Acid for Blood

GDC 2008: Two Sessions Highlighted

There were a couple of sessions that I really enjoyed at the Game Developers Conference this year.

The first was "Game Studies Download 3.0". The Game Studies Download first appeared at GDC 2006, which was the first GDC I attended. I'm quite interested in the various fields of game studies, having dabbled in it (read: dissertation research) during my Master's degree. Bogost, Consalvo, and McGonigal delivered a fast-paced, information-rich and very interesting presentation. One of the interesting bits of research they highlighted were findings that showed that breaking immersion can actually make games more engaging. An example of this that I thought of is in Metal Gear Solid, when you're fighting Psycho Mantis and he tells you he can read your past. The game reads your memory card and if you have certain Konami games, Psycho Mantis comments on it. I personally found this bit of the game really entertaining, and though it does break the fourth wall, it was memorable and cool. If you're interested in the rest of the research top ten, check the link above.

The other session I especially enjoyed was "The BioWare Live Team: Building Community Through Technology". French gave an overview of the development of the Live Team and what technical decisions they made to support their fan community. I gleaned a lot of great insights from it, particularly since I don't work at a company that makes games. It was interesting to hear the rational behind decisions as well as what went right and wrong in the Live Team's work with Neverwinter Nights.

The rest of GDC was pretty good, though I'm not as wide-eyed and excitable as I was at GDC 2006. Could it be that I've become a jaded games industry professional? I definitely was not as keen on collecting swag as I was two years ago. In fact, I don't even know why I bothered to get the few free pens and assorted nonsense that I did come away with. Why the fuck do I need a yellow rubber duckie stamped with a company logo? I don't know, but it's a rubber duckie and I didn't have one until now!

Game School Newbie

Iris Gaming Network co-founder, Cerise Magazine co-creator, and creator of the Shrub.com blog, Andrea Rubenstein, embarks on an exciting new adventure: game design school. Not only is she studying game design, but she's also studying game design in Japan, at a well-regarded Japanese school (HAL), in the Japanese language.

Usually when one starts telling a story, one begins at the beginning. But I honestly don’t know where my beginning is. Does it begin with the first video game I played? With the long nights I spent with my mom, and later my friend Katie, playing video games until obnoxiously late at night? What about when I realized that RPGs came from Japan, and therefore decided that I would one day learn Japanese. Perhaps I should start with when I said to myself, "Of all the things I could do with my life, I want to make and design video games."

She has created a new blog on the Iris Gaming Network, which will detail her experiences of game design school.

Congratulations, Andrea! I wish you all the best!

Game School Dropout

In an article on GameCareerGuide.com, Lisa Laughy elaborates on the state of game design education, why she decided to drop out, and why current structures may aid in the stagnation of industry innovation:

My complaints aren't so much with the school I attended as they are with the way the industry has influenced the specifics of that program. It's not that I don't have issues with the program; it's just that I feel for the most part that the program is the way it is in direct response to what the industry is telling them they want. The school does an excellent job of turning out highly skilled workers that get placed with some of the most sought after game development studios, so in that way it is a smashing success. What I am left wondering is this: Is it really the best thing for the school to be solely focused on giving game development studios exactly what they want, at the cost of providing an educational environment that might encourage real innovation for the industry over the present status quo?

Readers of the Guilded Lilies blog, where Laughy writes under the handle 'Guilded Lily', may be familiar with her earlier article on the topic, posted in August.

[Read]

Ganking is “Impoverished” Play

Thomas Malaby analyses ganking over on Terra Nova:

What I would like to suggest is that this kind of PvP is meaningless. Or, perhaps more precisely, that the meaning it has is so narrow, rationalized, and improverished that it is outside of, or rejects, the game in which it is situated. Games, as ends in and of themselves, are things that can generate new meanings and experiences. For the ganker, however, ganking is a means to other ends ("Personal best crit!"), not a potentially generative new experience. (And, by the way, please keep in mind that I am not talking about all PvP -- there are many other kinds, both institutionally designed by the developer and emergent, which would not fit with the argument I'm making here.) ... Ganking lower level players is, then, a somewhat pathetic attempt to feel, well, something. But that something is not the meaning that participating in a challenging game would create -- it is removed from that. If there is no contingency, it follows that there is no meaning -- all you have left is an impoverished environment where pointless negative reciprocity (I was ganked at L24, so I'll gank at L60) reigns.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about it.

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[Thank you, Id, for pointing this out.]

Henry Jenkins Has a Blog

This is all kinds of awesome.

Note to self: Make time this weekend to catch up on his blog posts.

EDIT -- 25 June 2006, 21:21: Yaaargh. No time to read. Will have to pore over Jenkins-blog whilst at work.

[Via Raph's Website]

Culture Clash: Academics Anonymous

This month, Matt Sakey writes about the role of the games academic and why scholars are important to the industry:

The fact of the matter is that contemplative navel-gazing has led to some pretty amazing advancements in a wide selection of disciplines, which is exactly why pure scholarship exists. Simple experimentation, research and study often gives rise to discovery. If the only innovations in the world were the ones that people consciously sat down intending to produce, the world would be short quite a few innovations. Understanding and reflection breeds progress and enhancement.

[Read]

Eeewww

This will make germphobes and hypochondriac of us all: Toilet seat is cleaner than the average keyboard.

Despite this fact, I think I am the only one in the office who has yet to become ill this season. I haven't had a cold (knock on wood) in two years, at least. Though, having said that, I may seriously consider buying some of those disinfectant wipes for my work keyboard and phone...

[Via gHacks]

Games Are Good For You — Duh

Seeing this post on Kotaku pointing to this article: Game skills pay off in real life (Mercury News) made me wonder whether I, as a gamer, am like the people cited in the article.

Got Game: How the Gamer Generating is Reshaping Business Forever is one of the books cited in the article. One of the co-authors of the book conducted a survey of business professionals which showed a correlation between managerial behaviour and gaming. "Gamers are better risk-takers, show particular confidence in their abilities, place a high value on relationships and employee input and think in terms of 'winning' when pursuing objectives."

I'm not sure about being a better risk-taker. I'm one of those people that like to do everything well, and everything perfectly. In table-top, I wouldn't call myself a power gamer, but I certainly don't like to be weak or to 'lose'. I would say that I play strategically (and within the constraints of my character's personality), and if that means calculated risk, then so be it.

If I'm playing a console RPG, I'm level-grinding like no tomorrow so that I don't die and I have to get my party members revived. So yeah, I power-game in console-style RPGs, I admit it.

However, if I'm playing a third-person adventure game, I will take a lot of risks to get past a part I'm stuck on -- even if it means dying. You can't complete the game unless you comeplete all the challenges, right? :-D Playing video games trains you to look for every possible solution to a problem, and sometimes it means getting eaten by a monster and having to try again.

As a role-player, it's fairly obvious to me that gaming can be used as a way to develop skills that are applicable to real-life situations. Even more so with live-action role-playing (LARP). One doesn't often hear the argument for playing RPGs, but LARP helped me to become less shy in social situations. RPGs force me to think quickly and imaginatively when faced with tricky situations.

During the course of many undergraduate degrees in the social sciences, one is often subjected to scenario exercises which require the student to step into a role (manager of a plant facing closure, diplomatic envoy dealing with a political crisis, economist brought on to advise on monetary policy). Even in government and the military, they do role-playing and wargaming exercises and training scenarios. The only difference between those role-playing games, and the role-playing games that I play are the setting and the scope. Their settings feature the real world, the settings I play in feature an imaginary world. But the skills are transferable.

It's pretty silly to me that gaming gets the flak it does, because the benefits of gaming, as the article cites, can be enormous -- buidling a child's vocabulary and linguistic skills by playing the dialogue-intensive Pokemon; financial and resource management in The Sims and any number of real-time strategy games, from Starcraft to Rise of Nations; keeping fit by playing Dance Dance Revolution; improving hand-eye coordination; using your mind to solve logic and verbal puzzles. The list goes on.

Although most gamers don't think deeply about what they are getting from a game, apart from entertainment, I think most of them would probably agree with the conclusions of these research studies.