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Ask Gaming [Designer, Professor, Gadfly] Ian Bogost
Ian Bogost is a professor of game theory at Georgia Tech, a game designer, a prolific writer, an entrepreneur, and a bit of a prankster. These roles which sometimes overlap, notably in his surprise success satirical Facebook game Cow Clicker, which you can think of as the Anti-Zynga. Wired has a fresh article up about Bogost (which cleverly embeds a sort of micro version of Cow Clicker). It also mentions another game — my favorite of his projects — that should be on the mind of every TSA employee, the 2009 release Jetset. Ask Ian about clicking cows, being an academic provocateur as well as a participant in the world of gaming, and breaking into the world of social gaming. (Please break unrelated questions into multiple comments.)
And offers much more feedback.
I lead an enthusiastic clan of RuneScape players, and they tend to have a pretty broad interest in gaming and game development. As the lead programmer/IT guy for the clan, I'm frequently asked about programming and how to go about doing it.
I'm considering setting up a fairly basic "mafia wars" type of game for them to expand and update, coded in python/html5 and running on google app engine for simplicity's sake. Python has a huge amount of self learning resources out there, and putting a python project on GAE is my go-to method for getting a project up and running quickly.
Should I encourage them to move into building a facebook app, or should I encourage them to keep it a standalone website?
On the one hand facebook gives better potential for expanding their user base, but on the other there's the 30% fee for using facebook credits and their horrible API documentation. While I want to keep things as straightforward as possible for them, I would like to see their game accumulate a decent number of players so they can show it off.
Can you explain the connection between Object-Oriented Philosophy and videogame theory? From what I understand Object-Oriented philosophy is an attempt to move away from Continental, "correlationist" metaphysics -- and yet language used to explain and talk about it is very much steeped in speculative Continental philosophy. Does videogame theory require a metaphysical framework? Do you see a place for "analytical" traditions, which are leaning more heavily on cognitive and neuro-scientific findings?
What do you think of AAA studios exploring more moral grey areas (e.g. hostage shooting airport level in COD:MW2) as a form of procedural rhetoric? Do you think players' natural tendencies of (in this case) non-violence toward innocents is solidified or shaken by simulating such acts?
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
I just want to point out that Cow Clicker was made as a response to the shitty flash games that you're talking about. And amazingly, sadly, and happily became rather successful, despite it being a simple, transparent version of everything that's "wrong" with shitty flash games. That should tell you something about how we judge game design.
Hi Ian! Can you comment about game mechanics that you wish designers explored in more depth?
I have long described both MMO gaming and Facebook social games as being a "well-padded Skinner box" for their staggered/random reward system. Do you see any possibility for anything else to eventually replace this model?
Do you like Japanese imports?
The summary needs to be fixed, game theory is not the study of video games. (Bogost doesn't describe himself as a "professor of game theory", whoever wrote the summary does)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
Have you run into any issues involving parallel programming in game design, and how did you over come them?
So, he's written one FB game and we get to ask him questions to make him feel important?
I've talked to, worked with, and met mod developers with more experience in the video game industry. Not to poopoo, but this really feels lackluster. I understand it takes a lot to get experience in the video game industry and it must be really hard finding developers that actually want to teach after being through the gauntlet, but this makes me weep a bit. It's like talking to a professor that hasn't really spent any time working on a dissertation or who has no real in depth work. It really makes me question how meaningful any of his responses will actually be outside of personal opinion anyone can have simply by watching the video game industry from the outside and reading about it.
At the closing plenary for the 2011 IA Summit, Cennydd Bowles called out the whole 'UX' (User Experience) community as a whole, in that the role that most of them play is in trying to get people to spend more time on websites and buy more stuff, rather than doing stuff that really improves the world. You've taken a similar stance on 'gamification', but there's at least two groups (Zooniverse and FoldIt) using it for good as they're helping to advance science. Can you think of any other situations where we could use video games to improve the world at a grand scale, and not just simple 'edutainment'?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.