Tag: Computerspil

In the eye of the beholder

David Thomas of Buzzcut comments on the recent debate sparked by the list of 10 Worst Violent Video Games published by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

He is not exactly impressed:

The net effect is to mask real efforts to improve the videogame rating and retail system, and to push to the side a fair dialog about the social impacts of games. The word I’m looking for, the context again, is propaganda. The ICCR has stooped to punditry to press their point of view. And as a result, the good in their mission is tainted with the stink of polemic politics.

The medium is the message

[DANISH] – Here‘s yours truly speaking briefly about the study of multiplayer games on DR’s P1 Morgen (fast-forward to around 17:10). All in honour of Other Players.
The interview was cut a little short, so the public was cheated of some planned thoughtful-yet-humorous responses such as my (probably eagerly anticipated) Tolstoy-Chess analogy.

The power of expectations

At Edge Daniel C. Dennett describes his Law of Needy Readers:

On any important topic, we tend to have a dim idea of what we hope to be true, and when an author writes the words we want to read, we tend to fall for it, no matter how shoddy the arguments. Needy readers have an asymptote at illiteracy; if a text doesn’t say the one thing they need to read, it might as well be in a foreign language. To be open-minded, you have to recognize, and counteract, your own doxastic hungers.

In other words, he agrees with Forster.
Interestingly, I really liked Dennett’s book.

A circle within a circle

Quite a bit of confusion stems, I’m beginning to think, from the fact that when debating games it is easy to be unclear about one’s level of analysis. Three levels tend to be intermingled:

A) The Core Game
This is the more or less hypothetical ideal game defined by what Salen & Zimmerman call the operational rules. This is the level on which chess, Pong, Gun-Fight etc. are zero-sum games.

B) The Game System
This is the game in its broadest sense including the game’s matching system, the particularities of its communication features (if any), whether it is generally played against physically distant opponents etc.

C) The Concrete Game
This is any concrete instance of the game played by actual players who may have all sorts of utility functions. No matter what type of conflict is specified by the core game, players of a concrete game may feel that they “win” or “lose” by entirely different standards.

There is no magic circle, only different levels of analysis. But my point is that one must specify one’s perspective. Claiming, for instance, that playing zero-sum games is bound to make players unable to cooperate (a hypothesis often aired) entails a disregard – or failure to acknowledge – of the fact that actually playing the game may be anything but a zero-sum experience.