Gaming Academia Gets More Mainstream Press 86
jimharris writes "Eventually every area of human activity comes under the scrutiny of scholars. After thirty years, it's time for video games to go to college. The New York Times has an article (free registration required) called 'The Ivy-Covered Console', that talks about several lucky professors who play games for a living. The challenge, they say, is to develop a language of criticism to analyze video games." One particularly unfortunate quote: "Dr. [Barry] Atkins admitted that he didn't finish Half-Life before writing about it in his 2003 book, 'More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form,' (Manchester University Press), and only later realized he was two minutes from the shocking plot reversal at the end when he stopped. 'I am very nervous that I got it wrong,' he said."
plot twist at the end and game as fiction.. (Score:5, Insightful)
they see only half of the story, since the game is too boring, too easy or too hard to finish. this is something that they should have take into consideration when writing up the critique.
I remember fondly some games from my childhood that I never got around to finish
Unfinished Games (Score:4, Insightful)
I shouldn't be *forced* to keep playing because the game might get better *later*. The player should be having fun the whole time, right? Obviously, some parts will be better than others, but ten minutes of boredom can kill a gaming experience. Especially if there's ANOTHER game that will be fun RIGHT NOW. =)
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:5, Insightful)
How many games have you played where the gameplay is just horrid 95% of the way through, and then all of a sudden gameplay mechanics change for the last 5% of the game, and it totally rocks?
None?
Yeah, me too. Even so...why would you make your game crap half the time? That IS the mark of a bad game. When I play good games...I don't wait for them to get better...they're just good, there's not these huge peaks and valleys in enjoyment. Repetition kicks in at some point...but that's totally different.
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2, Informative)
None?
Yeah, me too.
Quite. On the other hand, the opposite is often true - take Final Fantasy VII as the classic example of a game that starts out excellent and ceases to be worth playing a couple of hours into the second disk. Or Xenogears, come to that - the story improves rapidly towards the end, but the gameplay is
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2)
You don't want the reviewer giving away the end of the game anyway, so why NOT have the reviewer crank out a review b
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2)
if you want the opposite play Solar Jetman (Score:2)
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite type of game is RPG -- console-style, D&D-style, any kind is good for me. The only three I've ever beaten are Fallout, Chrono Trigger and KotOR, and both because I almost just played straight through from beginning to end and had no distractions. I helped my girlfriend with the final battle in one of the Avernum games, but that doesn't count. I've never even finished a Final Fantasy, though I came very close in FF7. I stopped in the middle of Planescape: Torment and never came back. Same for both Icewind Dales, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Morrowind. That's all I can remember at the moment, but there are certainly many more. These, though, are not bad games. In fact, I think most of them are fantastic games.
Maybe it's as much a sign of a horrible gamer as of a bad game.
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2, Insightful)
I think there is approximately 3 games that we have at home that I have actually finished. Most console games I get to a point about 3/4 of the way through where I cannot make progress any further.
The worst one for me was actually Super Mario Sunshine, where I got stuck about 10% of the way in. It's not that I don't know what to do, it's just that I ha
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps that would be the trick to getting more women into gaming
My girlfriend just called you a cheater. She's not hardcore [she does play The Sims, Buffy on PS2, and we play Starcraft and Warcraft together, and she tries stuff I recommend], but I pointed this post out to her, and she feels that regardless of gender, cheating's cheating. What's the point in playing the game if you're going to play 'around' the game?
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:2)
In fact, the reason I never beat Torment was because I got totally stuck at one spot. Nothing I could do. Hell, that game even gives you a
Re:Unfinished Games (Score:1)
Tomb Raider? Beat it first time through, loved it [still one of my favourites], went back with a FAQ to find the secrets the second time through. Tomb R
Re:plot twist at the end and game as fiction.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:plot twist at the end and game as fiction.. (Score:3, Informative)
Quandry (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Quandry (Score:2, Insightful)
But even still, there are going to be a few places that are going to just have such a concentration of people who do this that it makes sense to make a department. I'd be distressed if every university had a gaming department, but I'm glad a few do - especially while the field is small enough that distributing them over a lot
It'd be a subsection of English, actually (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It'd be a subsection of English, actually (Score:4, Interesting)
When they were trying to get the Video Game Studies minor approved at UC Irvine, the mucky-mucks there balked, and someone pointed out that they had a Film Studies major there, and that people back in the 70s had made the same claims against that major.
How can you NOT realize that critiquing video games and the procedures for creating them are at LEAST as complex as the ones needed for movies? To allow for one and scoff at the other is stupidity with Flavor Crystals(TM).
Re:Quandry (Score:2)
Re:Quandry (Score:2)
Most of the stuff they talked about in this article I find very depressing and quite frankly pretty lame. While some of the people mentioned are doing good stuff, the projects they described jsut seem to be reproducing traditional dichodomies and seem fairly poin
Reg free link (Score:4, Informative)
I'll be an A+ student (Score:2)
If it's hardcore programming it should be categorized with computer science. If it's everything else not code related, it should fit into this new curriculum.
Researchers vs. Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
"So far, the academic and the industry worlds, they're very far away," said Mr. Frasca, who intends to play a role of a bridge. "Developers do not read academic articles, and that's not going to happen any time soon." Academics generated animosity early on by judging games as violent. "They were also not gamers," he said, "which made it weird to listen to their analyses."
Which is why I'm taking whatever an academic currently says with a grain of salt. For the past thirty years, academics have totally discounted our industry and getting it just plain wrong. In my book, they are currently 30 years behind the curve.
There are plenty of journalists and historians like Leonard Hermann and Johnny Wilson that are getting it. Next week these "ivy-league" academics are holding a conference consisting of "a lawyer, a journalist, a composer, two professors, two lecturers and six graduate students will present papers with titles like 'Musical Byproducts of Atari 2600 Games' and 'But Our Princess Is in Another Castle: Towards a 'Close-Playing' of Super Mario Brothers.'" Too bad that they seemed to have forgotten to invite a few developers. Perhaps the academics would be better served by going to the Game Developers Conference two weeks later and learn a thing or to.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not as though we invite authors to talk about books, or filmmakers to talk about film.
Academics are not interested in documenting the process of production. We figure that the developers are plenty good at explaining their own process.
What we're interested in doing is trying to give an accounting of the medium as it functions - in this case, to create a vocabulary of terms for video games, much like the vocabulary Aristotle created for narrative. We're interested
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Developers (designers in particular) are trying to do largely the same things as academics. Perhaps only because academics have so long ignored our field, someone had to step up and do it - so we could better understand the field.
Year after year the big round-table discussions at conferences revolve around creating a vocabulary, response analysis and intentionally evoking responses, implications of camera angle, avatar choice, etc.
The technical production of games may not be relevant to what interests academics - but the design of games and gameplay certainly is, and vice-versa.
Game Designers want to understand the feelings they evoke with function the same way a good cinematographer understands the feelings they evoke with color, composition, and angle - all while not caring particularly much about the technical details of how the camera works, or how the computers work that let him composite digitally.
Sure, there is animosity between the academics that discount(ed) gaming and game designers/developers. And your entire post neatly sums up the very attitude of academia that causes the problem.
Despite the attitude of academia - game designers and developers are very carefully studying the academic analyses of other arts: painting, music, film, and fiction to better understand the artform.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a member of a rare breed: I'm writing my thesis on games, so I'm familiar with all the academic literature on them. but I also code my own games. Without my coding background, I would never be able to analyze games in the same depth.
Most of the literature out there would be vastly improved if these researchers had even a cursory knowledge of programming. Instead, most of the academics are still clinging to what they're familiar with, like literary and film theory, instead of apporaching games on their own grounds. Procedural logic, artificial intelligence issues, and emergent behavior are all ingored by most academics in favor of more comfortable facets like narrative or visuals. Honestly, how many academic articles do we need on Lara Croft's breasts?
The Georgia Tech program [gatech.edu] mentioned in the article has exactly the right idea. For most of the classes, assignments are split between theory *and* production.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Critics entering the world of gaming will start to add value to the concept of games as art rather than simply games as entertainment.
Though games claim to have stories they are often so completely banal and stupid that even an action movie would be hard pressed to justify their plotlines.
I don't think academics should get involved yet because Gaming simply isn't at the same leve
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:2)
But I think (Ga Tech MA program grad) Chaim Gingold's essay on academia and gaming [igda.org] for an overview of the benefits that would accrue to the gaming industry for a vigorous, independent and serious academic interest in gaming. The framing of a media - whether it's perceived as "mere" entertainment, as a speech form, as an art form,
GDC vs. SIGGRAPH (Score:1)
I've had the opportunity to visit both conferences in 2002. There's no denying that the papers and sessions at SIG are less practical than those on the GDC, but the level is usually just as high. Game tech IS academic by nature, because it pushes limits and tries out new things. Maybe games were scorned in the past because they were the product of some lonely freaks hammering away in dorm room chambers, but these days are over. Even the academic world will have a tough hand at trying to keep up with the
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:2, Interesting)
We have no interest in designing better video games, by and large. Academic study took a turn away from those kinds of concerns in the 60s, and hasn't ever really gone back.
Put another way, there are two kinds of English Masters degrees - the MA and the MFA. The MFA is concerned with the productive aspects - with how to create a good poem, play, story, whatever.
The MA has no concern whatsoever with that. The MA does not want to write a
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
We need to take into account that video games are still a genre in infancy, unlike poetry which has been around and studied since Aristotle. Think more about Sergie Eisenstein at the birth of cinema. He made stirring films that showed knowledge of theory, and he wrote highly influential theory that he couldn't possibly have arrived at if he hadn't been trying to make films.
We have no interest in designing better video ga
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
I mean, I'm not saying I'm not glad there are people who are figuring out how to make fun games. I like playing them.
Just that, you know, I'm not interested in making them.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Topics like "Multiplayer Play: Designing Social Interaction in Games", "How to Write an Unforgettable Story", and "10 Tricks from Psychology for Making Better Characters" wouldn't interest the academics. "Creating the Right Mix of Static Versus Dynamic Content in a Massively Multiplayer Game" and "Entering the World: Cognitive Dissonance and Immersion in Electronic Games" is off-track. "The Philosophical Roots of Computer Game Design" is just speaking a totally different language from what universities are teaching.
Oh wait, my sarcasm is overtaking me. You see, these are questions that developers think about. We're selling a product and we damn sure know how things things work. To say that developers don't think about how a game can evoke emotional responses or how the social aspects of a game design can impact a game like Everquest is just ignorant. You think that these things just randomly happen during development? Developers don't just throw things in a compiler and see what sells. For that matter, Richard Evans used Heidegger as a major influence in creating the social AI routines for Black&White.
If this isn't proof of continuing ignorance then I don't know what is. Do me a favor and attend Toru Iwatani's "The Secret of Pac-Man's Success: Making Fun First" seminar. Perhaps you can learn a thing or two about what we already knew 25 years ago.
Consider yourself 0wn3d.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Why? Because we're not trying to make a game.
We don't want to determine how a game evokes an emotional response, or the sociology of EverQuest. We certainly don't want to employ Heidegger to create social AI routines.
We are not developers. We are theorists. Our major interest is in dealing with the relationship between games and humanity at large - as a whole (as opposed to an individual human with a particular cont
the Queen of England is posting? (Score:1)
Wait.. Oh my...declarative sentences claiming to speak to a whole community...devisive statements...an Academic Troll? What an oxymoron!
Listen: no one is saying you have to write a game yourself. But then writing a paper about video games and then claiming you never want it read in the soiled hands of developers is pretty self-defeating, isn't it?
Re:the Queen of England is posting? (Score:1)
As for developers... it's not that they shouldn't read it. It's that they're not the intended audience, so if it's of no interest to them, it's not really a big deal.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Largely, pure theory carries on the classical problems of philosophy - particularly political and social philosophy.
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
I mean, there's just not a field outside of the critical theory-based fields that are interested in selfhood...
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
All a critique of a show does is make a comment about the show and nothing more. Anybody working in TV will be able to pick up
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
We talk about shows in a very different way - we deal with their constructions of race, of gender, of class - with their politics, with many other things - not to tell if they're good or bad, but to determine what they do - how they function.
What we do is more similar to sociology, in a lot of ways, but with so
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
But once again we seem to have reached a point where I fall back to my previous argument. People actually making TV shows WILL consider these kinds of things when creating their product. People making TV shows will look at others work for inspiration and ideas as to how to improve their own work when watching other peoples work.
At the en
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:2)
A good critical stance is informed by a lot of relevant historical, anthropological, sociological and other disciplines that even most producers don't have
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Also, they do not do what professionals in the field could do if they so chose to and I would say that any true professional worth their job should be doing what you say critics are responsible for.
As for bias and defensiveness, I think you will find that many critics works take thier lead from the writers personal stan
I frankly think both are wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I frankly think both are wrong (Score:2)
The entire point
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
While I don't know anything about the papers that weren't accepted, I'm sure that if developers had submitted paper proposals that fit the goals of the conference organizers, those developers would have been invited to present their papers at the conference.
"Perhaps the academics would be better served by going to the Game Developers Conference two weeks later and learn a thing or to."
1) If a scientist who studies the mating habits h
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Researchers vs. Developers (Score:1)
Half-Life (Score:4, Funny)
The very ending was cute, though.
Re:Half-Life (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course if he meant that, he has only seen a rather small portion of the game. But think about it: how would he know if it was two minutes from the end, if he has never played that far?
Subjective Criticism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Subjective Criticism (Score:4, Insightful)
We have largely given up the notion of "review," I'll admit - but popular culture studies remains big.
And, believe me, we're well aware of subjectivism - it's there for most things.
I doubt this is a novelty thing - we'll be around to study video games as long as they remain popular. And if they die off, some people will focus on them in 150 years when they do 20th and 21st century studies.
Re:Subjective Criticism (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, my understanding is that subjectivity is rather central to postmodernism. As far as I'm concerned the idea in social sciences is to be subjective, just to be subjective from as many angles of subjectivity as possible (thus completeness increases over multiple academics).
Re:Subjective Criticism (Score:1)
In the humanities, it's even more extreme - we stopped thinking that completeness and objectivity were even goals to strive for.
Perhaps not objectivity, but completeness... (Score:3, Interesting)
Postmodernism, on the other hand, tosses consistency out the window in an attempt to be complet
Wow, Ikaruga and Virtua Fighter 4 in the NY Times! (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I'm a Library and Information Sciences graduate student and I'm working on a few projects related to video games. It's really exciting and challenging to present information and analysis of gaming in an academic context. I'm hoping to attend the conference at Princeton mentioned in this NY Times article.
.
Narrow selection of games (Score:5, Insightful)
Researchers shouldn't use cheat codes, she said.
Yeah, lets see you get all 150/250/whatever they're up to now Pokemon without cheating while maintaining your job as a professor. I spent over 50 hours in the original Pokemon and didn't even get 100 of them. Good luck trying to get double that number while writing an analyze of it up. Admittedly not exactly a fair statement considering the game, but how about RPGs? On average they now tend to average about 30-70 hours. Each.
Others say that games need a Shakespeare, someone who can catapult the digital medium forward.
You mean someone like John Carmack who is already considered to be the founder of the FPS genre, one of the best programmers in the industry, and the creator of some of the most recognizable video game serieses in history (Doom and Quake)? What about the people at Valve? They got Half-Life right, something great must be there. What about Hideo Kojima? He makes storylines so dense even hardcore gamers get pissed at him.
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:5, Funny)
Prince Hamlet enters, torn by guilt, grief, jealousy, and vengeance, and soliloquizes with stirring poetry about his problems. Then he proceeds to launch heavy artillery at Queen Gertrude and Claudius. "O that this too too solid flesh would melt 'Neath the heat of a Plasma rifle blast." Wow, even better than the original!
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:4, Funny)
Prince Hamlet enters, torn by guilt, grief, jealousy, and vengeance, and soliloquizes with stirring poetry about his problems. Then he proceeds to launch heavy artillery at Queen Gertrude and Claudius.
But just imagine the duel with Laertes!
Trumpets the while
HAMLET. Come on sir.
LAERTES. Come my lord.
They play
HAM. One.
LAE. No.
HAM. Judgement.
OSRIC. A hit, a very palpable hit.
LAE. Nay, thou'rt lame; thou campest; I'll not play with thee.
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:1)
And I think there's direct comparisons between Romeo & Juliet and Lula The Sexy Empire..
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:2)
I got as many as possible without trading (129? Something like that). I also recorded about 20 sheets of data trying to reverse engingeer the level up process (only to find that it had been done on the net a year or so ear
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:1)
Researcher's findings:
After sampling 25 games (using a GameShark for infinite ammo and health and all weapons), it has become apparent that games offer absolutely no challenge, mental or otherwise, whatsoever. The game merely boils down to holding an 'attack' button and running through the levels.
In-game puzzles are rediculously easy to solve. In all cases, their solution coul
Pokemon... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I am a pokemon fanatic. How did you guess? I would have filled up my Ruby's Pokedex months ago, except for the fact that I have to do actual work up here in the University of Wisc @ Madison...
In case you're wondering, I do have hundreds, if not thousands, of hours logged on my Pokemon games.. Have Yellow (first one), Blue, Red, Silver, Gold (2), Crystal, Sapphire, Ruby, Pokemon Stadiums 1 & 2, and the special release of Pokemon Yellow Gameboy. It does take dedication, and hard work, but you can catch em all.
Re:Narrow selection of games (Score:1)
intellectual....? (Score:1, Troll)
Mr. Bellin and Dr. Palmer's premise is shared by others who study computer games: games are credible objects of intellectual inquiry
I supposed the learned doctors have never played counterstrike with a ratpack of 13 year olds. 'Intellectual' is NOT the operative word to describe the experience.
We've come a long way (Score:5, Interesting)
I set out looking for an advisor. I picked one of CMU's best known professors. I called his secretary, made an appointment, and described my idea. His response? "Do you know who I am? There is *no way in hell* that I am attaching my name to a video game."
Bah, his loss. I set out to find another professor to serve as advisor. I wandered around the halls until I found a professor that I had for a class once. This guy wasn't a big shot. He didn't have a secretary, and didn't have such a big office, but that was ok. I jazzed up my presentation a bit, threw in a few buzzwords of the day: "It's an 'object oriented' system for 'rapid application development' of a class of interactive entertainment, blah blah blah.
He was intrigued! "Hmm, object oriented, rapid applica... Er, wait a minute - this is a video game? No, I'm not putting my name on that."
Ok, so no cigar just yet, but I was picking up on a trend. I wandered around some more. I went deep into the lower levels of Wean Hall. I walked down a corridor carved out of solid rock - the offices here were the size of closets, and they didn't even have windows. I found someone who appeared to have just been hired, and gave my pitch, filled with as many ridiculous buzzwords as I could think up. He mulled it over "object oriented, um, rapid stuff, um, 'Oh, you mean a video game! Yeah, cool, I'll be your advisor for that!'"
So I found my advisor. He didn't get fired for putting his name of a Senior Project video game, and it came out pretty good in the end, and nobody else got embarrassed.
BUT
Looks like I was ahead of all of them! Carnegie Mellon now touts it's Entertainment Technology Center [cmu.edu], and proudly proclaims how they're considered the Harvard of Game Development Programs [cmu.edu], and they've even had me back to speak on a few occasions about my latest game [ataleinthedesert.com]. They've come a long way
thanks for the spoiler (Score:2)
Thanks for the partial spoiler doctor-dude!
I was seriously going to play Half-Life this weekend to destress.
Be nervous indeed, I
Re:thanks for the spoiler (Score:1)
Distances and Realities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Distances and Realities (Score:2)
1. Most of the current crop of academics working on videogames are gamers. This wasn't true, maybe, 6 years ago, but it's pretty true now.
2. "Flow." It's known. It's talked about. It's theorized about. Academics are aware of it.
3. There's always one difference between game-flow and real-life-activity flow: in the former, the consequences are negotiable. In the latter, not so much. Which is why people can game recklessly or casually: there's freedom to engage in
Re:Distances and Realities (Score:2)
Hate to beg, but can I get a few references of the work you are reffering to so that I can bootstrap my way back to something more current? As for the pilot data, pilots don't seem to like be insturmented in actual combat; so the research available is simulator based.