Conference Paper Review

Designing Games to Effect Social Change
Chris Swain
Game Innovation Lab
USC School of Cinematic Arts
Los Angeles CA 90089-2211

Swain’s paper, concerning the methodology and potential of games as a medium for conveying socially “Worthy” ideas, brings across a number of interesting points. However the examples he explores are almost all small budget games that would have a limited appeal. In fact I would say that, while games that are centred around global warming or the U.S. voting system may be well crafted and have an important message to convey, they are likely to spread that message only to people who already have experience, or at least empathy, with the subject.

Swain avoids looking at games which have tried effect social change as well as reach a reasonably sized audience. The fact that so few of these efforts have reached the sales or the audience reaction they hoped for is perhaps a more pressing issue, and one that could be further investigated.

Waiting for Something to Happen: Narratives, Interactivity
and Agency and the Video Game Cut-scene
Paul Cheng
University of California, Riverside
1202 Humanities and Social Science Bldg., - English Dept. 40
Riverside, CA 92521

Interactivity, or the lack of it, is a subject that interests me. Cheng looks directly at the areas of games where the interactive and passive blur, offering some creative insights into just how the term “Interactive” can be defined. The most interesting parts of the paper concern the way that narrative and gameplay overlap in modern videogames. However, he also falls into the same trap that many researchers seem to. By drawing a very deliberate line between the players control of the game and the players experience of the game, he in some ways, undermines his own arguments.

Exporting Wars: Literature Theory and How It Explains the
Video Game Industry
Mikolaj Dymek
Dept. of Industrial Economics and Management
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

This paper mainly concerns the way that academics look at various aspects of games. It argues that using culture economics as a way of researching games is defunct and that we should instead use ludology and narratology as a means of investigation and categorization. The paper chooses self serving examples to try and convince the reader of this. While they are both important positions to look at, they have just as limited a perspective. Different games, and different aspects of those games, will require different perspectives if we want our investigations to have any true merit.

Player-Character Dynamics in Multi-Player Role Playing
Games
Anders Tychsen Doris McIlwain Thea Brolund Michael Hitchens

An interesting investigation into the way that players identify and use avatars in multiplayer online spaces. Their findings are well presented and it is obvious their research has been extensive. The central premise, that to make characters more useable by players we should tailor them to the individual’s gender, age and cultural background, seem somewhat draconian. Isn’t one of major draws of these games the chance to create, investigate and if we choose, discard new and different personas?

MMOs as Practices
Ren Reynolds

Another paper on MMOs, this time looking at whether or not the framework of MacIntyre’s practices is applicable as a way of investigating moral behaviour in MMOs. He surmises that, they do fall into the categories laid out by MacIntyre, but admits that they are frequently more complex, as they are social situations and cannot be viewed in the same way as sports or board games. A well argued and impressive piece of work.


“Gamic Realism”: Player, Perception and Action in Video
Game Play
Hanna Sommerseth
The University of Edinburgh
School of LLC, 19 George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9LD

This was a paper which held great interest for me. The ideas of player perception and interaction with games is a field which has few papers have successfully dealt with, often concerning themselves with narrow sections of play. This paper takes a more holistic approach, basing the way that people play games on Merleau-Ponty’s description of human behaviour being defined by the body, as opposed to the Cartesian principle “I think, therefore I am”. An extremely convincing and well constructed paper.