Graveyard by Tale of Tales

Graveyard (Tale of Tales) is a small game (or one could say it is game-like thingie) in which player controls an old lady who visits a graveyard. All there is to accomplish is to walk to church and sit a bench next to, yet the game manages to keep you interested. If you buy a full version, there is a change that the lady dies. Designers of the game  are writing a postmortem that is still unfinished, but, even in half-finished state, is an interesting read.

The top selling games

Next Generation lists The top 100 selling games of the last 12 months. They promise to publish a detailed look of the selling data tomorrow (also the older list with some descriptive statistics is available).

I am not sure if the sales list is usable for anything, but I decided to make a note of this if I would like to site or take a deeper look on the best selling titles later on.

Update (12.4.): Best selling games — the analysis is available.

Exitus Acta Probat — The End Justifies Means

This is totally off-topic rant on Finnish censorship, written sometimes ago, but I haven’t had time to finish it up.

Our government, especially certain ministers, such as Suvi Linden, and Anne Holmlund (and ministers from previous government who were in charge of preparing the law) seem to thing that the end justifies means in fighting against crimes, in this case child pornography. Moreover, many, including Linden, Holmlund, and Pelastakaa lapset ry are taking stance, which can be described as if we do no not see it, it does not happen.

Continue reading “Exitus Acta Probat — The End Justifies Means”

“Games without Frontiers” by Järvinen

Aki Järvinen’s PhD thesis is now published (he will defend it at March). It is worth to read. I have been using draft version of it in teaching Introduction to Game Analysis course.

Järvinen, A. (2008). Games without Frontiers: Theories and Methods for Game Studies and Design. Tampere: TUP, http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.phtml?11046.

“Narrative, Games, and Theory” by Simons

Narrative, Games, and Theory by Simons

The article Narrative, Games, and Theory by Simons reviews ludology–narrative debate and claims that Eskelinen’s, Aarseth’s, and Frasca’s anti-narrativist arguments are fallacious. In addition Simons looks game theory and makes comparisons between game theory and game studies approaches. The most interesting part for me is a section titled Players and characters, which takes Aareth’s claim that characters in games are purely a vehicle for the players’ action. Simons argues against that. He base his counterargument to Bordwell and Genette and notes:

the psychological traits of a character are part of the motivation and motivation is from this perspective a justification a posteriori that explains and naturalizes the character’s action.

This is one reason why ludological approach is not disjuctive with narratological.

Note for myself: read the article again and think if there is a use of the arguments in my thesis.

Simons, J. (2008) Narrative, Games, and Theory. Game Studies 7(1).

Capturing Gameplay

I needed to capture gameplay to get some illustrations for papers and my thesis. Also, videos are good source to double-check details later. I did have software for this in my use while I worked at Tampere. Now I needed to figure out solution for OSX. The choice was ELGATO EYETV HYBRID which has functionality needed. Software works fine for capturing; unfortunately my Powerbook G4 is not updating screen without lack when recording. The solution for this is to split the signal for television and laptop, and use television to play.

(P.S., publishing screen captures and making recordings for scientific use are legal, with few limitations, in Finland, see tekijänoikeuslaki, 2.14.)

Playing More Pleasurable to Males than Females?

Science Daily reports on a study conducted at he Stanford University School of Medicine, in which researcher found out that playing activated the brain’s pleasure center of males more than female.

[T]he researchers found that the participants showed activation in the brain’s mesocorticolimbic center, the region typically associated with reward and addiction. Male brains, however, showed much greater activation, and the amount of activation was correlated with how much territory they gained. (This wasn’t the case with women.) (Science Daily, Feb, 4, 2008.)

The researchers say that this might help to explain why males are more easily addicted to games. However, would this result also implicate that males are, in general, more competitive1 than females, because of the more activation in success in a game?

Notes

  1. Stock exchange is not easily distinguished from a game based on the formal features (this applies business also).
  2. Study by Allan Reiss et al., published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.