Category: games
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Win:Loss Ratio
A very big win for Australian gamers this week, with the news that NSW Attorney General, Greg Smith, had announced in-principle support for the inclusion of an R18 + classification for games. The good news however has been tempered by the closure of two Australian games development studios: THQ Brisbane and the Melbourne-based Blue Tongue…
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Gamification – Round Two
The two results from my interviews with Australian games developers that have surprised me the most, are the negatives responses to the suggestion that there is a need for more women to be working in the local industry (but more on that in a later post) and gamificiation. Long before I’d heard the term and…
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Australian Games Industry Study: Working Conditions
One of the recurring themes arising out of the interviews with Australian games developers is the issue of ‘crunch’ time, the period in the development of a game – usually towards the end of a project – when overtime (often unpaid) becomes mandatory. Crunch time is often necessary, as one interview participant in my current study…
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What is Gamification
Gamification is the application of secondary game mechanics to non-game experiences. Gamification, despite the name, does not involve play or primary game structures, but those devices associated with measuring progress and encouraging players to maintain their involvement, such as points, scores, leaderboards, levels and progression meters, achievements, badges, virtual currency, and other rewards that acknowledge…
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No game buying (update)
Six months in and won’t lie, it’s been hard. Portal 2 was the biggest the challenge. The trouble with the social networking features of the digital distribution platform Steam, is the system’s affective marketing. Each time a player on your friends list loads a game a notification pops up in the in the lower right…
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Being a fan sometimes has its costs
I should be working on a book chapter, but the news today has me thinking in parallels. Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and the Sarah Jane Adventures has died due to cancer at age 63. It has been a bad year for fans with the passing of the…
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Hats of Affect
The article is finally out – many thanks to all at Game Studies for a great collection!
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Finish It! – Mortal Kombat and the missing R18+
The banning of Mortal Kombat in Australia this week is pushing all the right buttons. By ‘refusing classification’ for Mortal Kombat 8, the Classification Board has reignited an already well flambeyed interest in the missing R18+ rating for video games. Australia’s National Classification System (NCS) is without an R18+ classification for video games, making us…
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Realism and Immersion
(I’ve posted on this previously but this is an updated version, as part of some reflections on the topic for the chapter mentioned in the previous post) My issue with the use of the terms ‘realistic’ and ‘realism’ to talk about texts like movies and games started when I first went to the cinema to…
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FPS Abstraction
An abstract I submitted last year to a call for contributions for a book on First Person Shooter (FPS) games (with the awesome title: Guns, Grenades, and Grunts: The First-Person Shooter) has been accepted for further peer-review. Now I have to get cracking and write the chapter. Here is the abstract: Creativity, Contagion and Control:…
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