Playing the Field: An interdisciplinary game researchers’ summit
ITU; Dec. 6th, room: Aud. 3, 2nd floor.
14:00 Edward Castronova: “Why is this talk so boring?”
14:40 Bart Simon: “Digital Gaming and Local Practices of Social Imagination:
A Report from the Montreal GameCODE Project”
15:20 Coffee break, machine in 2D
15:40 Ian Bogost: “Platform Studies: computers and other neglected topics in
game research”
16:20 short break
16:30 Panel discussion: Where are “we” going? And how?
Turns out that penalty kick behaviour conforms beautifully with game theoretical predictions.
Economist Ignacio Palacios-Huerta of Brown University has studied thousands of penalty kicks. Penalty kicks are theoretically wonderful since they constitute 2-player zero-sum games where players have very few available strategies and where the outcome is decided immediately after the initial action.
Palacios-Huerta found that no strategy is inherently better. And that soccer players (as opposed to the typical lab subjects of behavioural game theory) manage to play truly randomly (the way they ought to if they are following basic game theory assumptions):
…professional players are found to be capable of behaving perfectly randomly. Their sequences neither exhibit negative or positive autocorrelation, and choices do not depend on one’s own previous play, on the opponent’s previous plays or on past outcomes.
According to the author, these results are close to unique, i.e. the observed behaviour (supporting the model) has not been seen in other experimental contexts.
The article is a fascinating example of how games (in our sense) and game theory (in the economist’s sense) may be reciprocally fruitful. Which was the larger point of Edward Castronova’s recent article Castronova, E. (2006). The Research Value of Large Games: Natural Experiments in Norrath and Camelot. Games and Culture, 1(2), 163-186.
An article (intro article) in today’s Politiken describes the development of real-world markets for virtual world items (and such) including statements from yours truly, Espen, Miguel, Edward Castronova and Julian Dibbell (website down).
Among the more noteworthy features, well-known orc warlock and my former WoW avatar Garrg lights up the very front page of today’s newspaper (see picture above).
GDC 2005 has played itself out. It did so with great pomp, some fascinating talks, some entertaining talks, quite a bit of mingling, immodest amounts of high-quality coffee and a considerable number of visits to Lori’s.
Most distinctly the air was loaded with some trepidation over the coming console generation and particularly buzzing with energy during Will Wright’s “Spore” keynote (advocating a solution to next-gen woes in the form of player-generated content). See Jesper’s blog for more on this.
Oh, and here is Jesse Schell, Edward Castronova, and Jim Paul Gee discussing “What Researchers Can and Can’t Tell You About Your Games“. Castronova pitches his game design idea that will “enable social scientists to finally make studies with the precision of physicists” – yep, that’s more or less what he said.