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This paper explores the role of the intentional stance in games, arguing that any question of artificial intelligence has as much to do with the co-option of the player’s interpretation of actions as intelligent as any actual fixed-state systems attached to agents. It demonstrates how simply using a few simple and, in system terms, cheap tricks, existing AI can be both supported and enhanced. This includes representational characteristics, importing behavioral expectations from real life, constraining these expectations using diegetic devices, and managing social interrelationships to create the illusion of a greater intelligence than is ever actually present. It is concluded that complex artificial intelligence is often of less importance to the experience of intelligent agents in play than the creation of a space where the intentional stance can be evoked and supported.
Being "in the game"
(2008)
When people describe themselves as being “in the game” this is often thought to mean they have a sense of presence, i.e. they feel like they are in the virtual environment (Brown/Cairns 2004). Presence research traditionally focuses on user experiences in virtual reality systems (e.g. head mounted displays, CAVE-like systems). In contrast, the experience of gaming is very different. Gamers willingly submit to the rules of the game, learn arbitrary relationships between the controls and the screen output, and take on the persona of their game character. Also whereas presence in VR systems is immediate, presence in gaming is gradual. Due to these differences, one can question the extent to which people feel present during gaming. A qualitative study was conducted to explore what gamers actually mean when they describe themselves as being “in the game.” Thirteen gamers were interviewed and the resulting grounded theory suggests being “in the game” does not necessarily mean presence (i.e. feeling like you are the character and present in the VE). Some people use this phrase just to emphasize their high involvement in the game. These findings differ with Brown and Cairns as they suggest at the highest state of immersion not everybody experiences presence. Furthermore, the experience of presence does not appear dependent on the game being in the first person perspective or the gamer being able to empathize with the character. Future research should investigate why some people experience presence and others do not. Possible explanations include: use of language, perception of presence, personality traits, and types of immersion.
Extending Alexander Galloway’s analysis of the action-image in videogames, this essay explores the concept in relation to its source: the analysis of cinema by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The applicability of the concept to videogames will, therefore, be considered through a comparison between the First Person Shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Andrey Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. This analysis will compellingly explore the nature of videogame-action, its relation to player-perceptions and its location within the machinic and ludic schema.
Most play spaces support completely different actions than we normally would think of when moving through real space, out of play. This paper therefore discusses the relationship between selected game rules and game spaces in connection to the behaviors, or possible behaviors, of the player. Space will be seen as a modifier or catalyst of player behavior. Six categories of game space are covered: Joy of movement, exploration, tactical, social, performative, and creative spaces. Joy of movement is examined in detail, with a briefer explanation of the other categories.
Landscape aesthetics drawing on philosophy and psychology allow us to understand computer games from a new angle. The landscapes of computer games can be understood as environments or images. This difference creates two options: 1. We experience environments or images, or 2. We experience landscape simultaneously as both. Psychologically, the first option can be backed up by a Vygotskian framework (this option highlights certain non-mainstream subject positions), the second by a Piegatian (highlighting cognitive mapping of game worlds).
This paper highlights the different ways of perceiving video games and video game content, incorporating interactive and non-interactive methods. It examines varying cognitive and emotive reactions by persons who are used to play video games as well as persons who are unfamiliar with the aesthetics and the most basic game play rules incorporated within video games. Additionally, the principle of “Flow” serves as a theoretical and philosophical foundation. A small case-study featuring two games has been made to emphasize the numerous possible ways of perception of video games.
The space-image
(2008)
In recent computer game research a paradigmatic shift is observable: Games today are first and foremost conceived as a new medium characterized by their status as an interactive image. The shift in attention towards this aspect becomes apparent in a new approach that is, first and foremost, aware of the spatiality of games or their spatial structures. This rejects traditional approaches on the basis that the medial specificity of games can no longer be reduced to textual or ludic properties, but has to be seen in medial constituted spatiality. For this purpose, seminal studies on the spatiality of computer games are resumed and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. In connection with this, and against the background of the philosophical method of phenomenology, we propose three steps in describing computer games as space images: With this method it is possible to describe games with respect to the possible appearance of spatiality in a pictorial medium.