Blogging through my Dissertation

New Meat for Dissertation Flesh February 19, 2008

Posted by nutheadgreg in Uncategorized.
Tags: delicious, Game theory, video games
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Below I have summarised a journal article that I found on the net, it poses some interesting ideas about understanding Video Games, and provides a definiton of the authors understanding of how they work. It gives reference to society too, which is always useful.

Beyond Play: A New Approach to Games (Thomas M. Malaby, 2007)

- His ideas are centred around the following definition of a game

“A Game is a semi-bounded and socially legitimate domain of contrived contingency that generates interpretable outcomes”

- In this work Malaby is trying to move away from the common pitfalls that other game theorists fall into. He suggests that looking at games in a way the removes them out of the context of play, and holds them up against reality is an inappropriate way of studying them. For example, suggesting that video games cause violence. However, he also wants to avoid theorists who see games in a utopian light, in that they are a positive thing to be doing or playing, an example of this is studies that demonstrate how playing games boosts in a learning environment helps kids learning.

- He suggests that existing (normative) treatments of games, that separate between games and play run into problems. As by treating play activities as pleasurable and fun experiences is more or less the same way in which games are treated. As a result how is it possible to say that the two are separate, when it is clear that games and play intrinsically, is the same thing?

- To get away from existing treatments, Malaby explains that a better way of viewing games is in a non-normative way, where games are considered as socially constructed artefacts. Under this he suggests the follow ideas about games:

- Games are processual i.e. the experience of them is an ongoing and evolutionary process.

- Games can change as they are played i.e. rules altered in monopoly where chance and community card fines are paid into a pool, and whoever lands on free parking can claim the money.

- They can change when new ways are found to play games (can lead to rule changes) i.e. being able to see through walls on Counter-Strike, which was outlawed from the game as it gave you an advantage over other players.

- That games are grounded in human practice in that they are always a process of becoming something.

- That games are not reducible by rules at any given moment that may produce new practices or meaning.

- Malaby goes on to say that games are like social processes as they are dynamic and recursive, reproducing their form through time. It doesn’t matter how stable a game is as it can change like social processes.

- From all of the above, it is suggested that it is possible to identify the universal feature of games as a set of processes.

- Games are seen as a contrived contingency, this is because games are designed to have a number of different possible paths (contingencies) to follow some are predictable others are unpredictable. As a result of this games are popular as they allow us to see what could have been if a different route is taken. This can be done in RL, but risk is involved. In games bigger risks can be taken than in RL.

- The contingency within games is utilised by game designers, it is there job to contrive how multiple options (contingencies) are integrated into their games. The effectiveness in which this is done, will impact on how well the game is received by the audience.