Ludophile

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-111
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
North American ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
The Invisible ◽  
Asian North American

This chapter explores the transnational dimensions of authorship through three types of video game developers: the invisible American developer, the Japanese auteur developer, and the Asian North American game developer. The absence of Western designers in game media and advertisements allows companies to blame players themselves for a game’s violence, sexual transgressions, and virtual racisms. As Western developers gain little recognition for their work, the cults of personality around Japanese designers reinvent “the Orient” as a space of development and playful innovation. Toying with Roland Barthes’s theories of love within an “amorous discourse,” this chapter explores the player as “ludophile,” whose attention to game designers (particularly Asian North American designers) can offer erotic readings of games as objects of attachment, queer intimacy, and obscurity. The “ludophile” does not invest authority into the author so much as call attention to speculative ways of playing routed through ethnic authorship.

Variations on a Theme by a Rogue A.I.: Music, Gameplay, and Storytelling in Portal 2 (Part 1 of 2)

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Reale
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Theme And Variations ◽  
Scientific Experimentation ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
Variations On A Theme

This two-video series explores how the scoring to the video game Portal 2, published by Valve Corporation, not only helps tell the game’s story, but also comments on the game developers’ philosophy of puzzle design. The first video explores how the game’s title theme 9999999, including its texture, voice leadings, and chord qualities, musically enacts dual aspects of the character of the game’s central antagonist GlaDOS: once human, her personality was uploaded into a computer mainframe where she has become a sociopathic, homicidal artificial intelligence who takes delight in subjecting humans to hazardous scientific experimentation. The second video demonstrates that 9999999 serves as the theme for a set of double variations in the game’s middle act. Since Valve’s philosophy of player training centers on iterative puzzle-design that systematically increase in complexity, and the musical accompaniments for these puzzles feature coordinated developments in musical complexity, the scoring here lets us parse the puzzle design into a kind of set of gameplay theme-and-variations.

scholarly journals The perils of project-based work: Attempting resistance to extreme work practices in video game development

Organization ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Peticca-Harris ◽  
Johanna Weststar ◽  
Steve McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Game Development ◽  
Video Game Development ◽  
Dominant Ideologies ◽  
Reader Comments ◽  
Game Developers

This article examines two blogs written by the spouses of game developers about extreme and exploitative working conditions in the video game industry and the associated reader comments. The wives of these video game developers and members of the game community decry these working conditions and challenge dominant ideologies about making games. This article contributes to the work intensification literature by challenging the belief that long hours are necessary and inevitable to make successful games, discussing the negative toll of extreme work on workers and their families, and by highlighting that the project-based structure of game development both creates extreme work conditions and inhibits resistance. It considers how extreme work practices are legitimized through neo-normative control mechanisms made possible through project-based work structures and the perceived imperative of a race or ‘crunch’ to meet project deadlines. The findings show that neo-normative control mechanisms create an insularity within project teams and can make it difficult for workers to resist their own extreme working conditions, and at times to even understand them as extreme.

Technical Issues for Video Game Developers and Architects to Prevent Photosensitivity

2020 ◽  
pp. 407-412
Author(s):  
Edoardo Ferlazzo ◽  
Chiara Sueri ◽  
Pascal Masnou ◽  
Umberto Aguglia ◽  
Sergio Mercuri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Technical Issues ◽  
Game Developers

scholarly journals Quantifying and contextualizing the impact of bioRxiv preprints through automated social media audience segmentation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jedidiah Carlson ◽  
Kelley Harris
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Research Evaluation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Audience Segmentation ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Media Audience

AbstractEngagement with scientific manuscripts is frequently facilitated by Twitter and other social media platforms. As such, the demographics of a paper’s social media audience provide a wealth of information about how scholarly research is transmitted, consumed, and interpreted by online communities. By paying attention to public perceptions of their publications, scientists can learn whether their research is stimulating positive scholarly and public thought. They can also become aware of potentially negative patterns of interest from groups that misinterpret their work in harmful ways, either willfully or unintentionally, and devise strategies for altering their messaging to mitigate these impacts. In this study, we collected 331,696 Twitter posts referencing 1,800 highly tweeted bioRxiv preprints and leveraged topic modeling to infer the characteristics of various communities engaging with each preprint on Twitter. We agnostically learned the characteristics of these audience sectors from keywords each user’s followers provide in their Twitter biographies. We estimate that 96% of the preprints analyzed are dominated by academic audiences on Twitter, suggesting that social media attention does not always correspond to greater public exposure. We further demonstrate how our audience segmentation method can quantify the level of interest from non-specialist audience sectors such as mental health advocates, dog lovers, video game developers, vegans, bitcoin investors, conspiracy theorists, journalists, religious groups, and political constituencies. Surprisingly, we also found that 10% of the highly tweeted preprints analyzed have sizable (>5%) audience sectors that are associated with right-wing white nationalist communities. Although none of these preprints intentionally espouse any right-wing extremist messages, cases exist where extremist appropriation comprises more than 50% of the tweets referencing a given preprint. These results present unique opportunities for improving and contextualizing research evaluation as well as shedding light on the unavoidable challenges of scientific discourse afforded by social media.

scholarly journals Semi-automatic construction of video game design prototypes with MaruGen

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Italo Felipe Capasso-Ballesteros ◽  
Fernando De la Rosa-Rosero
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Video Game Design ◽  
L Systems ◽  
Role Based ◽  
Game Designer ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
Expression Mechanism

Machinations Ruleset Generator (MaruGen) is a semi-automatic system for the generation of mechanics, rules, spaces (environments), and missions for video games. The objective of this system is to offer an expression mechanism for the video game designer role based on the definition of rules, and the ability to explore the concepts of progression and emergence in video games by using a formal, usable, and defined tool to design games with innovative and complex elements, and behaviors defined from combinations of basic elements. Based on the expressed designs and with the participation of programmers and video game artists, MaruGen allows the generation of agile video game prototypes in the Unity game engine. These prototypes can be analyzed by the entire workgroup to look for games with diverse complexities that make them attractive to their users. MaruGen is based on the expression of rules on elements of interest in video games and the rewriting mechanism using L-Systems for the generation of procedural content. MaruGen was evaluated in the construction of the Cubic Explorer video game and tested by gamers and video game developers during the Game Jam Ludum Dare 38.

Spatial Design and Placemaking: Learning From Video Games

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Álvarez ◽  
Fábio Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Multiple Viewpoints ◽  
Spatial Design ◽  
Fundamental Value ◽  
Game Developers ◽  
Games Development

Spatial design and placemaking are fundamental to create a vibrant urban life, whereas video games are designed primarily for temporary amusement. However, they both share the same essence of creating large-scale artificial environments for human interaction as their fundamental value. Video game developers have been successfully using spatial design tools to create virtual environments to engage players and build narratives, understanding, and appropriating many characteristics of what makes a place tick. In this article, we argue that spatial design and placemaking could learn from video games development, by incorporating features ranging from storytelling and multiple viewpoints to participatory practices and flexible design.

Best Practices for the Design and Development of Ethical Learning Video Games

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Rudy McDaniel ◽  
Stephen M. Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Design And Development ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Ethical Learning ◽  
Literature Base ◽  
Applied Design ◽  
Game Developers

This article builds upon earlier research (McDaniel & Fiore, 2010) in which the authors presented case studies focused on the design and development of two original ethical learning video games. Through this case study and a review of relevant literature, the authors explored the content creation of, and theoretical rationale for, the design and development of ethics games. Both games were geared toward an undergraduate student audience as casual learning games to be completed in a few hours of gameplay. To update and expand this original work, the authors reviewed contemporary research on identity, cognition, and self in relation to video game environments as well as literature dealing more specifically with ethics and video games. From this literature base and their applied design experiences, the authors offer ten guidelines as best practices to follow for aspiring ethics game developers.

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