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Compared with the articles by Ryan, Juul and Bringsjord, The Gaming
Situation verges on the tangible. Here, author Markku Eskelinen
puts it simply: "Outside academic theory people are usually excellent
at making distinctions between narrative, drama and games. If I throw a ball at you, I don't expect
you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories." He explores the space and time of games:
the ways games might be analyzed along a spectrum of configurability,
how much control the user has over space and time. Such moments of
game-specific exploration, places where theory concerning
interaction is tied to the games themselves, are all too rare in this first
issue.
Besides delving briefly into anchored game theory, Eskelinen lists
specific criticisms of video games at large; talking about, for example, ways of conditioning the player's perception "...But for some reason I can't blacken my opponent's screen." It
appears that this poor fellow has never enjoyed Deus
Ex, or even Counter-Strike.
Within the first ten minutes of Deus Ex, anti-government terrorists
shoot you with tranquilizer darts that blur your perception and add a
sort of drunken motion to your movements (later you can do the same
to them). In Counter-Strike (1999), players make extensive use of
"Flashbang" grenades that serve to blind an opponent. Besides being
wildly popular, both Deus Ex and Counter-Strike have won countless
editorial and developer awards for excellence and innovation. At
risk of sounding too much like a hardcore gamer, these two games
are a part of an electronic entertainment canon that any game
theorist should study if they care to hold forth on the shortcomings
of modern game design.
Eskelinen does have some valid lamentations and areas for exploration, and reading over some of his criticisms might provoke a game producer to
design some more unusual challenges. These ongoing discussions could
prove valuable for an industry that could use an injection of studied
consciousness. Still, ensconced members of the game development
community are unlikely to accept input from someone who doesn't front
more game knowledge.
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