Tactical Forms: Classification of Applied Games for Game Design

Proceedings, Level Up Digital Games Research …, 2003

Following Huizinga's view, the play element of culture is emphasized. While playing, by means of rules, the participants in a game interact with one another to impact on the reference system. Thousands of simulation games are available that depict many different areas and purposes of use. The variety of the gaming landscape is illustrated by linking the various foci and areas of interest in one scheme. To see the wood for the trees, the generic model of games is presented, based on the three interconnected building blocks: actors, rules, and resources. I will point out that even if games have similar forms, their purpose, subject matter, content, context of use, and intended audience(s), may be very different. A framework for constructing, deconstructing and classifying games emerges, based on the combination of the three building blocks with elements of a semiotic theory of gaming: syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

This article explores how the concept of formalism and the resulting method of formal analysis have been used and applied in the study of digital games. Three types of formalism in game studies are identified based on a review of their uses in the literature, particularly the discussion of essentialism and form that resulted from the narratology-ludology debate: 1) formalism focused on the aesthetic form of the game artifact, 2) formalism as game essentialism, and 3) formalism as a level of abstraction, related to formal language and ontology-like reasoning. These three are discussed in relation to the distinctions between form and matter, in the Aristotelian tradition, to highlight how the method of formal analysis of games appears to be dealing with matter rather than form, on a specific fundamental level of abstraction, and in turn how formal analysis becomes a misleading concept that leads to unnecessary confusion. Finally, the relationship between game essentialism and the more computer science-centric approach to ontology is studied, to account for the contemporary trend of identifying the unique properties of games and opposing them with properties of, e.g., traditional storytelling media like literature and film, explored through their aesthetic form.

User interfaces are a very important part of game aesthetics, but their impact on the semiotic processes and user experiences in different games and genres is still underestimated within current game studies. This paper argues that interface analysis can contribute to the methods of game analysis, especially with regard to a future methodology of digital hermeneutics. With the term “digital hermeneutics” I want to stress the necessity for new methodological approaches when we want to analyse digital media products, their ‘content’ and their semiotic mechanisms of meaning production. We need to pay attention to the players’ actions in order to understand the semiosis of games. In this context interface analysis is starting point to analyse by which means player actions are structured in the gaming situation. In order to explore the approach of interface analysis more closely, this paper will discuss the common interface and “ergodicity” of real-time strategy games (RTS), a popular subgenre of strategy games. I will focus on some of the visual concepts that are used as key elements of the user interface of RTS. The analysis of the functioning of interfaces can be regarded as one of the central elements of almost any approach to the issue of ‘interactivity’. This is because the handling of an interface is a necessary pre-condition of access to any participatory aspect of computer games. Its mastery is in many ways directly interwoven with the promised pleasures of the game world (e.g. as ergodic obstacle, as implicit telos or challenge, or as ‘ludic poiesis’ – an action that transforms and continues the game world). Thus games do require a specific ‘knowledge of action’ that must be adopted by understanding the ‘meaning’ of various interface elements and their pragmatic functions. If critical interface analysis can contribute to the understanding of games, it is necessary to go beyond the concept of the interface as a means to an end, a mere tool. Increasingly, the various user interfaces appear entangled within a certain excess of meaning production and its social machineries. In turn, our user interfaces have themselves become part of the production of meaning: They are a decisive component of our technologically mediated experiences and of the social machinery of cultural (re)production.

Las relaciones de conocimiento en la Biblioteca Digital del Pensamiento Novohispano. DE MIRIAM PEÑA PIMENTEL Y ERNESTO PRIANI SAISÓ, PÁG. 10 •Del mito de "la silla peligrosa" a la leyenda urbana de la aguja escondida y el contagio del SIDA. DE ÁNGEL J. GONZALO TOBAJAS, PÁG. 30 •El diablo dijo… "¡acción!": Hellboy en el laberinto Del Toro. DE RAFAEL BONILLA CEREZO Y JAVIER GUTIÉRREZ PARERA, PÁG. 51 •La obra de arte en la época de la retuiteabilidad. DE PAULO ANTONIO GATICA COTE, PÁG. 81 •When Video Games Tell Stories: A Model of Video Game Narrative Architectures. DE MARCELLO ARNALDO PICUCCI, PÁG. 99 Reseñas •Prácticas artísticas e Internet en la época de las redes sociales, de Juan Martín Prada. POR PAULO GATICA COTE, PÁG. 118 •Narrativas del simulacro: videocultura, tecnología y literatura en Argentina y Uruguay, de Jesús Montoya. POR VEGA SÁNCHEZ APARICIO, PÁG. 130 •Ciberteología. Pensar el cristianismo en tiempos de la red, de Antonio Spadaro. POR MIRIAM BORHAM PUYAL, PÁG. 136 Artículos de divulgación: Intersecciones •La crítica digital en la era poscinematográfica. DE HORACIO MUÑOZ FERNÁNDEZ, PÁG. 142 •El jazz: una aproximación a su estudio como producto artístico y como elemento argumental transmedia. DE VIRGINIA SÁNCHEZ RODRÍGUEZ, PÁG. 157 Sobre los autores, PÁG. 175

Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference on - MindTrek '12, 2012

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

Proceedings of IADIS …, 2008

In earlier work, a reference method for game production was developed. In this research, we start with extending this method with different routes that correspond to different types of games. Therefore, we propose a game categorization scheme, in order to add situationality to the reference method for game production. The categorization scheme consists of four descriptive dimensions and two supportive dimensions.

T. Velders (org.), 1996

This work proposes a classification of electronic entertainment artefacts as an instrument for the study of computer-based games. The subject of this study is limited to games designed for multipurpose home computers. A distinction between types of entertainment artefacts in general was the starting point of the classificatory effort. The classification of desktop computer games appropriates some of the nomenclature already established and broadly accepted by gamers, but also includes new terms and categories.

Conference of the Spanish Association for Videogames Sciences, 2020

Video Game Industry has grown exponentially in the last years. As a consecuence of this evolution, development environments have become more complex toolkits focused on the many features that are common in modern video games. This phenomenon has allowed the emergence of tools that non-technical users can use, making video game development accessible to virtually everyone. Due to the high interest on this type of tools we have decided to develop TRPG Maker, an intuitive and self-contained tool focused on the development of tactical role-playing games for non-technical users without interest on development's technical details. Along with the development of the tool we have carried out a first experimental validation with real users to determine the degree of usefulness and comfort of the tool, as well as to detect failures and discover possible improvements. Finally, the feedback obtained has been used to create a more complete version of the product, which has been published and made available to the community for free use.

This paper is part of an experimental approach aimed to study the nature of videogames. We will focus on videogames rules in order to try to understand the anatomy of a videogame. Being inspired by the methodology that Propp used for his classification of Russian fairy tales, we have cleared out recurrent diagrams within rules of videogames. We then analysed these rules diagrams by using the definition of a game drawn by Salen & Zimmerman, which led us to propose a definition for the nature of gameplay. Through an additional analysis, we will be able to propose a typology of videogames rules which extends the typology proposed by Frasca.

Videojogos: Fundamentos e Aplicações, 2017

The development of a game with educational purposes, similar to a game focusing on fun, requires an analysis process, which must evaluate positive and negative points, to support a plan of product improvement. The game A mansão de Quelícera, supported by the CNPq project " Diálogos entre Arte e Design " (Dialogues between Art and Design), was reviewed by a group of researchers from different institutions of higher education in Brazil. Different parts of the game were the subject of evaluation and redesign, as presented in two articles presented in SBGames 2012. In this article, the research explores parameters, strategies and analysis' techniques of digital games, pointing out existing approaches and the ones organized by researchers of the group, whose action part of the game-player interaction. The theoretical foundation for this research considered the parameters of quality for computer games and the parameters defined by the MEC (Ministry of Education-Brazil) to evaluate educational technologies, as well as made use of strategies and techniques for data collection. RESUMO: O desenvolvimento de um jogo com fins educacionais, similarmente a um jogo com foco na diversão, requer um processo de análise, o qual deve avaliar pontos positivos e negativos, para embasar um plano de aperfeiçoamento do produto. O jogo A Mansão de Quelícera, contemplado pelo projeto CNPq " Diálogos entre Arte e Design " , esteve em processo de análise por um grupo de pes-quisadores de diferentes instituições de ensino superior brasileiras. Diferentes partes do jogo foram objeto de avaliação e de remodelagem, como apresentado em dois artigos no SBGames 2012. Neste artigo, a pesquisa explora parâmetros, estratégias e técnicas de análise de jogos digitais, pontuando abordagens existentes e as organizadas por pesquisadores do grupo, cuja ação parte da interação jogador-jogo. O embasamento teórico para esta pesquisa considerou os parâmetros de qualidade 1 This article is a modified version of a previous Portuguese version, available at http://www.sbgames.org/sbgames2013/ proceedings/cultura/Culture-19_full.pdf. The authors would like to thank CNPq for financing the research that led to results outlined in this article.