Essay

A Working Theory of Game Design

Mechanics, Technology, Dynamics, Aesthetics & Narratives

Dr. Paul Ralph & Dr. Kafui Monu 6 Comments

When considering how to teach fundamental principles of game design, we find ourselves torn between two well-cited frameworks: the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics Framework (MDA) and the Elemental Tetrad. We want to teach both, because each has its merits, but teaching two separate frameworks is unnecessarily confusing. This essay therefore develops an initial proposal for a working theory of game design by integrating these two existing frameworks. Continue Reading →

Useful, Joyful, Willful

Thinking About Types of Play

Jörgen Skågeb

In this paper I outline three perspectives that emphasize different characters of play: useful; joyful; and willful play. I further argue that designing for willfulness (e.g. rule-bending) will allow players to become game-changers rather than being played.

Generally speaking, computer games have created new arenas for play in several senses. Massive multiplayer online games have spurred, amongst other things, particular forms of social interaction and behavior; mobile and casual gaming has generated new breeds of gamers; the fundamentally code-based underpinnings of computer games make hacks and modifications possible; and grand ambitions of gamification, supported by digitization, even aims to turn ‘anything and everything’ into a race for points and badges. Instead of clearly situating itself within one particular practice, this paper will take an overarching perspective on play. It will go on to propose three perspectives that, in the light of processes such as the increasing specialization, quantification and rationalization of play(Pargman & Svensson), emphasize different characters of play. Continue Reading →

Identification or Desire?

Taking the Player-Avatar Relationship to the Next Level

Gerald Voorhees 5 Comments

Bringing queer theory and game studies into conversation with each other, I will argue here that queer desire is the fundamental structure of the player-avatar relationship so often mischaracterized by the notion of identification. If we are to accept the argument sketched out below, that sexual attraction is a motivating factor in like-sex player-avatar relationships, then we must also accept that a great deal of digital gameplay is motivated by queer desire. This means that queer sexualities are not simply invited into gameplay and gamespace, but rather that they already occupy, covertly, a critical position within games and game cultures that enables the possible subversion and transgression of the masculinity and heteronormativity that overtly characterize games and gaming. Continue Reading →

The Naked Dungeon

Situationist Practice in Warren Robinett's Adventure

mrghosty 2 Comments

In 1979, Atari released the graphical adventure game, Adventure, programmed by Warren Robinett for the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) home gaming console. A remake of the text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure (1977), Robinett’s Adventure became famous for it’s inclusion of a secret room, containing a message hidden within the game. This form of hidden message soon became known as the Easter egg; rooms, items and areas hidden within games waiting to be discovered by venturous players. While Adventure’s hidden room was not the first instance of the Easter egg created in a game (in 2004, an Easter egg was discovered hidden in a game title for the Fairchild Channel F console, which predated Adventure by several years), it was the first ever discovered by a game player. In time, the Easter egg became commonplace in video games as a means for programmers and designers to place their own embedded authorial markers within a game. Continue Reading →

When Friday is a Vegetable

A Colonial and Ecological Exploration of Pikmin

Joey DiZoglio

In the 2001 game Pikmin, protagonist Captain Olimar provides the titular word to his indigenous saviors and establishes a power relationship that develops throughout the entire game. During his first day shipwrecked on a toxic world he discovers a little plant person and needs to identify it within his pre-existing realm of experience: “Its shape is similar to the pikpik brand carrots I love so much… I believe I shall call it a Pikmin”. This name immediately assigns the pikmin to Olimar’s previous values and makes them tokens of hope for escaping the planet. As a man who employs both his own wit and the native labor of a foreign land, Olimar matches the archetypal Robinson Crusoe figure. The player’s main source of tension over the allotted thirty days is careful management of the “real-time strategy” resources, pikmin and pikmin food, while simultaneously combatting hostile life forms. Olimar’s colonial domination over the pikmin is the theoretical framework of the game mechanics. Given this lineage to post-colonial studies, the pikmin resonate as a people enslaved exploited by foreign empire. Yet the planet’s ecosystem rejects the role of subordination. Its alien biorhythms and defensive adaptations seem to imply that Olimar is just a superficial addition to the pre-existing ecocommunity. Continue Reading →

The Games People Replay

Toward a Performative Account of “Replayability”

Michael Lutz 5 Comments

The way in which Fernández-Vara’s comments turn attention back to the player of the game also raises the question of why certain games are repeatedly played by certain players, and furthermore why the games are esteemed for this quality, commonly called “replayability” or “replay value.” In 2010, Ben Abraham posted a polemical entry to his personal blog in which he points out that as pieces of software, games by definition may be played multiple times. He alleges “replayability” is a “non-word … lack[ing] any actual meaningful content,” because while we can understand replayability in a general sense, in individual cases its particulars remain elusive and difficult to quantify. Speculatively, Abraham asks if “replayability” might in fact be used as a “shorthand way to refer to a series of unrelated yet seemingly connected factors that influence whether someone is willing to endure repeat exposure to a game-type experience?” A game may have a branching narrative, multiplayer components, or unlockable content that becomes available as the player reaches certain benchmarks; none of this is a guarantee, however, that any given player will be willing to play the game multiple times. Continue Reading →