Comments on: Games and x

By: Michael Abbott

Michael Abbott — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:38:15 +0000

Thanks, Dan. I’m familiar with Brathwaite’s work, but I didn’t know she had a blog. I’ll head over there forthwith.

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:41:55 +0000

Michael: I agree with you that we could use more design perspectives. You might like Brenda Brathwaite’s Applied Game Design. She approaches game design from a broader perspective, bringing in ideas from board games and the like and applying them (naturally!) to video games. I’m not crazy about the blog’s “personality,” to be honest, but it’s still a good read.

By: Michael Abbott

Michael Abbott — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:25:28 +0000

I guess we all come at this from our own perspectives and backgrounds on the receiving ends of games, and that’s part of what makes it so fun for me. Your knowledge, Sparky’s training in science - it all informs my thinking about games a lot.

Now I’d love to see something similar from the design side. I don’t mean to say game designers are a homogeneous blob of one thing, but it does seem to me we lack diversity in terms of perspective, life experiences, etc. Where are the war games made by people who have lived through a genocide? Where are the women designers?

I would be very excited to see how the very phenomenon you describe here (one that serves us well, I think) could be applied to game design.

By: Sparky Clarkson

Sparky Clarkson — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:33:55 +0000

@Dan: Oh, it initially told me I was a fatty. But I’ve lost some pounds since starting, so I’m getting closer to a good BMI. I’m not sure that the Wii Fit exercises had much to do with the weight loss, but the scoldings I got for gaining weight or failing to weigh in certainly did.

By: The Renaissance Man

The Renaissance Man — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:07:59 +0000

and Mark Methenitis blogs about video games and law at http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:53:56 +0000

I just tried Wii Fit for the first time a couple of hours ago, and I gotta say, yours sounds more polite than mine…:-)

By: Sparky Clarkson

Sparky Clarkson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:40:55 +0000

I guess I’m filling the “games and science” niche.

It’s a pretty tight niche. And Wii Fit regrets to inform me that I am slightly too short for my weight.

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:43:54 +0000

Hey, there’s room for all kinds! :-)

I should point out that I don’t mean to pigeonhole anyone — obviously most of those bloggers, if not all of them, talk about games from a variety of perspectives, including just analyzing them on their own terms. I just wanted to specifically call out some of the interesting writing people are doing that is a bit further afield.

I still haven’t crystallized my thoughts on gaming vocabulary, but I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it in the future.

By: Matthew Gallant

Matthew Gallant — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:31:14 +0000

Gosh, wish I had a unifying theme like that. Might be better than “games and pretty much anything” ;)

Wouldn’t it be great if the emerging gaming vocabulary could borrow terms from all of these disciplines? Sort of an intermediate step before requiring completely new terms.