The Philosophy of Videogames

[icycalm]

Woke up today and decided to keep going through the abstracts I mentioned last night.

http://gamephilosophy.org/

It's really amusing to see how much time and effort all these people devote to the most trivial of issues, or even oftentimes to obvious non-issues, organizing elaborate conferences among great pomp and commotion, and travelling half-way across the world to get there. And to get there to do what? Deliver papers on stuff like this:

The Magic Circle(s) of Gameplay

Huizinga’s metaphor of games as taking place inside a “magic circle” has been questioned by many recently, for instance with a whole game studies seminar in Tampere, Finland being dedicated to this question. But while everyone seems interested in “breaking the magic circle”, we will argue here that the spatial metaphor used to represent a game’s space of possibility unduly focuses the researcher’s gaze on a single side of the coin, for a game is as much a finite object than an ongoing process. Therefore, the figure of the circle should make us think about an ongoing process more than an enclosed space. It is much more relevant to conceptualize the cognitive frame of gameplay as a cycle: the magic cycle.

To cast off the implications of redundancy or stagnation contained in the circle, we resort instead to the spiral, which accounts for the gamer’s progression through the game. As we will show, our model of gameplay features three interconnected spirals which represent the cycles the gamer will have to go through in order to answer gameplay, narrative and interpretative questions, in both heuristic and hermeneutic fashion. We also take into account the question of the reception, and integrate Jauss’ well-known notion of the horizon of expectations. Finally, this gamer- and gameplay-centric model draws attention to an important issue: the gamer’s understanding of the underlying game mechanics is more akin to a work of reverse engineering than of decryption. A gamer can never access the game’s algorithms, but must instead construct an image of the game system, whose degree of fidelity towards the actual rules of the game may greatly vary.

There is no Magic Circle: On the Difference Between Computer Games and Traditional Games

This paper discusses the special relationship of the game space in computer generated environments in contrast to non-computerized playing fields. Doing so, the concept of the so-called magic circle as artificially upheld border between the game space and the space outside the game will be challenged – particularly its adoption to single player computer games. Due to its digital and interactive core, computer games can provide the player with a virtual environment which is free to explore and configure. The rules in computer games moreover, are integrated into the program code and hence only allow exactly as much as is necessary to play the specific game. Without hacking the code, it is impossible to break the rules in a computer game. On the other hand, without the program code no actions at all are possible. So the software and hardware actually enable the player actions rather than constraining them.

Consequently, computer games are more than an extension of traditional games. They are a medium with unique characteristics and have to be interpreted accordingly. The computer generated environment establishes its own rules and simulated physics and makes the fictional space virtually explorable without having to rely on the awareness of the player upholding the rules of the game. There is no magic circle in computer games.

So is it a magic circle or a magic cycle then? Perhaps it is a magic dodecahedron? Or perhaps it's not even magic at all? Well, at least I am thankful all these smart, educated people are working hard day and night to solve this most fascinating of problems, along with many other equally important ones. I just hope to live to see the day when this happens.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Just when my hope for humanity is at an all-time high, what do I decide to read? This, of all things. It reminds me of that experiment where the guy wrote complete gibberish, but because he used scientific-sounding words, people took it seriously.

I particularly like their use of the word "magic". It's magic!

[icycalm]

Yeah, Alan Sokal. That was fun. The problem was that Sokal and his friends can't distinguish between real gibberish (Deleuze, Lacan, et al.), and very convoluted but at the same time extremely meaningful writing (Baudrillard). So they just lump all the so-called "postmodern" philosophers into a single pile.


More from the conference!

The Concept of War in the World of Warcraft


MMORPGs as “World of Warcraft” can be understood as interactive representations of war. Within the frame provided by the program the players experience martial conflicts and thus a “virtual war” (e. g. MacCallum-Stewart 2007). The game world however requires a technical and as far as possible invisible infrastructure which has itself to be protected against attacks: Among this infrastructure are counted e. g. the servers on which the data of the player characters and the game’s world are saved, as well as the user accounts, which have to be protected, among other things, against “identity theft” (e. g. Bardzell et al. 2007). Besides the war on the virtual surface of the program we will therefore describe the invisible war about the infrastructure, whose outbreak is always feared by the developers and operators of online-worlds and at least requires adequate precautions.

Furthermore we would like to pick out „virtual game worlds“ as a central theme as places of complete observation. Since action in these worlds is always associated with the production of data, complete observation is at least possible and given in reality by the so-called „game master“. Observation of different communication channels (inclusive user forums) as well serves for channeling the sojourn in the virtual battlefield properly, without the player feeling apparently limited in his freedom. Finally we would like to compare the fictional theater of war of “World of Warcraft” with the vision of “Network-Centric Warfare”, since already many a time it was affirmed that the analysis of MMORPGs could be useful for the real trade of war (cf. e. g. Sarasin 2004, p. 24). However, we will point out what an unrealistic theater of war “World of Warcraft” is.

This dude is hilarious. What the fuck does identity theft and the security of the game's servers have to do with the actual game? How confused do you have to be to write a "paper" that analyzes this stuff at the same time? As for the title of the paper: "The Concept of War in the World of Warcraft", which is, after all, what the paper should have been about, the answer is simple: there IS no war in World of Warcraft. War is a concept confined to reality -- in a videogame, which is simulation, all concepts lose their meaning and become empty signs -- pure simulacrums. If nobody dies, or is in danger of dying, it's not a war. That's all that needs to be said on the subject of "The Concept of War in the World of Warcraft", or indeed "The Concept of War in Videgames in General".

However, we will point out what an unrealistic theater of war “World of Warcraft” is.

I mean, duh! It's not even a "theater of war" in the first place, dumbass, it is a "theater of gaming". And look, I didn't even have to fly to Potsdam to explain this. If you had read a little bit of Baudrillard perhaps you wouldn't even need my explanation. But of course if you are too busy scribbling down pointless papers and flying halfway around the world to deliver them, it might be a bit hard to sit down and read something worth reading.

This is the dude's bio, by the way:

Dr. phil. Michael Nagenborg (born 1968) works at the Interdepartmental Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen, where he participates in the project “Terahertz-Detektionssysteme: Ethische Begleitung, Evaluation und Normenfindung (THEBEN)”. His key research areas include privacy, surveillance, (sub-)culture and information ethics. www.michaelnagenborg.com

You'd think people like him would be better educated than the average 1UP or Kotaku writer! You'd think!

[icycalm]

I guess some readers might find it strange that I would heap so much scorn on all these university professors with all their impressive degrees and pompous titles, so to those people I would recommend reading Schopenhauer's essay "On Philosophy at the Universities". It is unfortunately not available in its entirety anywhere online (at least not the English translation; German speakers might be able to find the original), but here's a link to a limited Google books preview:

link

Naturally, this glory of the age is pushed forward in every way; and so whether in literary journals or even in his own works, one professor of philosophy will not fail to take into careful consideration the absurd and preposterous notions of another, and will do this with weighty countenance and official gravity so that it quite looks as though we were actually dealing here with real advances in human knowledge. In return for this, his own abortive efforts soon receive the same honour and indeed we know that nihil officiosius quam cum mutuum muli scabunt*. But seriously speaking, a thoroughly deplorable spectacle is presented by so many ordinary minds who, for the sake of office and profession, think themselves obliged to represent what nature had least of all intended them to do, and to assume burdens that require the shoulders of intellectual giants. It is painful to the hoarse to listen to singing and for the lame to watch dancing, but it is intolerable to watch a limited intellect philosophize. Now, to conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, immense periods, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say -- just nothing; we obtain no new ideas and do not feel our insight increased, but are bound to sigh: 'We hear quite well the clattering of the mill but do not see the flour.' Indeed we see only too clearly what paltry, common, shallow, and crude views are hidden behind this high-sounding bombast.

*Nothing is more dignified than when two mules scratch each other.

[icycalm]

From their "Call For Papers" section:

Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will also attempt to use specific examples rather than merely invoke “computer games” in general terms. We invite submissions focusing on, but not limited to, the following three headings:

Action|Space
Papers submitted under this heading should address issues relating to the experiential, interactional and cognitive dimensions of computer game play. What is the nature of perceptual experience in game space? How should we understand the relationship between action, interaction and space in computer game environments? How should we think about players’ aesthetic, emotive and(/or) rational responses to what goes on inside the game space?

Ethics / Politics
What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in exerting influence on individual gamers and society in general? What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics? Also: what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context, and what are the factors that allow or delimit philosophical justifications of their application there or elsewhere?

The Magic Circle
Terms such as “fictionality”, “virtuality”, “simulation” or “representation” are often used to indicate specific functions of objects in games. But what is the nature of the phenomena these terms refer to in the interactive field of game play? And what is the structure of gaming-processes? What is the mediality of digital games? We are especially interested in discussions that aim at how the notion of a self-contained “magic circle” – representing an imagined border between play and reality, or the internal and external limits of game-programs – is being challenged by forms of individual action and social inter action which tend to transcend such limits.

Your paper should not exceed 25 000 characters (excluding blanks) and be accompanied by an abstract of 300 words. Please specify the primary focus (topic) of your submission.

I am only going to comment on the second of the three topics. It is pointless: about the only reason I see for its existence is so that someone could come in and deliver a paper on its pointlessness.

What are the ethical responsibilities of game-makers in exerting influence on individual gamers and society in general?

None. Absolutely none. The reason for this becomes clear once one has understood that videogames are useful chiefly as a means to ESCAPE from the asphyxiating torment of so-called "ethical responsibilities".

What role, if any, can games serve as a critical cultural corrective in relation to traditional forms of media and communicative practices, for example in economy and politics?

"Critical cultural corrective", lol.

Also: what is the nature of the ethical norms that apply within the gaming context

The very concept of "ethics" was long ago shown to be a misunderstanding. Wittgenstein himself explained why "it cannot be put into words" without those words turning out, on close examination, to be nonsense. But even ignoring this fact, ethics have always been connected to and concerned with reality -- the very concept of ethics in A GAME, as in, for example, basketball ("thou shall not steal the ball, lol") is absurd.

Man, what a bunch of clowns. I'd probably even take retarded gamers over them, I think.

[Gnarf]

Haha.

Finally, this gamer- and gameplay-centric model draws attention to an important issue: the gamer’s understanding of the underlying game mechanics is more akin to a work of reverse engineering than of decryption. A gamer can never access the game’s algorithms, but must instead construct an image of the game system, whose degree of fidelity towards the actual rules of the game may greatly vary.

Never. Except when they can. Reverse engineering a game, for example, would get you access to the game's algorithms (and not be very akin to playing the game and constructing an image of the game system).

[icycalm]

A gamer can never access the game’s algorithms

He must mean from inside the game, i.e. while playing it. And that's true. I mean at the end of the day you can always ask the programmers for the algorithms if you want, but that's not something that interests us while analysing the experience of playing the game.


More fun!

Playing with Information: How Political Games Can Encourage the Player to Cross the Magic Circle


Most Players do not confuse games with reality. However, political games need to encourage the player to link his virtual experience to his subjective construction of reality, in order to have an persuasive effect (I smell contemptible, lowest-common-denominator targetted propaganda, lol! And what do you know, it is a German who is championing it!). They can achieve this by the interplay between their rules and their representations. To be able to experience meaningful play (as opposed to meaningless play, lol), the player has to interpret the game’s representations in order to perform strategically planed actions. Games can implement ideological positions within their rules, but rules need some form of representation to be perceptible. In addition, many games have a layer of narrative or thematic framing, consisting of non-interactive textual elements, which provide the player with information. These layers cue the player in his meaning making (in his "meaning making", lol!), and shape his application of schemata and mental concepts. He uses them in order to choose the best options for successful and meaningful play. Political games, like “Zottel rettet die Schweiz”, “Global Conflict: Palestine” or “Peacemaker” gain their possible meanings by their specific representational skins. Games like these encourage the player to move back and forth between the magic circle and his subjective construction of reality (here is the magic circle again!). The player can test his knowledge in games, but in revers, it is shaped by this experience.

Niklas Schrape is a Ph.D. student at the University of Film and Television Studies “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam, Germany. Since summer 2007, he works on his dissertation on video games as a medium of political communication. Before that, he studied “Social and Economic Communication” at the University of the Arts in Berlin and the International Filmschool of Wales.

What a bright scholar this Niklas Schrape is. He has a bright future ahead of him!

[icycalm]

This actually doesn't sound like a very bad paper. The first paragraph of the abstract is indeed very reasonably written.

Can Avatars Act?


The aim of this paper is to clarify the nature of agency inside a gaming environment. The problem with understanding in-game agency is that reports of in-game actions are unclear both with regard to the literal content of the actions performed as well who is the proper owner. While we refer to cases of ”walking”, ”shooting”, “breaking” and the like inside the game, they are clearly none of those things, and nor is it clear that they are supposed to attributed to a fictional in-game character or to the player at his controls. I suggest that they main problem in spelling out the literal content of these actions is due to the fact that the computer game medium involve a collision between the requirements of representation on the one hand and agency on the other. The intentional object conveyed by a representation will typically not exist, while the action descriptions will typically imply that the individual is capable of exerting causal control over it.

I discuss ways of spelling out the content of the player’s actions in terms of interaction with representations and find that they fail to account for evaluations that are due to the players control over the outcome of his actions.

Taking a page from externalism in the philosophy of mind, I finally offer an account of in-game action based on the diagnosis that the element of control forces a shift from the represented fictional object to a real graphical environment. Utilizing the proposal that the basic actions of the player are directed at non-representational graphical happenings, I spell out the typical actions performed inside the game environment and indicate how they should be evaluated.

The point however, again, is that all this has been more or less already resolved by Baudrillard, and with much more depth and insight. And lines like these:

the element of control forces a shift from the represented fictional object to a real graphical environment.

with the "real graphical environment" being clearly a contradictio in adjecto (graphical environments are by definition never real -- at least not in the way he means it), do not give me any confidence in the ability of the author to say anything truly new or interesting.

[icycalm]

I admit I have only a vague notion of what this paper might be about.

Trigens Can’t Swim. Intelligence and Intentionality in First Person Game Worlds


Intelligence in games is largely the product of players adopting the Intentional Stance, rather than the functional capabilities of underlying state systems. This paper demonstrates how Dennett’s concept of the Intentional Stance is a great asset in understanding the creation and function of believably intelligent agents in games. Particular focus is paid to the use of cheap and simple tricks, often existing outside the AI system, to bootstrap projected intelligence beyond the constraints of the system; specifically the importance of factional and social networks, ecological validity, imported schema and the co-option of the natural tendency to project closure onto networks of potential. Examples are drawn from across the FPS genre to demonstrate that intelligence in games is largely a product of the management of expectations and assumptions on the part of the player.


Dan Pinchbeck is a senior lecturer in games and interactive media at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He specialises in first person gaming, with particular focus on content and player behaviour, and is currently completing a PhD in this subject. He is also finishing an AHRC funded development project creating game mods to explore new narrative and affective experiences in first person gaming (www.thechineseroom.co.uk).

Is he even talking about player intelligence or artificial intelligence? Meh. I guess I woulnd't mind taking a look at the paper.


By the way, if anyone comes across any links to other similar conferences/papers/etc., please let me know by posting them here...

[Afterburn]

Wow. Just wow.

I'm left speechless after reading these abstracts.

If this is representative of gaming's "intellectual community," we're in bad shape.

On a slightly different note, icy, do you think that Lacan is "gibberish" because you think psychoanalysis is itself "gibberish," or for other reasons? What's your opinion on someone like Žižek, then, who calls himself a "Lacanian"?

[Gnarf]

A gamer can never access the game’s algorithms

He must mean from inside the game, i.e. while playing it. And that's true. I mean at the end of the day you can always ask the programmers for the algorithms if you want, but that's not something that interests us while analysing the experience of playing the game.

I'm not sure. Maybe what the writer is getting at there is something completely different from what I think it is and it all makes perfect sense in the paper. I'd say it doesn't interest us because the player knowing the algorithms used won't make a difference. He'll get a better understanding of the game from playing it anyway. And then the fact that the algorithms are "hidden" isn't an important issue.

There are cases where knowing the algorithms used will make a difference, but I can't think of anyone where there's any point to them being hidden. Like when dodgy collision detection lets your ship pass right through a bullet without getting hit every now and then. But that's the kind of situation where I'd expect the player to ask the programmers about why that happens (or, if possible, download the source code and see what algorithms are used, or whatever). And then it's only an important issue if the algorithms can't be accessed, from inside or outside the game, which is not always the case.

Is he even talking about player intelligence or artificial intelligence?

Artificial. Way I understand it, what he's saying is that AI seems more impressive if it behaves the way the player would expect it to (or would expect people to behave in some real life situation like the one in the game) than if it plays optimally by the game's rules. Like, the soldiers in Half Life are impressive because they take cover, throw grenades at you to get you out of cover, flank you, and so on. You're impressed because those are the kind of things you imagine soldiers do all the time. Not because they're particularly good at playing the game.

[icycalm]

On a slightly different note, icy, do you think that Lacan is "gibberish" because you think psychoanalysis is itself "gibberish," or for other reasons? What's your opinion on someone like Žižek, then, who calls himself a "Lacanian"?

There is clearly so much bull flying around in the field of psychoanalysis that it's hard to take anything but the most rudimentary, self-evident theories seriously. But my objection to Lacan goes far beyond that.

Lacan claimed that his Écrits were not to be understood, but would produce a meaning effect in the reader similar to some mystical texts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacan

Do I have to say anything more?

...

As for Zizek, what little I know of him leaves me completely cold. He seems more a "cultural critic" than someone who has something new and interesting to say. Besides, I've seen videos of him giving interviews. Not impressive at all. He was merely regurgitating banalities, and not very convincingly either.

[icycalm]

Is he even talking about player intelligence or artificial intelligence?

Artificial. Way I understand it, what he's saying is that AI seems more impressive if it behaves the way the player would expect it to (or would expect people to behave in some real life situation like the one in the game) than if it plays optimally by the game's rules. Like, the soldiers in Half Life are impressive because they take cover, throw grenades at you to get you out of cover, flank you, and so on. You're impressed because those are the kind of things you imagine soldiers do all the time. Not because they're particularly good at playing the game.

Oh ok. Well put. This makes sense.


PS. See how easy it is to write in a clearer manner than these clowns?

[icycalm]

Wheeee! More fun!

http://game.unimore.it/game/Benvenuto.html

"The Philosophy of Computer Games"
An Interdisciplinary Conference
Reggio Emilia, Italy 25-27 January 2007

Abstracts: http://game.unimore.it/game/Abstracts.html

[raphael]

What's this obsession they seem to have with ethics ?

[icycalm]

It pays the bills. Since that is all the newspapers, politicians and average people care about, the pseudo-philosophers of the universities, in order to serve the public's needs -- and thus be richly rewarded for it -- are only too happy to pretend Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Baudrillard never existed.

[icycalm]

A reasonably decent article:

http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articl ... cles_id=26

He makes a couple of glaring mistakes (which I will bother to point out only if someone asks me to), but a good read nevertheless.

Note that the the list of recommended books at the end is practically worthless.

[icycalm]

lololol

WEEK 13
- Tim Rogers: Life, Non-Warp
- Alex Kierkegaard: Arcade Culture

http://itp.nyu.edu/syllabus/GameStudiesSp09.pdf

He certainly picked Tim's best article.

[Evo]

http://www.aesthetics-online.org/articles/index.php?articles_id=26

I would like to know what the glaring mistakes are.

[icycalm]

as Collingwood might put it, video games are possibly the first concreative, mechanically reproduced form of art: they are mass artworks shaped by audience input.

lol at "concreative, mechanically reproduced form of art". All this elaborate verbiage in order to avoid saying "simulation". And of course his careless use of words at this point is what ends up leading him completely astray.

Interactivity marks a crucial distinction between decidedly non-interactive mass art forms such as film, novels, and recorded music and new interactive mass art forms. Sadly, this important distinction has yet to be examined in any satisfactory manner.

And it never will be because there's no distinction. Interactivity does not "mark a crucial distinction" between interactive and non-interactive mass artforms (lol), it marks a crucial distinction between art forms and simulation.

Not to mention that the "new interactive art forms" he mentioned do not exist. Which is why he doesn't attempt to mention them!

As such, perhaps the most interesting and widely discussed questions that video games raise involve the notion of interactivity. In The Language of New Media, Manovich argues that the notion of interactivity is meaningless and, similarly, Wolf and Perron consciously avoid the term in their introduction to The Video Game Theory Reader. In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Murray finds the term too vague, preferring instead the terms “procedural” and “participatory.” In contrast, Ryan, in Narrative as Virtual Reality, accepts an extremely broad notion of what it means to be interactive, so expansive that she even counts TV as an interactive medium. As an initial foray, I would argue that the notion of interactivity can be more precisely defined to closely map our ordinary use of the term. I would suggest that to “interact with” something involves engaging in a mutually responsive form of activity that is neither controlling, nor completely random.

Worst paragraph in the whole thing. Mucking about trying to find a definition of interactivity, when we all know exactly what it means, and the dictionary one is perfectly reasonable and valid.

Funnily enough, all this bullcrap is followed by the most insightful comment in the whole essay:

In one of the most interesting positions on the subject, Ryan agues that interactivity and narrative immersion work against each other.

But I will explain this in detail in a future article.

Later on he makes more childish mistakes:

The notion that videogames require rules has become something of a dogma in the literature, but it seems that a complete videogame cannot provide rules proper. Video games require working within a machine – be it a pc or a game console – that lays out iron parameters, and the notion of a rule that cannot be broken seems incoherent.

I have no idea where he sees the "incoherence". It just sounds like he doesn't have a clue how computers work.

Perhaps, games are more like performative artworks where the artwork is intended for the performers. However, since philosophical aesthetics has almost ignored the aesthetic experience of artists and the performers of artworks, such a classification would shed little light.

Because it would be an astonishingly stupid one. LOL at "artwork intended for the performers".

It is unfortunate that philosophers of art have neglected this area.

This is because they do not exist. "Philosopher of art" is a contradictio in adjecto. Philosophers do not specialize in particular areas of knowledge: their subject is the whole -- this is what makes them philosophers in the first place. A "philosopher of physics", for example would simply be a physicist, a "philosopher of history" a historian, a "philosopher of ethnology" an ethnologist, etc. etc., and a "philosopher of art" would of course be an art critic, or an art historian, or whatever these people are called these days. And none of them, of course, would really be a philosopher.

[icycalm]

By the way:

as Collingwood might put it, video games are possibly the first concreative, mechanically reproduced form of art

My dictionary has no idea what the word 'concreative' is supposed to mean. This is the kind of thing I was talking about here. Witness the birth of a new word!

[ganheddo]

What's funny is that this Collingwood only used the word once in his book "Principles of Art" (published in 1938), where he complained about "mechanically reproduced art" not being "concreative".
I don't know if Collingwood invented the word or if it was coined prior to that.

The audience is not collaborating, it is only overhearing. The same thing happens in the cinema where collaboration as between author and producer is intense, but as between this unit and the audience nonexistent. Performances on the wireless have the same defect. The consequence is that the gramophone, the cinema, and the wireless are perfectly serviceable as vehicles of amusement or of propaganda, for here the audience's function is merely receptive and not concreative; but as vehicles of art they are subject to all the defects of the printingpress in an aggravated form.

source: Are Video Games Art?" (not recommened)

In The Principles of Art Collingwood held (following Croce) that works of art are essentially expressions of emotion. He portrayed art as a necessary function of the human mind, and considered it collaborative activity.

So he uses the term "concreativity" to describe a collaboration between author and audience i.e. a collaborative, creative activity, with the latin prefix con- meaning "together" or "together with"
(see also competition comming from con-petire: "to seek together").

[icycalm]

Here is an example of how a set of data that basically speaks for itself can be interpreted to mean the exact opposite, as long as the one doing the interpreting is dumb enough:

Top Ten Videogame Emotions
What are the most popular emotions of play in videogames?

Based on the 1,040 responses to the DGD2 survey, I have ranked the top 10 emotions with their average score out of 5 to get a rough-and-ready estimate of the popularity of various emotions. This isn’t a strict scientific measure, as such, but the highest scoring emotions are those for which the majority of people not only recognised having that emotion while playing games, but recognised it enhanced their enjoyment.

(For reference, the top answer that could be given in each case was “Yes, [I recognise this emotion in my play] and I seek out games that give me this feeling” and the next highest was “Yes [I recognise this emotion in my play] and it enhances my enjoyment of a game”. The bottom answer in each case was “No, I never feel this way when playing games.”)

I have included my hypothetical deductions concerning the underlying neuro-biological mechanisms where I have some idea of what is involved.



10. Bliss (3.26)

At the bottom of our Top 10, the feeling of utter joyfulness, which is probably the experience of highly elevated levels of the neurotransmitter seratonin. While 27.7% of respondents said no videogame had given them this feeling, 59.9% of people gave this emotion one of the top two responses (with 22.1% actively seeking out games which give them this feeling). I’m actually quite doubtful that so many people have experienced bliss in the sense intended by emotions-expert Paul Ekman (although a study could easily determine this), and I find it more likely that people are taking the description “utter joy and bliss” to mean fiero (the emotion of triumph over adversity), which we will come to below.



9. Relief (3.28)

Relief, which may be the experiential analogue of the hormone cortisol, has already been acknowledged as an important emotion of play (as we discussed before in the piece on rushgames). Despite this, 21.5% of respondents said no videogame had ever given them this feeling. However, 43% said it enhanced their enjoyment of games, and 14.4% said they sought out games that gave them this feeling.



8. Naches (3.57)

Here’s a curious one – the emotion of pride in the accomplishments of one’s students or children, referred to by emotion researcher Ekman by the Yiddish term naches. Players seem to really enjoy training their friends and family to play games, with a whopping 53.4% saying it enhances their enjoyment, and another 12.9% saying they seek out games that give them this feeling. (I don’t have the data yet, but I wonder if such people play mostly MMORPGs?) Only 10.9% had never had the experience in the context of videogames. Perhaps, as Katherine Isbister has suggested, more videogames should include a co-operative Tutor mode?



7. Surprise (3.59)

Another emotion we’ve seen in the context of rushgames, surprise is closely related to fear and thus probably relates to the hormone and neurotransmitter epinephrine (adrenalin). Few people (8.1%) had never been surprised by videogames, while more than half the respondants (51.9%) said it added to their enjoyment, and another 14.4% saying they sought out games that gave them this experience.



6. Fiero (3.89)

Yes, arguably the most prominent of the videogame emotions, fiero (the feeling of triumph over adversity – probably a cocktail of norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine) didn’t even make it half way up the top ten! It wasn’t because it wasn’t highly rated – in fact about three quarters of respondants (77.1%) gave it the top two marks, with about a third (32.7%) saying they seek out games that give them this feeling. Still, there were five other emotions that scored more highly, and three other emotions which scored higher in terms of players actively seeking out the feeling...



5. Curiosity (3.92)

I wasn’t surprised to see curiosity in the Top Five, but to see it edge out fiero was unexpected! Curiosity, which is an expression of what some psychologists refer to as interest (and could be seen as a behaviour rather than an emotion) seems to relate to the beta-endorphin neurotransmitter, which is involved in a mechanism encouraging animals to explore and seek new stimulus. Nicole Lazzaro was the first person to relate it to videogame play, and with good cause! It pulled in big numbers, with once again about three quarters rating it highly (78.8%) and of these about a quarter (24.3%) seeking out games that give them this feeling. Just 5.4% had never had the experience in videogames.



4. Excitement (4.02)

Well no surprise to see this one near the top! Excitement, as discussed previously, is an expression of epinephrine (adrenalin), and an extremely common experience – just 2.7% of respondents claimed they had never experienced it in the context of videogames. 8 out of 10 people (82.1%) gave it one of the top two responses, with about a quarter (26.3%) actively seeking it out. This emotion also produced the highest incidence of the second-to-highest response (55.8%) in the survey, that is, a strict majority of players recognise excitement as a major contribution to their enjoyment of play.



3. Wonderment (4.07)

Another expression of the interest mechanism mentioned under curiosity, wonderment is probably also related to beta-endorphin. Here, the feeling is more intense – and it seems players respond to the greater intensity. Whilst a larger number of people could not relate the experience to their play (8.1% had no experience of it in videogames), 41.5% said it enhanced their enjoyment and an additional 41.2% (for a total of 82.7%) said they sought out games that gave them this feeling. In fact, of all the emotions studied in this survey, this was the highest scorer in terms of respondents actively seeking it out, as even the top 2 emotions did not clear 40% in seeking out the emotion. It seems amazing players is one of the most effective techniques videogames can muster.



2. Contentment (4.09)

I said before the survey began that I suspected that the research community had underestimated the importance of contentment to videogames, and although this crude ranking is far from definitive, it does seem I was correct! 82.7% gave this emotion one of the top two marks, with 38.2% seeking out games that would give them a sense of contentment. Like bliss, this probably connects to serotonin, but whereas more than a quarter of players had no experience of bliss to draw upon, just 5.8% could find no memory of contentment in their play.



1. Amusement (4.28)

But head and shoulders above every other emotion in the survey was amusement (for which I have no biological mechanism, although psychologists link it to the resolution of inconsistencies, and it will involve an endorphin of some kind as well as the pre-frontal cortex). The fewest number of people responded that they had no experience of amusement in videogames (just 1.7%) while a whopping 92.6% gave this emotion one of the top two responses, and 39.7% stating they actively sought out this feeling (second only to Wonderment for the rate of response in the top answer).

It seems that if we want to make better games for everyone, we should be looking at how to make our games funnier, not more challenging!



Bottom of the List

Finally, you might be interested to know what the bottom three emotions were. At number 20, it was Sadness (2.08), at number 21, Guilt (1.91) and bottom of the barrel at number 22 was Embarrassment (1.70). In all three cases, more than half the respondents said no game had made them feel this way. Oddly, 1.1% of respondents said they actively sought out games that made them feel embarrassed – even allowing for some fatuous respondents, this is still odd. I guess it truly is different strokes for different folks!

http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_gam ... deoga.html

[icycalm]

The best article you will read on the subject of videogames before my book comes out:

http://gac.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/2/4/358

Soaring 30,000 feet above everyone else.

[icycalm]

More of what passes for philosophy these days:

But today it would be entirely naïve to believe that play retains its anti-capitalist or anti-work status. One finds traces of this in Adorno in the Aesthetic Theory where he dispenses with Huizinga and Schiller alike. Adorno claims that Schiller's notion of play is nostalgic, in that it is entirely removed from the circuit of production and capital. "Playful forms are without exception forms of repetition,"[7] is Adorno's lament. (This is not such a radical claim, as many theorists of play agree that repetition is an essential aspect of it. Indeed, for Freud, play is articulated through repetitious activity. In the "fort/da" game, which is an act of play, the game is "constantly repeated" by the child who "never cried when his mother left him for a few hours."[8] For Freud, neurosis is only ever experienced as a repetition. The common interpretation of the "fort/da" game is that it is a game of presence and absence, essentially a game of peek-a-boo. However, in Lacan, one sees a slightly different reading of the Freudian scene: the game is not about the cotton-reel, it is about what Lacan calls the "ditch" or the gap between the reel and the child. Lacan argues that "the game of the cotton-reel is the subject's answer to what the mother's absence has created on the frontier of his domain -- the edge of his cradle -- namely, a ditch, around which one can only play at jumping."[9] Lacan claims, contrary to Freud, that it is not the mother who is miniaturized in the cotton-reel, but that a part of the child is detached from himself [detached in the form of the petit a] and miniaturized there. For Lacan, the game is not about the return of the mother but is simply about repetition and alternation; the game "is a here or there, and [its] aim, in its alternation, is simply that of being the fort of a da, and the da of a fort."[10] So, fort/da is not only a game of peek-a-boo, but also a game of fish. The string is the thing, not the cotton-reel it retrieves. If fort/da were simply about appearance and disappearance (or even Lacanian subject formation), there would be no string, just as the game of peek-a-boo has no string. But the string exists. In short, fort/da is a kind of network game, the string being a link in a miniature network. The string is the edge and the cotton-reel is a node. In this sense, the game of fort/da is a game of connectivity. The string is connectivity, and the story it tells is how connectivity trumps presence. It is a relational game, in which the creation of links -- sending and pulling, linking and retrieving -- is paramount. A thoroughly modern youngster, the child playing the fort/da game is a spinner of mesh-works, a weaver of webs.)

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=507

There are interesting ideas dealt with in this essay, but passages like the above are simply unacceptable. Even if the author really did have something genuine to communicate, he has such a tenuous, muddled grasp on it that it is simply not worth anyone's time to sit down and attempt to discover what it is. The above passage, for example, if it contains any meaning at all, would probably be possible to express in one or two clear sentences by someone who understood it clearly. And lo and behold, by the end of it all he hasn't managed to reach any conclusions:

Is World of Warcraft labor or play? I'm not entirely sure.

Only more questions about questions, in an endless process whose very aim seems to be the perpetual generation of questions about questions. -- And woe to him who is inconsiderate enough to actually come up with some answers!