Tag: PhD

As we may watch

Ex-co-PhD student Martin Sønderlev Christensen (of nowuseit fame) defends his thesis masterpiece at ITU tomorrow (14:00, Auditorium 4 or 2).

The thesis is here (draft version).

Update:



By stilleben [‘stelle:bƏn] http://www.flickr.com/people/stilleben/

The abstract reads:

Abstract
This dissertation offers a cultural theoretical interpretation of the emergence of personal affective mobile media [PAMM]. By interpreting the apparent cultural changes and representation of mobile devices, the dissertation provides a description that emphasizes a conceptual shift from understanding technology as efficiency to using it affectively.

Continue reading As we may watch

Sing, O goddess

All good things – and apparently also the barely bearable ones – must come to an end.

As implied, my dissertation was sent on its merry way through the labyrinthine ways of the Danish PhD system, beyond human interference. That is well and good.

In recent weeks I’ve been in recovery spending much-appreciated (by me, at least) quality time with the family. Venturing a premature diagnosis, I’d say I’ve come through with only curable wounds (but the dreams! the dreams!!!).

The old “What now?” question rears its head. From now on I’ll focus on embedded gender values in late modernity leisure practices in a strictly hermeneutic pperspective. No seriously, here’s what: From 1 Sep I’ll return to the ITU to co-teach the “Digital Media” course and to head (in practice from October-November or so) the Digital Design and Communication study line. Formally, I’ll be a member of the Innovative Communication research group but I will of course stay closely in touch with the illustrious Game Center.

I guess all these changes makes this a good time to take stock. This blog, I believe, has suffered from a lack of focus. Rest assured this will only get worse. I will be finger-thinking about new topics and generally allow myself the luxury of constraintlessness. On the other hand, I will be more systematic with entry categorization so it will be possible to RSS-read more specifically.

And so, I need only say welcome back to TDSoT – it’s not new, but it’s not very old either.

(I’ll be uploading the dissertation here as soon as I can create a web-friendly PDF).

The beast is born


No Russian men’s choirs appeared and the sound of trumpets seemed distant indeed, but my dissertation epos made its bumpy way from the smoking remnants of my brain, into a 10mb PDF, out of a (now altogether disoriented) Canon printer and to the kind people of “Facilities Management” who promised to bind it. In other words, I plan to arrive casually tomorrow morning, collect the bound monstrosities, cart them to the right fourth floor office and deliver the thing to meet its destiny.

In case the comitee find the thing defensible, the defense is scheduled for 7 December.

(Photo by Soundsgood)

Dissertation abstract beta

The Necronomicon

Here’s my current thinking on what it is I’m doing…

Working title
Plans and Purposes: How Videogame Goals Shape Player Behaviour

Abstract
Games shape player behaviour by presenting goals which players attempt to fulfil. This is the most common “folk” theory of the relationship between game design and player behaviour. It is also one central to most game design literature and to much work within the game studies field.
And yet, it is also clear that it is at best an approximation. Players will often behave in ways contrary to their objective interests as defined by the game goals. This may happen to satisfy social norms of fairness, to keep other players interested in the game, to avoid losing face by showing one’s disrespect for the stated goals and for many other reasons.

This dissertation is an examination of the “Rational Player Model”: The idea that players try to win. The model is applied and discussed in two capacities:

A) As a model for aesthetic analysis which can used to understand and categorize formal aspects of games related to goals. Here, video games are studied through the lens of (economic) game theory in order to determine, for instance, the types of conflict dynamics the games will elicit given Rational Player assumptions.

B) As a predictive model of actual player behaviour. Here, the model is used to derive concrete predictions about video game player behaviour which are then tested in an empirical study of multiplayer console gaming. The study shows that the model accurately explains behaviour inside the gamespace but does not explain (indeed, is often contradicted by) the verbal behaviour of the players.

Structurally, the dissertation consists of three main chapters. First, four different models of the relationship between game design and player behaviour are identified in the games literature and discussed. It is shown how the “Rational Player Model” is the predominant model within game design although one which often operates at so deep a level as to be unstated. Second, the model is discussed in more theoretical detail and employed in the analysis of games by drawing upon economic game theory. Besides categorizing games and suggesting methods of analysis based on existing concepts, the chapter also introduces a way to understand the extent to which games are strategic. Third, results of previous studies of player behaviour are discussed as an introduction to the empirical study of player behaviour in a multiplayer console game context.

The dissertation contributes by elucidating often implicit player models inherent in much games scholarship, by showing the exact analytical and predictive implications of applying the highly common “Rational Agent Model”, and by testing the explanatory strength of that model as regards actual player behaviour. Through the latter, the dissertation also contributes to a limited pool of knowledge on video game player behaviour more generally.

Methodological commandments

Finishing up my dissertation I am naturally curious about methodological requirements in game studies. A general meme seems to be that the field is multi-disciplinary and no clear guidelines can be given and yet, I’ve stumbled upon a few. The following, arguably, are claims about how game studies should be conducted. Make of it what you will…

“Ultimately, the player’s perspective (Jenkins 1999) and understanding of play
must be included in any meaningful discussion of FPS games and, indeed, of
all video games.”

Wright, T., Boria, E., & Breidenbach, P. (2002). Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games. Game Studies, 2(2).

–

“Gamers’ own thinking about styles of play and the identities they underwrite are a conflation of design characteristics and emergent culture of the context of the MMOG they inhabit, situated within the myriad of contexts they
themselves encounter with others, with some configurations of constructs evoked for sense-making in some social/material contexts, other configurations evoked in order to explain others. They are therefore complicated and necessarily messy. Our analyses of them ought to be a testament to this fact.”

and

“Indeed, indepth investigation into the ‘worlds of meaning’ created, maintained, and displayed by so-called ‘end users’ may very well be the only solid foundation on which to theorize a culture so definitively constructivist, heteroglossic, and hermeneutic
(Steinkuehler, Black & Clinton, 2005) as that of games.”

Steinkuehler, C. (2005). Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

–

“In general, any methodological approach which does not take participants as the primary actors produces flawed results.”

Jakobsson, M., & Taylor, T. L. (2003, 19-23 May). The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Paper presented at DAC2003, Melbourne, Australia.

–

“…the essence of a game is rooted in its interactive nature, and there is no game without a player. The act of playing game is where the rules embedded into game’s structure start operating, and its program code starts having an effect on cultural and social, as well as artistic and commercial realities. If we want to understand what a game is, we need to understand what happens in the act of playing, and we need to understand the player and the experience
of gameplay.”

Ermi, L., & Mäyrä, F. (2005, 16-20 June). Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion. Paper presented at DIGRA 2005: Changing Views: Worlds in Play, Vancouver, Canada.

Like Hell I lost, I was trying to feed the mushroom creatures!

Have you noticed that sometimes during video game play, players try to redefine the goals?
This can happen verbally or it can happen through actions as when a player starts shooting his team-mates for the heck of it.

Often, I think, it is related to certain future defeat. The losing player tries to redefine the goals to signal that he wasn’t really playing that game after all. When he loses, he will not really have lost.

Do you agree? Do you recognize the phenonenon?

Anyway, I wrote a brief section for my dissertation on the topic. Continue reading Like Hell I lost, I was trying to feed the mushroom creatures!

Fascinating stuff

The latest issue of SIMULATION & GAMING has an interesting article by Zagal, Rick, and Hsi: Collaborative games: Lessons learned from board games.
It seeks to explore collaborative games, focusing on board games in order to extract principles which can be used by video game designers.

The article makes interesting points, and a few debatable ones (here I’ll just quibble about theory, without adressing the content).
The article starts of by delivering the “good news” that the number of single-player games will probably soon decrease. A rather odd normative statement. Continue reading Fascinating stuff

Sydney-bound (apartment for rent)

All signs indicate that I’ll be spending February and March of 2006 as a visiting research fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. I’ll be associated with a group of game research-oriented people there. Among other things I’m excited to learn more about a project they’re doing on multiplayer game-play analysis (central to Anders Tychsen ‘s PhD).

Also: That leaves a nice 3 room Copenhagen apartment for rent in February and March 2006. So if you – or someone you know – need Copenhagen housing in that period, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

 

Equilibrial

An equilibrium is a point towards which a system tends to move or a point which, once reached, tends to be stable.
The concept originates in physics. Imagine a room with a certain air temperature. You add a certain volume of warmer air and after a while the air in the room settles on a new higher temperature (all other things being, as always, equal).
In economics Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” provides an equlibrium. In a market economy, supply and demand make prices settle on a certain equilibrium point.

In terms of video games, two types of equilibria are important.

Equity equilibrium: A game may be constructed in a way which produces an a drift towards equality of score. Pool is a good example. The player with the most balls left has the best chances of actually landing a ball in a pocket. Thus, Pool is a game with an equity bias. All other things being equal, the score will tend to even out. Other games are equity neutral. In table tennis, for instance, winning a point does not increase or decrease one’s chances of winning the next ball. The game simply doesn’t care, if you will. Still other games have an inequity bias. Here, winning a round (or whatever) increases one’s chances of winning more. Chess is an example. Having many pieces left means having more power over the board. Once you’re ahead, you’re likely to stay ahead. This can all be understood in terms of feedback in the cybernetic sense of that word (see for instance Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play on cybernetics).

Strategic equilibrium: A game may be constructed in a way which makes certain strategies highly succesful, sometimes given certain strategies played by the other player(s). In game theory terms a (Nash) equilibrium is a point where no player will unilaterally change his strategy – a point where both (or all) players are playing the best strategy given what the other player is playing. Game designers tend to dislike “best strategies” in this sense, as it implies that any choice facing the player is an uninteresting one (e.g. see Morris and Rollings’ discussion of strategic dominance). There are a number of challenges related to applying the idea to video games – chief among these are that it tends to miss the issue of skill (as it over-emphasises choice) and that it tends to miss the fact that playing video games is generally a very inductive process in which finding a “very good” strategy is a pleasant task in itself. Thus while clearly applicable and interesting, the concept is less than simple (or more than simple, if you prefer difficult things) as I will discuss in what-will-one-day be chapter 3 of my Dissertation. So now you know.