Games, numeracy, and uncertainty
Jared Lorince on Jan 7, 2013Take a look at this word problem, quoted from Gerd Gigerenzer’s Calculated Risks. Before you read on, try to come up with a ballpark estimate of the answer; what does your gut tell you? The probability that a woman of age 40 has breast cancer...
Making failure less fail in World of Warcraft
Lauren Collister on Dec 26, 2012In my time doing a World of Warcraft ethnography, I have had to acquire many skills; perhaps the most valuable of these was the fine art of failure. Let’s back up. I’ve been reading John Ferrara’s Playful Design: Creating Game...
Presence and Games – An interview with Paul Skalsk...
Jim Cummings on Dec 5, 2012Back in October I gave a talk at the 2012 conference for the International Society for Presence Researchers. While there I sat in on a number of fascinating presentations, including several by Dr. Paul Skalski, professor and researcher in the...
Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE
Jared Lorince on Nov 29, 2012REAMDE is speculative fiction author Neal Stephenson’s latest novel. His previous work has dealt with virtual reality, cryptography, Baroque-era Europe, and more, but REAMDE represents his first explicit foray into video games as a literary...
Ethnography and Gaming: A Short Primer
Lauren Collister on Nov 18, 2012In this post, I am going to introduce the methodology of ethnography to this blog, and discuss some of the ways that ethnography can be a useful tool for understanding players of games and their motivations. Jared touched on ethnography in his post...
Introducing Lauren Collister
Travis L. Ross on Nov 18, 2012I’d like to take a moment to introduce Lauren Collister, who is a new writer joining our staff. Lauren is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Linguistics at University of Pittsburgh. Her focus is in sociolinguistics, which is the study of...
A technical note for game analysts
Isaac Knowles on Nov 12, 2012Twice now I have reviewed and subsequently rejected papers that attempt to analyze the price of games in terms of real currency and the price of virtual items in terms of virtual currency. I’ve had to do so on the basis of a fairly serious...
How to Reduce Antisocial Behavior
Travis L. Ross on Nov 2, 2012Recently Bungie (Halo 4) and NCsoft (Guild wars 2) have both taken a very aggressive stance on antisocial behavior in chat channels. Both companies have begun to ban players who use hate speech. Now, as far as I can tell banning such behavior can...
Reality Mining at Cogito
Jared Lorince on Oct 31, 2012Cogito Health is a young technology startup based in Charlestown, MA developing tools for real-time monitoring of customer engagement. Though their way of operationalizing engagement differs in marked ways from the game-centric way we usually...
What Can Serious Games Learn from Soap Operas?
Gabriel Recchia on Oct 24, 2012The serious games industry—if “industry” is the right word for a ragtag handful of academics and idealistic startups—is in a deceptively precarious position. Funding for games and gamified applications is at record levels in the public and...
Refining the flow diagram
Jared Lorince on Oct 19, 2012Last month, I posted on the origins of Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, but the diagram I focused on there (and that tends to pervade discussion of flow among game designers) is actually a bit dated. Preparing for a reading group on...
ICA CFP – Motivational Uses and Applications...
Jim Cummings on Oct 16, 2012This year’s 63rd annual conference of the International Communication Association will be including a special pre-conference event focusing on the power of play and the motivational aspects of digital games. The event will take place in...