11 slides to change the world

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11 slides to change the world

• Miguel Sicart
• Computer Game Theory
• Spring 2005

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Computer games are ...

• rules (formal systems) played (experienced by
  users) in virtual environments (worlds created
  with computer technology)

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Games might be a medium,

• but we know they operate as cross medial, cross
  cultural devices, linked to technological
  development

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Mapping game genres

• the genres we use to classify computer games are
  not precise - we need to think about how they are
  designed, played and modified to create new,
  specific genres

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Game analysis has to fit the medium and the
target

• games can be seen from many different
  perspectives all the players involved in the
  business want different answers. Target your
  analysis

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Narratology vs. Ludology the war of the Roses

• games tell stories and are formal systems of
  rules.
• This debate was fictional, but posed the right
  questions about what games are, and can be.

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Then Espen said very clever things about fiction
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Games are about space

• the magic circle
• is not real
• but half real
• and the space conditions the game mechanics

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Games are arts

• or better, they can be arts the art of game
  design is the art of simulation, the art of
  balanced rules, the art of compelling game spaces.

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Politics, Ethics, Games

• games are powerful rhetoric objects because they
  are experiences designed with embedded values.
• Pity that they do not believe in the matureness
  of the players or of games.

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all this summarizes in 2 slides
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Computer games are rubbish
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but we can change the odds
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mmmm, I actually used 14 slides ...
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Damn!(and this is the 15th - Doh!)