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Define real, Moron!
(2011)
Academic language should not be a ghetto dialect at odds with ordinary language, but rather an extension that is compatible with lay-language. To define ‘game’ with the unrealistic ambition of satisfying both lay-people and experts should not be a major concern for a game ontology, since the field it addresses is subject to cultural evolution and diachronic change. Instead of the impossible mission of turning the common word into an analytic concept, a useful task for an ontology of games is to model game differences, to show how the things we call games can be different from each other in a number of different ways.
Space is understood best through movement, and complex spaces require not only movement but navigation. The theorization of navigable space requires a conceptual representation of space which is adaptable to the great malleability of video game spaces, a malleability which allows for designs which combine spaces with differing dimensionality and even involve non-Euclidean configurations with contingent connectivity. This essay attempts to describe the structural elements of video game space and to define them in such a way so as to make them applicable to all video game spaces, including potential ones still undiscovered, and to provide analytical tools for their comparison and examination. Along with the consideration of space, there will be a brief discussion of navigational logic, which arises from detectable regularities in a spatial structure that allow players to understand and form expectations regarding a game’s spaces.
Die besondere Beziehung zwischen Humboldt und Darwin, zwei der bedeutendsten Persönlichkeiten in der Welt der Naturwissenschaften und der Biologie des 19. Jahrhunderts, wird detailliert auf den verschiedenen Ebenen ihres Kontaktes analysiert, sowohl was das real stattgefundene persönliche Treffen betrifft, als auch hinsichtlich ihrer Korrespondenz und der Koinzidenz von Ideen. Dieser wechselseitige Blick zeigt uns wie sich die beiden Gelehrten gegenseitig wahrnahmen, ob sie wirklich versuchten, mit dem Paradigma ihrer bedeutenden Vorgänger zu brechen, oder ob sie lediglich schrittweise das bereits erlangte Wissen erweiterten, bis es durch die Erstellung einer genialen Idee zu einem Bruch des bisherigen Wissens kommt. Bekannt ist die wiederholte Referenz von Darwin auf die Werke Humboldts, insbesondere auf die Tagebücher des deutschen Naturwissenschaftler und seine Art der Beschreibung der amerikanischen Natur in ihrer ganzen Reichhaltigkeit. Weniger bekannt hingegen sind andere Verweise in seiner Autobiografie, sowie die wissenschaftliche Verwendung des Humboldtschen Werkes oder die Zitate in seiner Korrespondenz, die in diesem Beitrag aufgezeigt werden. Darüber hinaus wird die Verwendung der frühen Schriften von Darwin durch Humboldt in einigen seiner Publikationen, vor allem im Kosmos, erwähnt.
This is the second part of the presentation of data elicited by means of QUIS within the project on information structure in Gur and Kwa languages. Whereas the first part (Anne Schwarz) introduces the project and the rationals behind the development of the focus translation task, this part provides some comparative remarks gained from the data presented in both parts.
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Selection of QUIS Data for Comparative Goals 2.1 Fairy Tale (Topic and Focus in Coherent Discourse) 2.2 Focus Translation Extract 3. On the Presentation and Comparison of the Data 4. Buli 4.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Buli 4.2 Focus Translation Extract in Buli 5. Kɔnni 5.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Kɔnni 5.2 Focus Translation Extract 6. Baatɔnum 6.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Baatɔnum 6.2 Focus Translation Extract in Baatɔnum
This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one.
Ngizim fieldnotes
(2011)
This chapter presents field notes of the West Chadic language Ngizim, spoken in North-East Nigeria. In Ngizim, subject focus is indicated by subject inversion, whereas the word order of sentences with focused non-subjects can remain unchanged. The goal of the field work was to find out more about focus marking in Ngizim.
This paper is a critical examination of the relationship between reality and simulation. After a brief theoretical introduction, it unfolds its argument on an empirical level, using a thick game playing description of GRAND THEFT AUTO IV. This in-game experience serves as material for the subsequent analysis, in the course of which defining characteristics of computer game playing are formulated. Finally, on the basis of this analysis, the paper postulates the hypothesis that playing computer games like GTA IV promotes competency in deconstructing simulations and implements a cyclic logic of recreation.
In recent years computer games have been discussed by a variety of disciplines from various perspectives. A fundamental difference with other media, which is a point of continuous consideration, is the specific relationship between the viewer and the image, the player and the game apparatus, which is a characteristic of video games as a dispositive. Terms such as immersion, participation, interactivity, or ergodic are an indication of the deep interest in this constellation. This paper explores the resonance between body and image in video games like REZ, SOUL CALIBUR and DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION from the perspective of a temporal ontology of the image, taking particular account of the structuring power of the interface and its subject positioning aspects.
The debate whether to locate the narrative of digital games a) as part of the code or b) as part of the performance will be the starting point for an analysis of two roleplaying games: the single-player game ZELDA: MAJORA’S MASK and the Korean MMORPG AION and their respective narrative logics. When we understand games as abstract code systems, then the narrative logic can be understood as embedded on the code level. With a focus on the player’s performance, the actualization of the possibilities given in the code system is central. Both logics, that of code and that of performance, are reflected in players’ narratives based on the playing experience. They do reflect on the underlying code and rules of the game system as they do reflect on the game world and their own performance within. These narratives rely heavily on the source text – the digital game –, which means that they give insights into the underlying logics of the source text. I will discuss the game structure, the players’ performance while playing the game and the performance of the player after playing the game producing fan narratives. I conceive the narrative structure and the performance of the player playing as necessarily interconnected when we discuss the narrative logics of a game. Producing fan narratives is understood as a performance as well. This performance is based on the experience the players made while playing and refers to both logics of the game they use as their source text.
Reflecting on how and with what kind of consequences something artificial, something manufactured becomes naturalized in video games will be the central issue of this text. It deals with the question of how the video game hides its artificiality in terms of technique. In a certain sense this retrieves one of the fundamental questions of modernity and industrialization: How does the manufacturing of our environment become a naturalized, self-evident and indubitable process?
Video games structure play as performance in both the virtual and the physical space. On the one hand, the player encounters game worlds as virtual stages to act upon. On the other hand, the game world stages the player and re-frames the play space. This essay sets out to suggest some of the elements that are at work in this dualism of games as performative media. The two key elements here are the mediation of the game environment and the transformation of the player through virtual puppetry. Both cases will be argued with a focus on spatiality in performance.
Communication, simulation, interactive narrative and ubiquitous computing are widely accepted as perspectives in humancomputer interaction. This paper proposes play as another possible perspective. Everyday uses of the computer increasingly show signs of similarity to play. This is not discussed with regard to the so-called media society, the playful society, the growing cultural acceptance of the computer, the spread of computer games or a new version of Windows, but in view of the playful character of interaction with the computer that has always been part of it. The exploratory learning process involved with new software and the creative tasks that are often undertaken when using the computer may support this argument. Together with its high level of interactivity, these observations point to a sense of security, autonomy and freedom of the user that produce play and are, in turn, produced by play. This notion of play refers not to the playing of computer games, but to an implicit, abstract (or symbolic) process based on a certain attitude, the play spirit. This attitude is discussed regarding everyday computer use and related to the other mentioned perspectives.
Logic as a medium
(2010)
Computer games are rigid in a peculiar way: the logic of computation was the first to shape the early games. The logic of interactivity marked the action genre of games in the second place, while in massive multiplayer online gaming all the emergences of the net occur to confront us with just another type of logic. These logics are the media in which the specific forms of computer games evolve. Therefore, a look at gaming supposing that there are three eras of computation is taken: the early synthetical era, ruled by the Turing machine and by mainframe computers, by the IPO principle of computing; the second, mimetical era, when interactivity and graphical user interfaces dominate, the domain of the feedback loop; and the third, emergent era, in which the complexity of networked personal computers and their users is dominant.
Seki
(2010)
Game space can be conceived of as being structured by varying levels of ruledness, i.e. it oscillates between openness and closure, between playability and gameness. The movement through game space can then be described as a vector defined by possibility spaces, which are generated organically out of the interplay between ruled and unruled space. But we can only define rules ex negativo, therefore the possibility of breaking the rules is always already inscribed in this vector of movement. This can be conceptualized as a boundary operation that takes the difference between ‘ordinary life’ and ‘play’ as its argument, and which thus generates the difference between ‘play’ and ‘game’.
This paper comprises four parts. Firstly, an overview of the mathematics of decision logic in relation to games and of the construction of narration and characters is given. This includes specific limits of the use of decision logic pertaining to games in general and to storytelling in particular. Secondly, the rule system as the medial unconsciousness is focused on. Thirdly, remarks are made on the debate between ludology and narratology, which had to fail as it missed the crucial point: the computer game as a medium. Finally, gaming in general, as well as its relationship to chance, coincidence, emergence, and event is discussed.
This paper discusses different options for institutional arrangements providing network infrastructure on the basis of the ‘transaction cost economic’ approach using the example of highway infrastructure. Drawing on lessons learned from highway provision in three European countries (Italy, Poland and Spain), five models of highway provision are discussed: public authorities, public enterprises, user clubs, private partnerships or a regulated private market. Three options to regulate the private market are presented: a rate-of-return regulation, a price-cap-regulation and franchise bidding. The main factor that makes private construction and provision expensive are the risk premiums of private companies that are incorporated for political risks. It is argued that the optimal model of highway provision depends on each country-specific situation. This is mainly influenced by the regulatory experience within the country on one hand and by the stage of highway development on the other.
Der Autor diskutiert in seinem Aufsatz kritisch den Friedensvertrag von Lomé, der am 7. Juli 1999 offiziell den bewaffneten Konflikt in Sierra Leone beendete. Nach einer kurzen Zusammenfassung der allgemeinen Regelungen des Vertrags stellt der Autor die in Artikel 9 des Abkommens vorgesehene Generalamnestie den bindenden Grundsätzen des internationalen Rechts gegenüber. Internationale Verbrechen, wie Völkermord, Kriegsverbrechen oder Folterung sind als Verstoß gegen ius cogens-Normen von allen Staaten zu verfolgen. Nach der Erörterung der betreffenden Konventionen, internationalen Abkommen und Fallentscheidungen des IGH, die diesen Grundsatz festschreiben, beschreibt er den - Friedensprozessen inhärenten - Konflikt, ein Gleichgewicht zwischen notwendiger Versöhnung und strafrechtlicher Verfolgung zu finden. Bei der Betrachtung des Fallrechts schließt Phenyo neuere Entscheidungen ein, wie die des britischen House of Lords im Fall Pinochet, die sowohl nationalen wie internationalen Gerichten das Recht auf Strafverfolgung internationaler Verbrechen zugestand. Stellvertretend für die weite Kritik der Generalamnestie des Lomé-Abkommens zitiert der Autor den VN-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan, der die Generalamnestie als unvereinbar mit der Tätigkeit und Aufgabe der internationalen Straftribunale in Den Haag und Arusha sowie des zukünftigen Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes ansieht. Phenyo schließt sich mit seiner kurzen Analyse des Friedensabkommens der kritischen Haltung Annans an und sieht nur eine geringe Möglichkeit für die Durchsetzung der fraglichen Amnestie, deren Gültigkeit durch die wiederaufgeflammten Kämpfe in Sierra Leone auch faktisch in Frage gestellt worden sind. (trai)