An open access journal has published an issue about games, Games as Transformative Works.

TOC

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Note for myself: check Game Development Course at ITU.

Lies and Seduction earned Special Recognition: Adventure Game Development at Unity Awards 2008. We submitted a very early version to the contest. Hopefully the current version is even better.

Unity people got the videos out from the Unity 2008 conference yesterday, and I went to see what they say about the game. Sam Kalman introduced the game roughly as follows:

Lies and Seductions… Very much an adult  game. Not for kids at all. Um and umm. I mean, you try to get the right person to sack.

Mick West writes about how to make NPCs or game system to make mistakes in a piece  Intelligent Mistakes: How to Incorporate Stupidity Into Your AI Code at Gamasutra; something we needed also think when designing poker minigame for Lies and Seductions.

Game Studies journal seems to be resurrected after long coma.

Issue 8(2)

• Jørgensen: Audio and Gameplay: An Analysis of PvP Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft
• Tyler: A Procrustean Probe
• Sample: Virtual Torture: Videogames and the War on Terror
• Sicart: Defining Game Mechanics
• Zagal & Bruckman: Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games

Issue 8(1)

• Miller: The Accidental Carjack: Ethnography, Gameworld Tourism, and Grand Theft Auto
• Karlsen: Quests in Context: A Comparative Analysis of Discworld and World of Warcraft
• Barton: How’s the Weather: Simulating Weather in Virtual Environments
• Hutchison: Making the Water Move: Techno-Historic Limits in the Game Aesthetics of Myst and Doom
• Höglund: Electronic Empire: Orientalism Revisited in the Military Shooter
• Ouellette: “I Hope You Never See Another Day Like This”: Pedagogy & Allegory in “Post 9/11″ Video Games
• Hall & Baird: Improving Computer Game Narrative Using Polti Ratios

This is old publication from 2005. The paper was presented at Changing Views: Worlds in Play Conference, Vancouver.

Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views – Worlds in Play.
© 2005 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.

Petri Lankoski
Hypermedia Laboratory

ABSTRACT
Characters are in an important role in many games. A good player character is likely to leave good lasting impression about the game. It has been argued that creating the personality for a player character is problematic. However, there are multiple methods used in games to inform a player about the nature of a player character: predefined functions, goals, possible and impossible actions, and more traditional audiovisual means. In this paper the player character of Silent Hill 3 is analyzed using presented categorization. This paper shows that the classification is a useful analytic tool, but it needs to be developed further to include belongings and space as elements describing a player character. The categorization also highlights aspects that need to be addressed when designing player characters.
Keywords
Game characters, interpretation, computer games
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This is an old paper published in 2003 containing an early version of character recognition framework developed further for my thesis. This version contains some edits compared to version available in Digra Digital Library due to quick html conversion (no foot notes, tables are lists, etc.).

Presented at Level Up Conference Proceedings, Utrech: University of Utrech, November, 2003. A presented version is downloadable at digra digital library http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05087.10012.pdf, © Authors & DiGRA, 2003. Free for educational and research use; commercial use restricted and only by permission.

Petri Lankoski, Satu Heliö, Inger Ekman
Hypermedia Laboratory
University of Tampere

ABSTRACT
Interpretation of characters is a fundamental feature of human behavior. Even with
limited information available, people will assign personality – even to inanimate objects.
Characters in computer games will be attributed personality based on their appearance
and behavior. The interpretation of these characters affects the whole game experience.
Designing the protagonist character in computer games is different from the design of
static characters (e.g. film or literature), because the player’s actions will affect the
nature of the character. There are, however, many ways to control and guide the actions
of the protagonist and thus the character’s nature. By setting goals, scripting pre-
defined actions and choosing what kind of actions to implement, the game designer can
restrict the player’s freedom. This, together with the characterization of the character,
will affect the interpretation of the character.
Keywords
Characters, Design, Interpretation

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