lost virginity

Ah, almost forgot, dear gaming diary. I lost my virginity during the weekend! Well, my table-top-RPG virginity that is ;)

I guess its by accident that I did not know rpg-players in my youth, so I never ended up starting to play or even try. Well, now the opportunity presented itself, and even though I hesitated a bit I was glad I took it. It was a so-called one-shot, a bit of a half-lifeish scenario. Even though I don't think it's my cup of tea, it was very enlightening - if I try a couple times more, I might even say something about RPGs in the thesis...that was one of the reasons to participate anyway. Thanks to Mikki the GM for having me.

crime fu

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to try out True Crime: Streets of L.A. It's a crossing between GTA and Getaway, and seems to fall between the two in terms of quality as well. Actually it got me pretty excited at first, but slowly some irritating things - interface, AI, incoherencies in the game-world - started to bugger.

Analysis-wise, it might present a suitable point of comparison when I'm updating my theories and analysis on simulation & Vice City. In any case, there are lots of interesting things to keep me going at solving crimes at least for a while. The Chinese-American main character is quite well sketched, and the hip-hop/nu metal soundtrack rules. And having spent one's childhood watching crime series on tv, there's few things that beat chasing criminals on urban streets with a siren wailing. I wish they made a game adaptation of Hill Street Blues... Let's be careful out there!

toc updated

I finally got round to update my table of contents! It's been revised quite a bit, and I bet the structure will change at least slightly, but I'm pretty well set for following this one. The subtitle has changed a zillion times, and so it did again.

Still, I don't want to give too much away, so I'm keeping the case study games under wraps for now. You'll get hints by reading the gaming diary ... ;)

MMG or MM

Go and read Greg Costikyan's rant on why MMGs are games, or at least they should be - it makes a lot of sense.

The Ring has power!

As a consumer of games, I've been really confused with the string of Lord of the Rings games. Not being a fan of the phenomenon as such but having enjoyed the movies I was slightly interested in the game adaptations, but reportedly the first game sucked. Well, I've been reading that the following games are better, and yesterday I had a chance to try out the Two Towers on the xbox.

I was really impressed! The game itself is your better-than-average fighting, but what fascinated me, both as a gamer and a theorist, were the ways in which the film scenarios and narrative had been implemented into the game. The game looks and sounds awesome. Besides the movie footage, the film score was there to enhance the experience. Moreover, the game dynamics seemed carefully temporally structured - the variation between narrative sequences and gameplay felt enjoyable, and the cutscenes were thankfully short. I have often frowned at the 'play the movie' ad slogans, but for once, a game actually managed to convey that very feeling. Kudos to Stormfront studios!

...so I guess that after seeing the final film, I should check The Return of the King game as well...

game on workshop

Quick piece of info for my Finnish audience: Game on -luennon materiaalit, olkaa hyvä!

Animal Kamakura!

I'm glad to report that after the Summer memory card tragedy, we have built a new Animal Crossing village with Satu, and even regained our most beloved friend, Pinky the little bear :)

We decided to name the new village Kamakura, after visiting this wonderous historical area near Tokyo last month. And now that we're not learning the ropes of the game anymore, we've pretty much reached the stage where we were last time around, in just a few weeks! It is a truly captivating, heart-warming game.

Otherwise, I've played some Wario Ware on my GBA. Its single-mechanic games are great for me to illustrate my game mechanics theories!

On the non-electronic front, I found Sunda to Sahul board game from a shop in Akihabara...Just played it once, but it seems definitely promising, and actually enables solitary play as well.

LEVEL Up critique

Positive feedback about the conference has been posted to the gamesnetwork list, among other places. As mentioned in the previous entry, it was inspiring and pleasant experience for me as well. Still, some critique is in order, too:

First, the cd-rom accompanying the book proceedings is produced in less than satisfactory manner. The PDFs are not typeset according to the book format, which was something that one would have expected. Images are not optimised for printing, and some tables are plain unreadable. There are even some papers with plain stylings straight out of a word processor. This not only makes the papers less readable but demotes them to a somewhat second class status - which they by default should not be, of course - even though the book vs. cd-rom might already contribute to promoting a hierarchy of sorts.

Also, it was observed in the gamesnetwork list that EDGE magazine seems to be the most often quoted reference in the proceedings. I'm a happy EDGE reader - but seriously, folks. This has to do with a larger issue. I'm disappointed at the fact that surprisingly few papers acknowledge the work in the Computer Games and Digital Cultures profeedings from the Tampere conference (2002), as many topics were discussed there and it was, unofficially at least, the 'birth' conference of DiGRA.

I believe that part of developing game studies into a creditable disclipline has to do with engaging with the dialogical nature of academic work - this takes the somewhat tedious shape of formal referencing, but on a more abstract level, a considerably less tedious and less formal respect towards peers and positioning oneself into a tradition (even if it was only a few years old, as with MMOPRG studies etc.). Innate theory, produced inside a bubble, might be possible, but it does not qualify to academic standards.

Referencing does not necessarily mean that papers and articles become less attractive and more cumbersome to read. It is the task of editing to take ensure that this does not happen. Editing is not only about suggesting cuts & revisions, but in an academic context, it is also about making suggestions about previous work that the author(s) should take a look at. I know that a conference proceedings is not the ideal case to do that, but an anthology that has run through the publication process of a distinguished publisher should be. This became evident when picking up the Video Game Theory Reader from the conference - even though it has quality papers, there are too many omissions of previous work, I argue.

That's my few cents - please comment by e-mail, or on the gamesnework list, if you wish.

reschedule time

Ok, I'm ready to admit to the obvious fact. I cannot make my deadline. So, I will set a new one! The best, and most realistic candidate at the moment is March the 19th - just before GDC2004, which I plan to attend.

inspiration & reorientation

All right, the LEVEL UP Conference in Utrecht was good. For me, it was, first and foremost, inspirational - I now have all this energy to round up my all-explaining superior theories ;) I just have to find the time to do it...as well as read many of the papers in the proceedings as well as Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman & Katie Salen, whose workshop in the conference I enjoyed. I hope to drop some more impressions in an entry or two later, after reorientating myself back to the run of things.

While travelling, my article on simulations and Vice City was published in Digital Dichtung. I wrote it before coming up with my theories on rules, so I will revise it accordingly for my thesis. I also hope to include discussion of sports games, the most overlooked game genre ever, research-wise!