Frans Mayra
CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures List of Boxes Acknowledgements viii x xi 1 Introduction: what is game studies? 1 Making sense of games 1 A (very) short history of game studies 5 11 Suggested further reading 11 Orientation assignment: Personal game history 11 Notes 12 2 Game culture: meaning in games 13 Games as cultural systems 13 Game cultures as subcultures 21 27 Suggested further reading 28 Assignment: Game culture survey 28 3 Play and games in history 30 Writing for game history 30 Defining games 32 Prehistory of games 37 Study of play in culture 43 50 Suggested further reading 50 Assignment: Remediation of a non-digital game 50 4 Dual structure and the action games of the 1970s 52 Digital games as multi-layered meaning-making systems 52 How to define a 'classic'? 55 Three decades of digital games: The rise of modern information society 56
Games in the 1970s: Learning the lexicon 58 Pong (1972): Introducing enjoyable core gameplay 58 Significance in gaming devices 61 Space invaders (1978) and the playability of a shooter 62 65 Suggested further reading 66 Assignments on early digital games 66 5 Adventures and other fiction in the 1980s' games 68 Games and culture in the 1980s 68 Pac-Man (1980) and digital game as pop culture 68 Donkey Kong (1981), the rise of interactive story-worlds 73 Text adventures and the evolution of computer role-playing games 78 Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985) and games' thematic depth 81 86 Suggested further reading 87 Assignments on diversifying game cultures 87 Notes 89 6 Three-dimensionality and the early 1990s 90 Debating games in the 1990s 90 Meaningful audiovisual technology? 91 Civilization (1991): Ideological simulation or just strategic play? 95 Doom (1993): Controversy, immersion and player-created mod culture 101 115 Suggested further reading 116 Assignments on 3D and tum-taking 116 7 The real and the game: game culture entering the new millennium 118 Games as worlds, the world as a game 118 The growth of online games 119 EverQuest (1999) World of Warcraft (2004) and other virtual worlds 127 Multimodal and pervasive games 141 ISO Suggested further reading 151 Assignments on mixed reality and multiplayer games 151 CONTENTS vi
8 Preparing for a game studies project Learning to ask Selecting and building the toolbox of methods Humanities methods Social sciences methods Design research methods Game playing as a method Writing for an audience References Index 152 152 155 157 158 162 165 167 171 184 vii CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES 5.1 All-time top twenty games by sales 77 5.2 Four game categories as a matrix between the temporality of interaction and the randomness of game world 80 5.3 The Ultima IV virtues, character classes and starting towns 83 7.1 Available subscription data for twenty popular online game worlds 134 7.2 Ten different player perceptions ofrmt [real money trade] 140 8.1 Selected titles of papers presented in Chancing Views - Worlds in Play 155 FIGURES 1.1 The focus of game studies in the interaction between game and player 2 2.1 Screenshot from Breakout IS 2.2 The dialectic of core and shell, or gameplay and representation in the basic structure of games 18 3.1 Primary Schemas 37 3.2 Tic-Toe-Toe, created by A. S. Douglas, 1952 40 3.3 Tennis for Two - a screenshot and a controller 41 3.4 The seven interlocking spheres of performance 46 4.1 Pong cabinet and an in-game screenshot 60 4.2 Space Invaders arcade console, set of instructions, and a screenshot with overlay colour effects 63 5.1 Pac-Man arcade console and screenshots 71 5.2 Donkey Kong console and screenshots 74 5.3 Sample screen elements from Roguelike games 79 5.4 Screenshots from Ultima IV, taken from the Commodore 64 version 83 5.5 A cloth map of Britannia 88 6.1 Commodore 64 and Nintendo Gameboy 92 6.2 A collection of Civilization screenshots from different phrases of the game 97
6.3 A collection of screenshots from Doom 103 6.4 Changes in the design of game level 'Episode II Map 4' from Doom 106 6.5 (a) Screenshot from the original Tomb Raider game and (b) image of Lara from Tomb Raider: Legend production 107 6.6 Gameplay experience model with three types of immersion 110 6.7 (a) Screenshot from 'Castle Smurfenstein' mod (1981) and (b) screenshot from Counter-Strike (1991) 113 7.1 (a) Screenshot from Meridian 59 (b) Screenshot from EverQuest (c & d) Screenshots from World of Warcraft 131 7.2 (a) Foot Craz pad for Atari 2600 (b) EyeToy camera (c) DDR dance game players (d) Guitar Hero package 144 8.1 Hermeneutic circle as a spiralling process of inquiry 153 ix OF AND FI(;UHE5