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Academic Journal on Computer Games

Posted by michael on from the machine-gunning-the-ivory-tower dept.

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."

4 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Missing something... by ChristianBaekkelund · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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...

  2. Computer games have become feats of engineering by hillct · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    --

    --Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
  3. My Thesis! by Root+Down · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  4. The papers are weak by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.