Saturday, December 31, 2005

New Year's Resolutions for nongames.com

In 2006 I intend to...

1) Upgrade to geeklog 1.4
2) Remove all the spam comments
3) Re-design the website
4) Place mini-nongames on the website
5) Include versions of the articles in Portuguese

Happy new year to everyone!

Friday, December 23, 2005

Chris Bateman on The Anarchy of Paidia

Game designer and author of books on the subject, Chris Bateman just posted on his Only a Game a very good article about Paidia, term coined by Roger Caillois to designate the more anarchic, free-form aspect of play permeated by, as Caillois writes, 'diversion, turbulence, free improvisation, and carefree gaiety'. (On the other side of the spectrum is ludus, much more based on rules and requiring more skill and effort from the player. Needless to say, nongames are much more related to paidia than to ludus).

In his article, Bateman says:

´I have accused game designers of being remiss in overlooking the value of alea (games of chance) but we are, on the whole, prone to overlook paidia completely. This is not surprising: the game designer's craft is generally about producing the framework of play, which is to say the rules and abstractions that define the game world and its gameplay. In essence, the game designer works in the field of ludus, and this application of ludic elements is a contrary state of affairs to paidia.´

That could help to explain why one of the most sucessful nongames ever, Electroplankton, was created by a multimedia artist and not a game designer. However, I do think paidia is getting much more space within the game industry than it used to. Just take a look at Nintendogs, Animal Crossing and, to avoid a Nintendo monopoly on this post, The Sims.

Here is the link to the article.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Pixel Chix (Tamagotchi x Barbie) - ludic aspects and gender issues

I saw an advertisement for the Pixel Chix toy (and that's how it looks like).

(Manufacturer's Description):

Pixel Chix pal is a 2-D Girl Living in a 3-D World, (...) Using the input buttons on the fashionable, handheld house, help your Pixel Chix pal decide all kinds of things(...) Your Pixel Chick pal will talk to you and tell you what she wants. She'll tell you if she's happy (or not!) about the choices you make. There are five levels of play. At each new level accumulate more choices of foods, fashions, games and places to go! The more you play, the more stuff you get but if you ignore your Pixel Chix pal, the more stuff you lose! Connect two houses together and then the Pixel Chix pals can visit or have a party!

It sounds like a good idea, and my guess is that it could not only sell quite a lot, but also get a series of dedicated studies in electronic toys and gender representation.

The reason i am saying that is because I am not quite sure if girls interact with dolls in the same way as with virtual pets. When playing tamagochi or nintendogs, the user is quite aware of his presence as a provider. On the other hand, dolls and figure actions have a more, say, 'proactive personality' during play. It's like they have a mind of their own, and make things for themselves through the player. In a way, it's like playing a 3rd person game instead of a god game (which is more applicable to virtual pets).

There is another fundamental difference: virtual pets and their behavior are nurtured and maintained with whatever tools and resources implemented by the designer. Dolls, however, can behave and have pretty much anything the player imagines. So while Tamagotchis have their lives very much structured inside quite narrow boundaries, Barbies can do the most different and unusual things.

My fear is that when you have the functional aspects of virtual pets embodied in a doll (or a dollhouse to be more precise), you end up having the designer's vision as a definitive statement on the life of those characters and whom they represent. In this particular case, you might never see the Pixel Chix going to the army, a church or a demonstration (just to give some really bad examples). For a user, it might fell like playing with dolls that live in a really constrained universe. Of course, children are quite smart, and I don't think that they will think that everything a young woman does is contained in the Pixel Chix set of activities, or that they have to be kept alive and happy by an external provider. Still, because of issues like these, the crossover between dolls (or action figures) and virtual pets should get some attention.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Political non-game

There are probably more, but Ragdoll Bush is the first politically charged non-game I've ever seen on the web.

(via WatercoolerGames.org)

Saturday, December 03, 2005

MA Final Project featured on Gamasutra.com

Insular, my MA final project, is now featured on Gamasutra's Education section, where you can read the design document, the critical appraisal and download the prototype.

The project is a group of interconnected 'non-games' for the Nintendo DS handheld system. The prototype is a PC demo, though.

So many people helped me with this project that I wouldn't try to list them here. To all of them, thank you very much.

Click here to go to the page at Gamasutra.
Copyright, Chico Queiroz