Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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The pleasurable lightness of being: Interface, mediation and meta-narrative in Lucasfilm\u27s Loom
No full textThis critique of the overlooked Lucasfilm adventure game focuses on the techniques, by which the distance between the avatar and the player is bridged, and the way the game deals with its gameness in its fiction.The critique is broken into three sections: the analysis of the fiction, investigation of the interface and, finally, the whole narrative structure.Conclusion is made that the uniqueness and "magic" often mentioned by the game\u27s fans comes about thanks to a series of parallels between the player\u27s and the avatar\u27s situation
Pure Hardcore? wipEout HD and current game design
No full textThis review highlights the changes made for the futuristic racing game Wipeout HD. Once deemed a hardcore game the Wipeout series has since broadened its appeal. The game\u27s state of the art audio integration and the subtle changes to its gameplay are highlighted in the context of contemporary game design
Letter from the Wilderness
No full textIn a November 2006 Gamasutra article titled “We’re not listening: An Open Letter to Academic Game Researchers” John Hopson argues that much of the research into games by academics is not presented in a way likely to appeal to game developers and is largely irrelevant to their concerns. Hopson’s argument implicates humanities and many social science researchers producing speculative and descriptive research rather than more hard-edged technical and statistical research that can have an immediate impact on a game’s bottom line. While conceding Hopson’s point about the ineffectiveness of many academic communication norms, I argue that Hopson’s article is indicative not of problems with academic research into games as much as the position of game development toward the utility of academic research in general. After analyzing the assumptions underlying Hopson’s argument, I offer a schema that articulates several key types of research into games carried out by scholars with a primary background in the humanities and the contribution of each research approach to the game development process
Games and Self-Imagining, a Comparative Media Perspective
No full textThis article compares the self-positioning mechanisms used by the computer game American McGee’s Alice to those of its paper and film predecessors. After dismissing the claim that the virtual is ontologically different and therefore incomparable to the fictional, Kendall Walton’s theory of representation as make-believe is laid out. This theory is then used to describe the various techniques for entertaining laid out by the three works and relate them to their relative medium-specific qualities. Next, Walton’s concepts of subjective and objective imagining are presented to describe the positions of the imagined self vis-à-vis the represented events. When applied to the material at hand, it becomes clear that while Walton’s theory does not allow for simple categorisation and that all three media lay out complex strategies combining subjective and objective techniques, overall the game can be seen as evoking a primarily subjective experience with an objective counterweight whilst the book and the film should be seen as primarily objective with subjectifying elements
Generations and Game Localization
No full textAn interview with Alexander O. Smith, Steve Anderson and Matthew Alt
Fahrenheit and the premature burial of interactive movies
No full textInteractive movies have the bad reputation of combining the worst of cinema and video games. The success of the game Fahrenheit (released in North America as Indigo Prophecy) in 2006 might lead us to reevaluate this failure. This articles argues that this game can be considered an updated form of interactive movie and discusses some of this genre\u27s characteristics that are still relevant and attractive today: artistically motivated mise-en-scène and rich storytelling
I HEART LocoRoco – a reading of a gameplay experience
No full textIn the diverse landscape of modern gaming it is rare to find specific games that are universally described in affectionate terms. Allegiances to form and genre identify the various tribes and often the divide between gaming sub-cultures runs deep. Passionate players pride themselves both by the longevity of their status and via signifiers of skill acquired. These traits typify what has become known as the “hardcore” player; in popular gaming culture the hardcore is often positioned contra the “casual” player with hours and type of game played as the main criteria for qualification. However these terms are ludicrous at best and fall short in describing the multitude of people who play digital games. The following is focussed on one particular Sony PSP game franchise that has received widespread critical acclaim, LocoRoco. This is a 2D platform game initially released in Europe in Summer 2006 and although it has not gone platinum this title got to No 5 in the UK Charts and has won 2 BAFTA’s for character design and children’s game in 2006. LocoRoco 2 was released in the U.K. in November 2008. Sony’s Tsutomu Kouno, the Director of LocoRoco, has stated that one of his design intentions was to make a game that appealed to those who didn’t normally play games (Kouno, 2006). This statement is key in my selection of this game. As a hugely lucrative yet nascent industry, it is of interest to study the ways in which commercial developers attempt to attract new players to part with their hard-earnt entertainment dollar. My investigation looks to explicate game design decisions that entice a player into dialogue with the ongoing game experience. I will look at issues including pleasure and seduction within the action and reward cycle inherent to gameplay
Assembling a Mosaic of the Future: The Post-Nuclear World of Fallout 3
No full textFallout is a series of role-playing games set in a prolonged nuclear age that follows the fictional Great War of 2077. Its story follows an alternate history scenario that branches from our history at about 1950. During the years following the nuclear fallout, the earth changes its face. Species mutate, some animals become sentient, and many humans lose their mind. This review focusses on the historic context of the nuclear age and how it informed the world of Fallout
Video Game Genre, Evolution and Innovation
No full textThis paper provides a critical overview of the notion of genre in game studies and in the video game industry. Using the concept of genre requires one to acknowledge the recent developments of genre theory in other fields of research; one such development is the contestation of the idea of generic evolution. After a comparative analysis, video game genres are found to differ from literary and film genres precisely on the basis of evolution. The technological imperatives that characterize video game production are also pinpointed as relevant to the establishment and development of video game genres. Evolution is linked to the processes of innovation, and so a model of innovation is laid out from a compare-and-contrast approach to literary and film genre innovation. This model is tested through the history and analysis of the First-Person Shooter genre. This results in new insights for the question of genre in video games, as it is established that genre is rooted not in game mechanics, but in game aesthetics; that is, play-experiences that share a phenomenological and pragmatic quality, regardless of their technical implementation.  
Doubly Real: Game Studies and Literary Anthropology; or, Why We Play Games
No full textFew game studies scholars will regret that the infelicitous ludology vs. narratology debate has been left behind. However, one misconception concerning the nature of literary theory continues to haunt game studies. If Gonzalo Frasca (correctly) observes that "Ludologists Love Stories, Too" (2003), I wish to point out that his conciliatory gesture seriously threatens to distort the concerns of literary theorists in ways that make their reflections on human sense-making indeed seem of very limited use to game studies scholars. If we truly want to know in what respects game studies can profit from literary theory without jeoparidizing the strategies of distinction a still emergent field such as game studies needs to position itself vis-à-vis dominant theoretical paradigms--and which Espen J. Aarseth calls for in his editorial to the first issue of Game Studies (2001)--we need to be aware of two things. First, narratologists make up only a fraction of the literary-theoretical community. And the narratologists most often cited by game studies scholars usually practice a structuralist version of narratology that has come under sustained critical scrutiny since the late 1960s. Second, not all literary scholars are concerned with narrative. Of course, they often study narrative texts such as novels and short stories, but they also study plays, poems, and other non-narrative texts. More importantly, even when they do study narrative texts, literary scholars--be they narratologists or not--are not always interested in the forms and functions of stories.This essay argues that game studies can profit from reflections on issues other than narrative by a literary theorist whose work has been unduly reduced to those concerns. In Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997), Aarseth refers to the work of Wolfgang Iser as one influential model of literary communication that does not help explain the specific forms and functions of nonlinear, multicursal computer games. More specifically, Aarseth argues that Iser\u27s notion of Leerstellen (blanks) cannot account for the kinds of openings cybertexts offer their users. Yet the later work of Iser is a much more promising avenue of exploration for ludologists. Iser\u27s The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (1993) develops what is arguably the most sustained theory of fictionality available today. While honed in the study of literary texts, Iser\u27s theory can tell us much about the cultural work of fiction in a variety of media without leveling the distinctions between different cultural practices. As such, Iser\u27s later work does not provide yet another framework for reading games as stories but challenges games studies scholars to rethink some of their central concepts, in particular \u27play,\u27 \u27simulation,\u27 and \u27immersion.\u27 Moreover, it invites us to ask whether the rhetoric of distinction that much game studies scholarship still employs to stake out its claims has outlived its usefulness, serving less as an effective defense mechanism than as an obstacle to cross-disciplinary fertilization