- heartbreak, betrayal, anticipation, jealousy, despair, eternal hope, grief, and so many others -- is to nurture students who are inspired and who are capable of inspiring others with their vision.... If academics can help instill inspiration, then the industry will find itself compelled by its undeniable humanity to take risks on unpredictably useful projects. And I'll bet many of those projects will also become massive commercial successes.

So what's the downside? This is a long-term project. I cannot commit to a return-on-investment proposition for inspiration, for talent, for art. This isn't just about reaping convenient rewards from university-funded experimental projects, getting cheap labor through internships, or plucking brilliant designers out of short-term certificate programs. --Ian Bogost --The Muse of the Video Game (IGDA)

The faithful, in order to be more true to the 'Jedi Code of Honour', crouch before each other and duck their 'heads' down as a mark of respect before enjoining battle. Some people think that's silly.

I thought it was silly, the first time I saw it. Then I saw everybody was doing it. And then I felt silly not doing it. --Bow, N*gger (Extra Life)

This is not just a game review -- it's a literate, engaging, gripping personal essay. Via bradblog, whose blog entry traces the influence of this particular review.

Gonzalo: That'sbetter. Now, let me tell you something: narratology is a sham. It'sfor losers who can't get laid. You know what I'm saying? Narratologists can go suck it, as far as I'm concerned. Kiss my sweet ass, Vladimir Propp! You?re not going to put that in the transcript, are you?

Walter: Of course not. Well, looks like it'stime for me to go, now.

Gonzalo: Gonzalo ?The Political Games Guy? Frasca.

Walter: Gotcha.

--Coffee with Gonzalo Frasca (Ludonauts)

This interview (published on the significant date of April 1) really puts the ludology vs. narratology debate into perspective.

--IF Quake (Loonyboi)

I wonder whether everyone who claims to have downloaded it and played it is in on a grand April Fool's joke, so I'll just let you decide for yourself.

The text adventure lives on as a result of a network of websites and Usenet groups, and each year this small community gathers to hold the IF competition, in which amateur entries are subject to peer review.

Dennis Jerz, associate professor in English and new media journalism at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania, says interactive fiction scratches a particular itch among some players.

"An IF game requires the player to combine the textual analysis skills of a literary critic with the problem-solving drive of a hacker," he says.

Anthony Fordham --Harking back to good old texts (Australian IT)

The article also quotes Scott Adams (great site re-design, Scott) and Eric Mayer.

I guess it's hard to get away from the nostalgia angle in mainstream coverage of IF, since that's an obvious way to make the story relevant to the average reader (the average IT professional, in the case of this particular paper). Fortunately, Fordham doesn't overdo it.