Video Games, Walking the Fine Line between Art and Entertainment

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Folkerts Jef
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

This paper is partly a response to the ongoing debate in the game world about whether games can be art, and partly an excerpt from my Ph.D. research. I aim to offer some insights in the cognitive experiences gamers have while playing - hopefully useful to both designers and scholars. I will argue that an art experience is a particular kind of cognitive experience, namely a distinctive type of imagination. The essence of an art experience is the mental representation of a signification process, a sort of mirrored representation that is also known as mimesis. I hope to demonstrate that it is a universal feature of art to mirror life, or more accurately, a deliberate view on it. And that what constitutes art is not defined by the properties of an artefact, but by our experience of it, by our mental actions. Along the same line I maintain that the boundaries between what we usually label entertainment and what art can not be as sharply defined as we generally assume. The main arguments in the aforementioned debate concern affective features, perceivable aesthetic qualities (as opposed to artistic properties), and the uniqueness of a game. I will set out explaining why most expert assumptions seem not discriminating enough to distinguish an art experience from an entertainment experience. Next I present some theoretical perspectives on both kinds of experiences, after which I will explain how they are being mixed and intertwined in everyday practice. Some gameplay examples should finally illustrate this inevitably condensed theoretical framework, drawn from my more detailed and elaborated dissertation on signification, imagination and mimesis in games.

 

Problem Based Game Design – Engaging Students by Innovation

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Reng Lars Schoenau-Fog Henrik
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

At Aalborg University’s department of Medialogy, we are utilizing the Problem Based Learning method to encourage students to solve game design problems by pushing the boundaries and designing innovative games. This paper is concerned with describing this method, how students employ it in various projects and how they learn to analyse, design, and develop for innovation by using it. We will present various cases to exemplify the approach and focus on how the method aspires for innovation in digital entertainment and games.

 

Evaluating Interactive Entertainment using Breakdown: Understanding Embodied Learning in Video Games

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Ryan William Siegel Martin A.
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper describes evaluating interactive entertainment by understanding embodied learning in games, which is a perspective that situates the learning that a player must go through to play a game in a skill-based environment. Our goal was to arrive at a tool for designers to improve learnability from this perspective. To study embodied learning, we use the concept of breakdown, which happens when our experience fails to aid our everyday actions and decision-making. We conducted a study to investigate learning in games from which we constructed a framework of 17 patterns of breakdown and a set of guidelines to aid heuristic evaluation of video games and to help designers support breakdown in interactions, which support players’ learning, so that they do not become breakdowns in illusion, which break players’ immersion.

 

Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming

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Devers Deirdre Wilson Stephanie
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Multi-player online gaming environments are designed with the intent of providing entertaining experiences to players that not only foster re-playability but also to cultivate an ongoing allegiance or loyalty to the game publishers’/developers’ brand or various assets (e.g. Master Chief, Grand Theft Auto etc.). Design elements such as webcams, activity monitoring between players, and online presence cues make possible player practices within online game-based environments that, though surveillance-oriented, become the key ingredients that work to construct entertaining online encounters. Yet when similar features are transposed to other less playcentric spaces (e.g. workplace), whether online or offline, they can be perceived as threatening or unwanted. The surveillance networks created by the online games themselves and associated ‘meeting places’ [9] (e.g. Facebook) as well as surveillance activities in these digital spaces are vehicles for creating and sustaining entertaining experiences. The presence of surveillance-oriented design features and their subsequent and on-going use by individuals, create a more entrenched level of engagement and intimacy through repetitive contact. . The aim of this paper is the analysis of various online games and meeting places that comprise a surveillance network in order to identify the various design features and the player activities they give rise to which can constitute various types of surveillance (e.g. participatory, mutual). Building on the idea of surveillance having an entertainment function, I argue that in terms of the expression of a user experience (UX) in these particular digital spaces, surveillance-oriented mechanisms and practices are fundamental to the creation of enduring entertainment experiences which would not be possible without the reliance on the necessity of exposure in both places and of individuals.