Academic Journal on Computer Games

Espen Aarseth writes: "The world's first academic journal on computer games, Game Studies, is now online. With several international conferences and a peer-review journal, 2001 is the year that the academic world finally takes computer and video games seriously."

Comments

Re:Missing something...

[TigerBaer]

Art is a very subjective thing (disclaimer)

But usually one would note the difference between artwork and popular culture/entertainment. For instance, although the talent level is often of the same level, most people will differentiate between comic books and "gallery" art. Same thing with novels. Most people would like to seperate Tom Clancy from Ernest Hemmingway.

Computer games require alot of talent to create in every facet, from the story of Myst to q2dm1, but still remain an elaborated fantasy for the purpose of entertainment.

Unfortunately the area between art and entertainment is often hazy because viewing and interpreting art is considered entertainment. Perhaps the best distinction for me between art and entertainment is the goal. Does a computer game intend to comment or question life/humanity/etc? Or does it seek to entertain?

I would say....

[Vermifax]

That the people making these distinctions between art and entertainment are putting up paper thin walls of distinction. Not only that put the paper walls are transparent to anyone who looks too hard.

Art has always been for entertainment. Its just that most people don't see thinking as entertainment anymore and so we get art that you don't have to think about.

Academic Attitudes to Game Development

[synapz]

In my experience, most academics in the field of computer science consider game development to be an waste of computing resources and expertise.

I had to fight hard to get my university to allow me to develop a PSX game for my final year undergrad project and I was lucky that my supervisor was not an old-school stick-in-the-mud, and was very supportive.

I ended up with a great mark (80percent) and a lot of decent experience which got me a job in the games industry. A lot of my contemporaries ended up doing 'suggested' projects - i.e. donkey work for lecturers who wanted some kind of utility to make their lives easier.

I'm pretty anti-academia and I think my main reason for being like that is that I saw these guys (university fellows, doctors, lecturers, or whatever they want to be known as), who really should have known better, acting like they were supreme masters of computing when really the stuff they were doing was stuck in the 70s. Game development is, by necessity, cutting-edge stuff.

I'm not arguing that there is not room for more 'traditional' computing, but the way these guys dismissed game development, you got the impression they considered it something that was only for people without the intellectual capacity to do something more 'academic'. In reality, the average big-budget game these days requires more combined knowlege and skill, across a multitude of disciplines, than almost any other type of software development.

Some great developments have come about through videogames. I'm sure you've all heard about how interested the military was in Atari's tank war game, or DID's combat flight sims. I'm sure there are lots of other examples of gaming technology going mainstream a few years down the line

The bottom-line is that "fun" is very difficult to quantify and it can't be expressed in mathematical notation. Therefore, the thinking goes, it ain't science. Therefore, it ain't academic enough.

-Sy/\/apZ-

Re:Academic Attitudes to Game Development

[chegosaurus]

I think part of the reason for the attitude you encountered might be that coding games requires (I imagine - I've never done it!) heavily optimised, very specialised code.

I'm thinking of "hitting the hardware" and writing hacks to get the absolute maximum performance out of the system.

I could well be wrong in assuming that's how games are written - I suspect the days of hitting the hardware may be gone, but I think that's the way a lot of people view game development.

That kind of coding goes very much against the grain with academics who learned how to code from K&R and Knuth, teach how to code out of K&R and Knuth, and place great importance on formal methods etc. In scientific disciplines there's a very strong mindset towards following convention, and many people's view of game development is that it is unconventional. For many academics I think it is too easy to equate uncondtional with incorrect.

As an aside, surely a student will learn so much more from a project they are interested in and engaged by than grinding out a solution to someone else's problem?

Seems to me that CS courses are wildly out of step with the real world.

Re:Academic Attitudes to Game Development

[Troller Durden]

Writing games for modern hardware does not require the obfuscating (although certainly clever) hacks needed when consumer computing was in its infancy. A modern game engine can be designed in a robust, readable, object-oriented manner and still get outstanding FPS.

If a student recently wrote a game using the "old school" attitude than I think his professors would be perfectly justified in at voicing dissatisfaction with the students work.

Re:Academic Attitudes to Game Development

[kin_korn_karn]

Most (PC) game interface code is written with DirectX, yes, and lots of strategy and other games that are not dependent on FPS can be done using nothing but higher-level DX API calls. However, FPS and 1st person games are still done at the low level with lots of C and asm. Example: EverQuest's graphics engine was written mostly in assembly. I happen to know the guy who did it (Howard Dortch), and he's one of the few assembly gurus left in the world. He was hired strictly for tuning the C/C++ code with assembly at critical points. He now works for AMD doing test and tuning code for the Athlon line. - JW

Re:Academic Attitudes to Game Development

[Troller Durden]

FPS's are FPS-intensive. But modern architecture allows for even these applications to be developed using high-level API calls and maintainable, less efficient code.

Some thoughts...

[Gingko]

Game Institute offers courses (non-trivial ones at that) for the aspiring game maker. They look pretty good, and I've heard good things about them, but I haven't done one myself.

The thing about game development is that is rapidly turning into its own kind of engineering. Large projects neccesitate good engineering practice. However, there is reputedly still remarkable reluctance on the part of developers to adopt coding practices that have been the norm in other development fields for some time (the adoption of C++ for one, but I realise that can start a flame war, so don't).

I don't think it's reasonable to say that game development is an academic discipline - a reasonable acid test is whether there is active research in game development. There's loads in graphics and visualisation, probably a bundle in audio techniques, and a lot of AI... but these are all ends in themselves, rather than explicitly contributory research to the field. Most implementations of research techniques are very heavily tailored due to the contraints placed upon the games developers by technology.

That's not to say that game-development doesn't take skill - clearly there are some incredibly bright people working in the field. It certainly warrants its own journal. Maybe we'll see some standardisation bodies :)

Henry

Missing something...

[ChristianBaekkelund]

As someone who actually does some amount of game studies in my actual academic studies, I feel that some of the posts here so far are missing an important feature...

People have stated that games are "science"...and that they are "feats of engineering"...but, what's missed is that to a large degree they are also works of "art" and as a whole comprise an artistic medium. There are journals analyzing film-work, television, music and such from a cultural, social, and/or humanistic academic standpoint. It was important for this distinction (in both ways) to happen with respect to gaming as well...

Re:Missing something...

[donglekey]

I agree with you almost completely. I have come to the conclusion that programming is not art, it is craftmenship. Video games are the fusion of art and craftsmenship, such as web pages sometimes are, although video games, or interactive entertainment of other kinds take it to much higher levels. (If its not entertainment, it doesn't need to contain art, so interactivity alone does not necessarily mean a combonation of art and craftsmenship). I think there should be a word for a the intersection of a tool and artwork, but I can't think of one right now.

Academic value?

[XNormal]

Ummm... how exactly would you define academic value anyway?

Academic pursuit is a kind of game in itself and it has its own set of rules. Even if there really isn't anything there that hasn't been covered in computer magazines it doesn't matter - it hasn't been done in an "academic, peer reviewed journal" - and that's part of the rules of the game.

Another very important rule is "let's all pretend twe are not playing a game".

Re:i suppose it had to happen

[NullAndVoid]

I wonder if it`ll tell us ...

Alas, we'll never know, will we ... the truth is hidden behind a hyperlink.

*sigh*

Computer games have become feats of engineering

[hillct]

It's about time this happened. Computer game programming has evolved since it's inception from an amusement of a few engineers, to a legitimate commercial enterprise, to a force in the marketplace and finally to an area of academic research.

In fairness for those who look on this with skepticism, the computer gaming industry integrates a variety of areas of research which together can be applied to computer gaming, buy are legitimate areas of study seperately: Mathmatical modeling, Graphic Arts, a whole variety of areas around AI research from the 70s, and the study of sociology, in attempts to create acccurate simulations of human responses. Aparently, all we really needed was some motivation to study these areas, and the pursuit of entertainment is just such a motivator.

--CTH

My Thesis!

[Root Down]

Now I can go to my review board with some credibility on Quake mods as a viable master's thesis!

Root DOWN
grep what -i sed?

Games are a science

[steveo777]

Tons of time and resources are devoted to all sorts of games. Algorithms are researched and revised constantly in order to make them more efficient. I'd have to say that even though the "high-society" may not enjoy reading about the latest Sims expantion, I still think that there is quite a bit to be learned from the people that code them.

Games already are in academia

[kaszeta]

fairness for those who look on this with skepticism, the computer gaming industry integrates a variety of areas of research which together can be applied to computer gaming, buy are legitimate areas of study seperately: Mathmatical modeling, Graphic Arts, a whole variety of areas around AI research from the 70s, and the study of sociology, in attempts to create acccurate simulations of human responses. Aparently, all we really needed was some motivation to study these areas, and the pursuit of entertainment is just such a motivator.

You're right, and studies of many game-driven (or at least game-related) computer science topics already are fairly common at academic conferences and meetings. I've sat through uncountable presentations on 3D-modeling, polygon reduction, texture mapping, landscape generation, networked real-time simulations, etc., in which the author(s) made it clear that computer games were one of the primary motivations for the study.

Then again, it cuts both ways---a lot of the technology available for Real Work[tm] was driven by games. A lot of the nice engineering design and visualization packages only started becoming useful on PC platforms after 3D accelerated hardware for the PC started becoming affordable---and we all know that PC 3D video performance is driven by gaming requirements. Also, many games have gotten use as more serious software---flight simulators being used in real pilot training, for example.

The possibilities of increased academic interest in gaming are interesting, because making a really good game requires a lot of useful investigation: user interface design, efficient graphics manipulation, improved realistic rendering, etc.

It's about time !

[UnknownSoldier]

We've only had professional game developers for at least 10+ years :)

It reminds of the Journal of MUD Research now Journal of Virtual Environments ( http://www.pennmush.org/~jomr/ )

Maybe we'll see more well written articles like the clasic Bartle's "HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS" ( http://www.pennmush.org/~jomr/v1n1/bartle.html )

Of course we've had Gamasutra hosting articles by Ernest Adams.
i.e. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010521/adams_0 1.htm

The papers are weak

[Animats]

I'm not impressed with Issue I. "The Case of Narrative in Digital Media" indicates a complete lack of familarity with the issues of game design. The place of narrative in game design is widely discussed in the developer community, and is examined in detail at the Game Developer's Conference every year. There's a basic tension in modern game design between world-building and narrative. Managing that balance is hard, and it's a recognized problem. The author of that journal article didn't know that.

A game is a place that you go or a thing that you do, not a story you listen to. Game designers who ignore this (usually ones stuck doing a game related to some Hollywood property) produce games that lock the player onto a story track. Such games get lousy reviews, and are only played a few times.

On the other hand, the game designer can easily create a world in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. That doesn't, of itself, make it interesting, although plotless pure first-person shooters do have a substantial market. There's a temptation to add a plot or backstory to give the game depth. But the two are hard to mix. The usual options are to lock the user into a series of challenges to be faced in order, or to build an adventure game with free movement but a finite set of puzzles. Getting beyond those models is a hot topic among game designers.

The author of the journal article was, clearly, totally unaware of these issue. So they were thus unqualified to write that paper.

But at least they didn't quote Derrida.

Hosted in Norway?

[MOMOCROME]

I think this is a strange place to host the 'academic' face of the videogame industry. Norway has not been known for their great VGI culture, nor their profusion of products. Perhaps this is their way of breaking into the field? Or is the site mearly hosted in .NO and run by established members of the industry?

In any event, as a professional game designer, I am not amused by the hoity-toity leap to exclusive peer review journals cluttering up the landscape. It seems the best games come from the underground, the fresh blood seems to come out of the garage. Well, the current culture of academic arrogance has killed any chance of a new Thomas Edison appearing on the Science and Technology horizon, and I'd hate to see the trend develop for video games. Or we may never see the next John Carmack!

Re:Is it possible that...

[Troller Durden]

There has not been a shift to the "proper" way of programming! What's causing the flood of crappy games are the entertainment conglomerates driving programmers to work 18 days every day of every week, paying well less than tech sector average wages, and sacking teams after every game.

Games today will be more complicated and more graphics-oriented than in the past. It's what the market dictages. But by taking advantage of software engineering practices, even lightweight ones like XP, programmers will find that its easier to develop robust, extensible, maintainable engines -- they can then spend more time working on the gameplay issues instead of constant rework on the graphics engine or squashing bizarre, intermitant bugs.