There were issues with this book, but I appreciate how the Critical Theory aspects of it serve as a sort of "red pill" to break us out of our complacent acceptance of the world--specifically in video games. Many reviews complain about the erudite verbiage, but all Critical Theory makes use of newly-invented words in order to circumvent our preconceptions about the social constructs that rule our lives. I appreciated the concept of the "allegorithm" of how the programming of games is used to define a world, the questioning of "play" in games when really many games are actually work, criticizing the concept of "flow" and calling it "non-contemplation," and the idea that the best gamers are merely the ones who most internalize the algorithms. This book is not for everyone. It is dense and obtuse, but also highly effective and will be very enjoyable for the right readers.
06 JUL 2024 by ideonexus
Another way of looking at "flow" is to call it "non-conte...
As the gamer becomes attuned to the game, they become one event, one action; an oscillating between the line dividing self from other, and the line connecting them as one substance. If the line dividing provides a moment of autonomous self; the line connecting provides a moment of selfless purpose. In games, action has its limits. It is an endless bit-flip between targeter, targeting and target. And yet at least it effects a transformation of gamer and game. Games are a repository for a certa...Folksonomies: gamespace
Folksonomies: gamespace
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notes28 FEB 2021 by ideonexus
Play Has Become More Personal and More Intense Through Te...
A similar trend is the rise of personal vacations and separate activities on family vacations. Children’s street games (such as marbles, Hopscotch, and hide-and-go-seek) have been replaced with video games. Face-to-face encounters have been transformed by e-mails, electronic chat groups, and web sur'ng. Revolutionary as all this may be, it represents the clear culmination of a century of developments in media technology.
Twentieth-century technology privatized and homogenized play, but it ...Folksonomies: play recreation
Folksonomies: play recreation
1 notes
notes27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Break the Rules of a Game to Improve it
In The Well-Played Game, Bernard DeKoven advocates a fundamental adjustment in players' attitudes towards the rules of a game:
You're not changing the game for the sake of changing it. You're changing it for the sake of finding a game that works.
Once this freedom is established, once we have established why we want to change a game and how we go about it, a remarkable thing happens to us: We become the authorities.
No matter what game we create, no matter how well we are able to play it,...Folksonomies: gameplay
Folksonomies: gameplay
1 notes
notesLike adding a push-your-luck component to Candyland or how SFR took Dragon Dice and refactored the rules to make it work.
27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
The Boundaries of a Game Versus Boundaries of Other Kinds...
What does it mean to say that games take place within set boundaries established by the act of play? Is this really true? Is there really such a distinct boundary? In fact there is. Compare, for example, the informal play of a toy with the more formal play of a game. A child approaching a doll, for example, can slowly and gradually enter into a play relationship with the doll. The child might look at the doll from across the room and shoot it a playful glance. Later, the child might pick it u...Folksonomies: gameplay
Folksonomies: gameplay
1 notes
notes16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Facebook is a Game
Game designer Robin Hunicke has noted that Facebook is actually a complex, massively multiplayer online game, with challenges, rewards, and levels just like any other. Think about it for a second and you'll realize that the rules are simple: be the most fun, intelligent, witty, caring version of yourself. The benefits are obvious, Hunicke observed: Facebook "makes people feel like they matter, like they have friends and family across all kinds of distances," she said. "How many games make you...Folksonomies: social media gamification
Folksonomies: social media gamification
1 10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Agency in Game Creation VS Game Play
Game design has been referred to as an art, and it is for the designers, calling upon all their powers of imaginative and creative production. For the child user, however, game play is not an art, but more of a sport. What we're talking about here is the difference between the free-form activity of pretend play and soccer on the playground or in organized leagues. In the first, child-determined goals and constraints respond or in organized leagues. In the first, child-determined goals and con... 1 notes
notes14 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Patenting Video Games as an Analytic Exercise
My initial reaction to discovering the Tapper patent was that it seemed like a hilarious parody. There are many silly patents, but this patent isn't silly in only the usual way, that it proposes an invention where I'm skeptical patent protection is really in order. It reads parodically because it seems to be describing the wrong thing entirely: It takes the formal structure of a patent, which is most at home when describing machines and other devices, and uses it to write a strange kind of g... 1 notes
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